What it is to rest ... and how we need it now. Our weekend From the Heart(h) series.

Rest is an essential truth of creation amongst Life's Sacred Living System, sadly - we honour our doing far too much to truly reap its rewards. At this time of year - rest is sorely needed.

It’s both the end of the year and the craziest time of the year. We are exhausted from running the hamster wheel as well as managing life. The cost of living, the financial crisis, the world on fire - wars raging - there is attacks on us from every angle. We need rest desperately. Our nervous systems are whacked - our minds depleted - bodies frail.

Rest - is vital to so many aspects of our health and vitality - as much as it is vital to Life / Earth’s - health and vitality. So under valued, and over priced, the opportunity for rest rarely comes without a cost. At this time of year we see it clearly - to rest now - comes at a cost of consumerism and buying in to the many facets of Xmas. Don’t get me wrong, the right type of time, surrounded by loving, supportive, relationships adds to our rest. But for many the wrong kinds, the abusive, neglectful, or just down right demanding relationships make this time of year more fraught with destruction than rest.

We need rest - we are part of a natural order of Life, that created rest purposefully, in order for all things to become.

The Living System holds rest at it’s core for creation. It holds a fast feedback loop of which, whilst there are many, rest is worth mentioning in depth as it plays an important role and is not honoured within our society or our current economy for what it truly offers. Neither within our own Self, or our relationships do we truly honour rest and all that it holds, nor within our economy, for rest - seen as downtime and ineffective - is costly, a statement that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Rest, allows the feedback loop time to reveal all things.

Rest as a part of Life’s sacred living system, is stored energy for creation of the renewable systems. To rest, pause, take time, breathe is in itself an economy of exchange that allows all things time and space in order to become. Rest allows healing, it allows time and space for what must move and shape and grow - in all life forms. It reveals all things, for at its core - the stillness within rest allows truth to rise.

Time and space creates all things, for which rest is its conductor.

To heal, to merge, to flirt and dance, to lounge, rest is required. The Living System’s rapid feedback loop uses rest for its own management and creation as the gentle spaces between the loops that allows silence for the making - all sentience is a part of this feedback loop - including us. The feedback is so fast it can alter its course in seconds, stimulated from the resonance of one source to another, messaging like sirens where there is need or trouble.

As all things honour rest, it lay amongst action in stages of silence, stillness and rest, which means there is more time for things to be noticed, discrepancies to be found, glitches to be realised, imbalance to be heard, all of which means at the same time as action taking place regeneration through feedback is occurring. Because of rest.

Rest opens us to having time to see, to feel, to sense into our being and our surroundings to find what is calling for harmony.

Not only does the human world deny and deplete ourselves of rest, this means we are absent from the responses to feedback and constantly in battle with balancing our health and wellbeing with the needs of all that is around us for doing. Finding more time to think amongst doing, we are in constant phases of reaction as opposed to nature's timing of agile responding. Rest allows flexibility, it offers a subtle suppleness to the system, (being that it provides absence of stress and tension) forever bending to manoeuvre around in response to what is - like water - as opposed to breaking through negative reactions to what was.

Rest also offers the capacity for the potential for life to continue. That pause - which all things have - means alignment takes place. The Living System holds within its foundations two valued pillars, through meaning and care. We each hold meaning, this meaning is offered as care, and rest is what offers us both the capacity to see where care is required - and the time to offer it. To our own being as well to those around us, AND to nature.

Caring is the most undervalued, yet vital thread of relationship, and within the Living System it is held by all who offer themselves to it as being of utmost significance. Nothing exists without the care for it to continue. The Living System is a system of meaning that attempts to make sense of the world in a way that leads to effective action for its continued existence through care.

A meaning system is one that is value-laden and action-oriented and is expressed through every sentience, that we all hold value and action as who we are as the foundations, and creation of life and that we care for the enriched livelihood of all.

All things have their time, all things require space, rest is essential feedback and regeneration is the creation of renewed life.

Rest

The role of sleep, rest and relaxation in transformation is too often overlooked and an underrated element to our wellness and wellbeing. Within the current framework of production these three elements are considered time wasters where every ounce of usable time must be squeezed from every available life source in order to produce.

