I've stopped saving myself

I’ve stopped saving myself.

Honoring what is here is divinely more important,
Than getting out of it.

Being in the stuck, in the yuck, in the panic of not moving,
Is far more impactful,
Than fixing it.

I often see things like,
“If you don’t like something in your life, GO CHANGE IT!”
As a motivational quote.

What about,
“If you don’t like something in your life, sit with the not-like.
Get curious about what part of you is not liking it.
Open up to medicine of the dislike.”

For the last few months, I’ve been experiencing what I can only name as panic.

PANIC
Is something I’ve never felt before.

Not because I was so secure or strong or something…

But because I’ve never let myself go
enough to feel it.
I always fixed it before it could even get there.
I always stopped the waterfall before it even got close to the edge.

Panic
Was unacceptable to my system.

So I did everything I could to prevent it.
I set up classes and to-do lists and scheduled hang outs with friends,
So I would never have to get
Here.
I tasked myself with workouts and spa days and educational books,
So I would never have to touch the absolute nothingness,
That is the present moment.

Even as I unwound my tight grip on productivity and hustle culture,
I still found ways to make sure my rest was useful.
I still found ways to elicit productivity through healing.
I still found ways to use my techniques to save myself.

From
Panic.

Well, what felt like panic anyway.

I wrote part of this post back in January,
And at the time,
All I could feel was the panic.

But as I have continued to sit with it,
Experience it,
And thaw from the frozen state I have been in most of my life…

I have found that it’s really not panic.
That’s just how my system responds when you give it absolutely nothing.

Total uncertainty.
Total lack of clarity.
No direction.
Nothingness.

No motivation to work harder.
No stories about what I “should” be doing.
No fantasies about what could be happening.
No wanting needing trying to heal or be better or be inspiring or or or…

Nothing that has me be any other way than whatever is happening in this exact moment.

And it’s this nothingness that has had me awaken.
It has had me see what’s actually inside me.
Not the roles I’ve played, or the stories I’ve told.
But
Me.

And it’s this nothingness that has given me practice
For somethingness.
Because when the somethingness happens again,
ME comes through,
Instead of all the things that were covering up the panic.

So
I’ve stopped saving myself.
And I’m finally finding the me
That never needed to be saved.