Taking a Break

Knock-knock
Who's there?
It's your Creator.
What do you want?
I want to answer all your prayers and pretty much make your life smoother and awesomer than you could possibly imagine.
Not now, I'm meditating...



In a recent discussion about spiritual pursuits, I was asked the question "when do we get to take a break from all of this?" Seriously.


This culture in particular is hell-bent on getting things done, crossing them off the list, producing endlessly, consuming without satiety. One would surmise that to counterpoint this flurry of desperate activity we would naturally balance ourselves with time to integrate and reflect on all of this business.

But when is there time?

Right.

The breaks we allow ourselves are often filled with either stimulants like coffee and cigarettes, or mind-numbing exercises such as On Demand television, or snacking without hunger. I remember as a young thespian, we committed to our smoking habits as the only real way to actually stop working during our union 5-minute breaks. Otherwise we could make one more update to the prop list, or reset the stage for the next run of the scene.

There’s always something else to do, of course. I’ve always got one more thing that isn’t done, that I could be doing. And if I could be doing something more productive, then isn’t it wrong not to do that thing? Isn’t it lazy, foolish, and downright willful not to keep on when the keeping’s good, to mix some perfectly good metaphors?

And yet, I think something somewhere mentioned God resting on day 6, and clearly He wasn't actually done, was he? Still had all that behind-the-scenes business of actually running this crazy skit. Still, God kicked off his cosmic sandals and floated down the Euphrates on a crocodile's back, goblet of ambrosia in hand, and just wallowed in self-satisfaction for a whole cosmic day.

So when is it okay for US to rest? The house isn’t clean, we haven’t labeled all of our vacation photos, we aren’t out of debt yet, and we’re certainly not enlightened. Why should we get to stop? Who do we think we are to stop before perfection? I mean, we've got nothing as good as a whole, thriving planet to show for ourselves. Compared to that we got a handful of sticks and some potato chip dust, right?

Try this experiment, if you like. Watch your brain as you go through your daily to-do list. The mind will promise “happiness” as a result of any activity, like your mom telling you to finish your peas so you can have ice cream. An even exchange. Do your homework and you can go to the mall. But the mind likes absolutes like: "Work harder and you’ll get out of debt so you won’t ever have to experience guilt again." "Meditate harder to attain spiritual perfection and then you can have peace and contentment."

Only thing is, it has no ability to deliver on its promises.

In fact, it will go to great lengths to contradict itself, just to keep you tied up in knots. “You know, if you stop now, you’ll never get it done, and if you don’t get it done someone will know you’re a fraud, and they’ll probably ostracize you from the tribe, and then you’ll starve to death in the wilderness. Is that what you want?” Sound like an exaggeration? Track it back to the very origin of the stress. It's absolutely there.

So you keep pounding on, but you’ve read part of this post, so it’s wise to you. “So you’re not gonna take a break, huh? So you can’t take time for yourself, huh? Well that’s about what I’d expect. You don’t really give a crap about yourself anyway. All tied up in fear, eh? And you call yourself spiritual, huh? Right! You can’t even follow the most basic of rules…” And so on, ad infinitum. You can’t win. Letting the mind steer pretty much anchors us to the belief that we suck. No matter what.

As Perfect Children of God, how does that work, then? It doesn’t, actually. Taking a break can help us climb above the chatter of the mind and take a look at Mt. Hood, or notice that the cat would really like some attention. It gets us in touch with our authentic selves, where we see what really feeds us. What things are written on the back of the list that we didn’t feel confident enough to write as an actual to-do item. Things like Take a Walk. Pick some flowers to arrange on the dining room table. Call a roommate from college. Take up unicycling. See, when we take the time to notice what our hearts are really calling for we return to our true Selves, and suddenly everything that really needs to get done takes very little effort, really. At least compared to all the freaking out about doing it.

The mind has us convinced that constant effort is what the Universe respects the most. And sometimes end does justify less-than-exciting means, but sometimes the means itself is simply taking the time to put the mind on hold. When the mind goes on lunch we get to reset, reboot, clear out the cache. We can kick back and just enjoy the moment. We get to set aside the bag of shredding and enjoy a few deep breaths (away from the paper dust, of course). We can set down the pruning shears and smell the rose. We can even sneak a look at the mind behind its back and notice that maybe it needs a little compassion. Notice all the fear and desperation it’s carrying around. All the thoughts and limiting beliefs that it consists of, and how nervous it is worrying about you not doing anything, thinking it’s literally going to die if you stop listening to it. Poor thing.

