Accessing Stillness, Joy, and Rest

Edit: I wrote this mindfulness shortly before Roe v. Wade was overturned this week. While it might seem paradoxical in a time many of us are so fired up to act, I realized this mindfulness on accessing joy, rest, and stillness is exactly the message I believe we need this week. Activist, author, and lawyer Karen Walrond discusses in her book, "The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change without Losing Your Joy," that joy, love, beauty, and self-compassion are the fuel to her work as an activist. She explains that engaging in activism in a sustaining way requires us to front-load with self-compassion, to make sure our well is full before we pull from it. Additionally, she found that lifelong activists lived by an ebb and flow, taking time to both work hard and rest/play hard. 

In this mindfulness, I invite you to cultivate the beauty of simply being without doing. I invite you to find joy, to play, and to have pleasure, even if it is just for a moment. I believe our hearts are capable to hold both beauty and pain, sadness and joy, and suffering and pleasure. Trust what your body is telling you- fight like hell when you need; rest like hell when you need; play like hell when you need. 

~

My love, rest is not a means to an end, but an end itself. We don’t need a reason to rest, play, or have joy. We don’t need to strive toward anything. I do not know accomplishment; I do not know productivity; I do not know awards, recognition, legacies, or marks. I just know how to be like a tree: present, alive, enduring. The tree does not try to do anything more than just be. The tree trusts the sun and dirt will nourish it, and, in return, the tree stretches little by little. People are in complete awe at the sight of a mighty oak, the tall redwoods, the plump elms. Dear one, you do not need to do a thing to add to the beauty of this world. Just by being you, the world will nourish you, support you, and, as a result, you will stretch like the tree. You will stretch into your true nature. 

Dear one, has your production ever given you peace? Production, achievement, attainment…these things may give you temporary positive feelings. But what makes you feel belonging in your bones? What makes your soul exhale? What makes you melt into the world around you? Is it the sight of the first flower in Spring? Is it standing still in a silent forest, only hearing a woodpecker in the distance? Is it the sunset over your favorite lake? My love, the world invites us to ease into her stillness and to be wrapped up in her quiet, humble peace. 

When you take time to withdraw from the noise, from the doing, from all the voices, you leave what is familiar because you know there is something better, something more true that exists. My love, once you leave it all, you can finally find yourself. You finally recognize the one voice among the masses that was giving you the right advice; it was your own. When you find stillness, you find yourself. 

It is easy to become anxious when we take away what we know. It is OK to be scared of the stillness. Dear one, if you ride the wave of discomfort, there is a bottomless well of true abundance awaiting you on the other side. Most of us only know temporary enjoyment from production. Dear ones, when we let it all fall away, when we shed the false belief that joy, peace, and satisfaction comes from our output, our production, we realize we can simply have joy to have joy. We can take a rest just to take a rest. This journey is not about attaining. This journey is about being present- just to be present, to feel love- just to feel love, to bask in pleasure- just to bask in pleasure, to admire beauty- just to admire beauty. There is no means to an end, dear one. You do not have to earn your reward or rest. All that truly fills us up is available to us anytime, no matter who we are, what we have done, or what we haven’t done. 

We may not be able to stay withdrawn forever, maybe even not for more than a few moments. My love, that is OK. Retreat to the stillness to find your footing, then continue on. There is nothing more holy than a pause.