rest

if i were to add more words to the already overcrowded communication world right now, i would choose them carefully.  they would be these words on rest by david whyte (from his book "consolations")...

"rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.  rest is the essence of giving and receiving.  to rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.

to rest is to give up worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right.

rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it, rested we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way.  

in rest we reestablish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation; someone we want to remember and someone others would want to remember too."

far from being self-indulgent, rest is a lovely way to sustain our pace and make sure that the efforts we do give forth are more accurate, more in tune and coming from our most authentic selves.  

it seems not so much a question of fast or slow, doing or not doing, work or leisure.  it may involve aspects of those, but it is more of a coming to peace with our place in the world.  rested, we can hear what is most needed from us and increase our capacity to contribute in lasting ways.

it is not a call to do nothing, rather it is being willing to cease certain ways of being in order to always begin again; a beautiful, renewing exchange akin to breathing.  our society is very action-oriented (yang) and may benefit from times of receptivity (yin) in order to strengthen the genuineness of our action.  

(how many times when things change is the response, "do something, make something happen!" instead of permission to "listen, wait and then act from an informed and rested place"?)

for example, i feel challenged to take a sabbath from the untruthful thought that i am only valuable if i am actively contributing or giving in some way.  i want to give this up in favor of embracing the truth that i am valuable just because i exist.

in what ways do you feel actively called to rest?