That we overlook those who produce, all that produces, in order to produce more, is backward thinking that speaks only of a disposable mindset. That we can use and continue to abuse our production line in order for it to be continually replaced after burning out, be it man or machine holds the stench of an oppressive diseased society.

To sleep, to allow rest and recuperation, to work from a relaxed state, are all ways vital - not simply necessary - vital to our most effective mental health and our bodies ability to heal and repair. Within life’s rituals and routines there is deep time around sleep. I use the framing of deep time - that whilst often described as the immense arc of non-human history that shaped the world as we perceive it today - here it is framed as the actuality of all time in and of itself that continues as the formation of all time, to which we connect through rest and sleep, even more so through meditation.

There is a deep stillness that once our sacred threads are rewoven we return to, that when in rest mode all things align to for healing. This stillness returns us to deep time. The art of deep time amongst this means we are always able to reconnect to our own intimate scope of time amongst that of eternal time, to that of the circular time of life as all things amongst nature as well our own existence. This depth is the gold to which all our creation wells from. It is the connection to our eternal power source and force, as life’s expressions, and if we truly want to debate longevity, it is its only true source. This is powerful, truly drink this in. 🔁

The art of reaching into the depth of stillness and time - to which it is an art as it is an individual expression and performance ritual or practice - is through meditation and is quintessential to our becoming. Within the framework of rest, relaxation, repair, renewal, there is none greater. To allow deep conscious surrender to all that is, with intention, is separate to slumber. The gold in which we seek to find our truest self, our greatest source, and our most vital expressions are found within allowing ourselves deep time to return to that which we belong in order to be reborn to life each time. This is continual transformation as the very essence of life itself.

The Living System holds this phase and stage of its becoming within every one of its creations, the moon holds pause (void of course) as do we within every breath, every animal has a stage of rest and hibernation, as does every plant, even the sun. Whilst we could never imagine the sun resting, the alignment of spring and autumn between southern and northern hemispheres are equal times of less radiance of the sun's heat through which it too holds pause in its luminance. Pausing is essential in the phases of transformation, there’s a moment where all things hold, to allow all things to become. If we liken this to our 4 stages of breathing/inhaling life, we realise that in the absorption and letting go phases this pause is seen as the moment where life’s own natural processes take over.

So in life sleep, rest and relaxation, is the time taken to breathe, pause and let life have its own course of action.

There is process to breath, as there is process to life, and rest, through breath is bridging the two.

• That we take in breath, as an inhalation of all of life, (that we take in life itself, or digest food)

• that we allow that which we need to absorb within us to be us, (as lesson or experience, as much as it is oxygen and nutrients), PAUSE

• that we then allow an exhalation of all that is waste, unneeded byproduct that isn't for our becoming (let go of things that are not a part of our life, elimination process),

• and finally that we let go PAUSE and move on from that moment to the next (giving space to honouring all that has been, space within for the body to rest). We hold the very same process for life, as space allows us with breath itself.

Rest allows this, pause offers this.

• Rest offers expansion through space as time, it is where we begin if we want to seek solutions for space allows, and more often than not our rush with time relinquishes this

• Rest and pause, allows space and time, to allow all things to appear, to be healed or to mend and grow.

• Rest as time, allows things to travel to us, or from us.

• Rest offers expansion, when we open to space, we open to life, we open to all we can become (as does life open to all its forms of creation).

Rest is more important today than ever before, it is the restoration of our ability to not just keep going but to stay the course. There is so much to do to make the changes called for to alter the course of this Earthship, even more to Be, in order for that to happen.

Right in this NOW we are all craving rest. The ability to allow all of us to carry the load, all of us to do our part - there is togetherness in our rest. The ability for us to sigh deeply and just allow the rush and the doing to be put on hold - the pause button to be pressed - so we can take stock, we can reload ourselves, we can just …….

find silence… and stillness …. and be.

May you have this moment in as many ways as you can find them - ask all around you to join you - take whatever opportunities come to indulge… just rest, be easy, soften…

May this festive time bring you the laughter and love of those closest to you and rest carry you home.

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1. Photo by Daniela Turcanu on Unsplash