Pausing trying to be better & practising being more myself
Pausing trying to be better & practising being more myself.
My daughter introduced me to a new phrase non improvement time, I rather like it. My wise friend is into idling.
There is a part of me that is not tired. Not behind. Not trying to catch up or do better or be more. This part doesn't need fixing because it was never broken. It has been there, quietly, underneath my performing for goodness knows whom, my busy mind, my calendar and the me that tries to manage everything and produce things.
It appeared seemingly uninvited at the exact same time I decided I no longer wanted to be married to my husband of 26 years. The best way I have found to describe what happened in that moment is ‘waking up to my life’. Not the version of my life that I live in my head or the one that I wake up hoping will happen. But the actual version of my life that I have, now, here, in all of this. Being able to see my current reality for what it is somehow introduced this other dimension, the one that offers me a choice in it all. Implicit in the decision to change my being married was an ability to witness myself and view where I found myself. This capacity to know that I had to choose to change things for the better required a level of awareness that didn’t come from inside the life I was living at that time.
That discovery was about six years ago. Curious that since this realisation I have been on an ongoing exploration of what is and what is not an expression of this part of me. There is an innate willingness to discern, articulate and colour in this aspect of me alongside an accompanying compass that orients my activities towards what feels more alive in me. A quality arises that carries momentum towards events that move me even closer to this sense of self and away from things that it’s not. Hard to logically understand when there is nothing to find and nothing to ultimately do with any of my findings!
Can anyone relate to this curious yet glorious orientation?
I live in Norfolk and offer sound baths as an invitation to simply rest in this part of ourselves for an hour — allowing the experience of existing to be enough.
The vibrations of crystal bowls and gongs seem to interrupt the automated running of thinking, the to-do lists, the performance of being a functioning adult and offers people something they rarely gets: permission to simply be. Julian of Norwich called this resting place the ground of the soul. Transpersonal psychology calls it open awareness. Many people describe it as Presence. Your body just knows it as relief.