Resting deeply and feeling the richness and value of rest.

I’ve been resting so deeply all month: napping, reading, drifting in my hammock, walking in the mountains and through the orange groves at night to sit by streams in the starlight, sleeping longer hours.  It feels as though I’ve come home after a long sojourn in another world! 

As I rest more, I become ever more aware of the profound tiredness in me from all the time I’ve lately spent in the world of “busy.”  It amazes me how much I can still juggle and “do” if/when I have to–even after so many long stretches (sometimes years) of doing nothing much at all.  Yet, each season that I come back to the stillness, the timelessness of not-doing, I feel so much fuller, more alive and more at home in the deepest core of my being.

We’ve all been sold such a bill of goods about being productive–as if resting is slothful. A shameful need to be kept secret, a waste of precious time, unproductive, a sign of depression.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  In the stillness of resting we can get to hear from our deepest selves.  Without the noise of being-always-so-busy, we have a chance to know what really is so for us in this moment of our unfolding.  (And, so often, what’s so is that we need more time for resting!)

So many of the e-mails that come about my website speak of how grateful readers are for the support, validation and encouragement they find at the site to be more gentle with ourselves, to go more slowly and to celebrate resting. I’m so delighted! If we can keep spreading the word, maybe we can reach “critical mass” and change/subvert the “dominant paradigm!”

Originally published May 2001