The world is so loud, says my Soul.
All these voices screaming at my delicate ego to buy this, to do this, to behave this way, to achieve this thing. And yet, whenever I obey it seems I am even further from my peace than when I started. I got the raise, and now I must work harder for the next one. I won the award, and now I have to hold that reputation. I bought that thing, I dated that man, I found that house.
Each thing I achieved from this obedience brought me further and further from whatever it was that felt important, even if I couldn’t say out loud exactly what that important thing was. Now, with 6 years of spiritual journeying, workshops and isolation behind me, I see that it is my very Soul.
Soul grateful. Soul nourished. Soul blessed to realize that no amount of chasing carrots will ever give me a taste of Spirit and the peace that comes with this embodiment. With my feet planted firmly in the dirt, the same feet that ran me in circles on the treadmill of achievements, I seek something new. It’s something I can not have by chasing, and I can not buy it. It is wrapped in the silence all around me. It is tucked into the leaves where the coolest insects like to hide. It is on the breeze that rides in from the lake and it’s in the lake itself, under the water and also in the splash of my skin hitting the surface and in the breath I take when I break through all wet-haired and smile to the sky. It is in my daily yoga practice which I share with my family. It is in the connection I feel with them as we sit on the sunny dock and eat breakfast together. It is in a sister’s gentle hands on my back while I cry.
It is nameless, but I’ve heard it called “the ineffable”, and since that simply means it has no words that can describe it, it seems to describe it perfectly. It is belonging, not only to a community, but to this Earth. In the silence and freedom and nature which surrounds me here at the farm there is a deeper knowing that I am needed. That I have succeeded already just by being born, and that every day I fulfill my purpose even if that purpose is to cry or rest or dance alone. It removes the need to be anything and then I simply Be, with a capital. Inside my heart I feel buzzing, and the honey of that buzz is the sense of tightness that I can feel deep within me. I read once that the soul is not in the body, but that the body is held in the soul. Here on the farm, I can’t see it any other way. My Soul, alive in the gentleness and peace, holds my body and eases my fears.
Why couldn’t I feel this great presence before? Was it the constant rushing around, getting things done? Was it the endless need to consume? New clothes, new homes, new shoes (I don’t even own those now). Why is it that, now, placing flowers delicately around the fire, I feel more peace and achievement than I ever did when I once deftly climbed the corporate ladder?
I suspect that there is a cure in silence. I suspect there is salvation in simplicity. I suspect that there is freedom in this space that is without Wi-Fi. There is connection in this lack of connection. A different connection, one which easily looks away from the outside world and begins to probe at the circuits within. I can almost see them, these gentle vines connecting my heart and my body and my spirit. The work is delicate, like trying to twist two thin wires together behind my ribs and on sense alone; so difficult to do in the noise and the rush of the Western world and now seeming to happen on its own as if my magic.
So perhaps I don’t know much, and that’s how I like it. I rest and I heal, and this delicate act of reconnecting to my Soul happens the same way a flower blossoms. And like a flower, it only needs a safe container. Good soil. Lots of sun and lots of rain. This gentle work needs gentle surroundings, and when we cultivate gentleness, life seems to respond with immense sensitivity.
And here I am, coming back to my Soul, my Self, and surrounded by others doing the same. We support each other and we hold each other. Sometimes we pain each other, and even there I find gifts. Slowing down. Rediscovering the Tribe. Singing around the fire.
The Revolution is here, my friends.
It is not what you expected.
Because in a world where we are addicted to DOing, rest is the true revolution.