When we notice these qualities about the mind, and we can get enough distance to recognize that we’re not dying from taking a break, which is literally what the mind has us convinced of, if you track it back to its root. When we see that nothing bad is happening whatsoever, we might want to call the mind back over to the couch, offer it a cup of chamomile, and tell it that it’s gonna be okay. Tell it that it’s not going to run the show any more, but that it’s appreciated just the way it is, for all it teaches us. Promise to hear and acknowledge its opinions, but to always check its assertions against our inner truth. With our feet up on the coffee table, we can suggest a partnership of sorts. A partnership wherein the mind will react to things and show us our triggers and challenges, and the Self will say “hey! That’s neat! You’ve made an even bigger to-do list than before! I’m still gonna stare out the window for a few more minutes…”

This is called staying-in-balance. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Of course, this is all terribly sage advice, but what happens when we’re just done? When we couldn't care less about being in balance. We don’t want to watch the mind any more. We don’t want to follow any rules about observing the mind or showing compassion or taking breaks. We just want to work too hard and feel terrible about it, and heaven forefend, make snap judgments and wax surly and unpleasant?

Well, take a break from that, too, for Pete’s sake! Let the “spiritual” effort cease.
If it isn’t natural and authentic it isn’t going to work anyway, so give it up!

I enjoy stepping away from my spiritual protocol every so often and just reveling in the mire that is the state of being human. Sometimes I just want to let go. To swear at traffic. To take offense. To even do a little blaming. This, believe it or not, can be a form of a break. If labor law (in this country) requires two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour for lunch, then I think Spiritual law ought to require the same.

Often what I discover from this sort of break is how miserable I become when I let the mind run the show. It feels good, momentarily, to be reactive, but after a day or two, I find myself totally wound up in my own tangle of false beliefs and fears, that it's a relief to come home to my heart and take the reins from the mind once again. Like going on vacation, it might be great to stay out late and consume things you would never give yourself permission to eat and drink during your day-to-day life, but by the end of the week you're not feeling so hot, and it feels good to get back into the routine again.

And that's cool. And, I mean, at some point the scales tip. At some point along the road it doesn't even feel right to deviate from the path I've laid out for myself. I don't even want the ice cream sundae, even though I've given myself permission to eat it. I don't want to stay up til 2, just because I can. At some point along the road it feels like wasted effort to blame it on my parents, the economy, the grocery store clerk. But in the meantime, the vacation helps us to identify patterns that no longer serve. To sift and sort and come back to ourselves to trim the fat once again. The break helps us to see the forest so we can get back to pruning individual trees.



And as you come back you might notice the little guilt-trip the mind is trying to lay on you. Oh, mind, you dear little thing...

It's all good.


Once I've taken the break I actually want to do the work again. I find I don't like the mind in charge, so I work back into the heart again. When the spiritual effort comes from the place of the mind "shoulding" you, it isn't helping you "get" anywhere, anyway.

See, we're not getting anywhere any faster by skipping our rejuvenation. We can skip sleep for a few hours to get a bit more done, but we certainly can't keep it up for long, before we break down. We need that time to eliminate toxins that do not serve us, and to rebuild the tissues that need rebuilding. The same goes for our daily lives. We need to take waking rest so we can allow that which no longer serves to fall away, and to fill up with the inspiration we need to create the rest of our day.

Just as the body cannot rebuild itself without sleep, it also needs to ingest. Without the building blocks it's made of, so we cannot bring our dreams to fruition without fuel for the fire. We need to go outside, go to a museum, go hear some music, play at the beach, and so on in order to be fed. We must play in order to work. It's a cycle that is required for our well-being. If we don't do these things we burn out, we dry up and are no longer serving our divine purpose here on planet Earth. We become shadows, rustling around in fear that we'll be caught-out without everything done.

I assure you, it will NEVER be done.

Our lives are a process, a fractal. If we follow our hearts we will always be veering off the road we thought would take us to the finish line. Well guess what, sweethearts. There is no finish line. In the words of Mr. Baggins, "the Road goes ever on and on..." So we may as well enjoy a look-see as often as possible. Daily is good, but whenever you think about it is a place to begin.

In case you’ve lost the thread, my point is, there is absolutely nothing in this world that has to Get Done, effort is just effort, and Grace can only come in when we stop and let it flow.

And Grace, my friends, is All There Is.

Let it in!