Balance and the Empty Well

I have not been as consistent with writing as I have wanted to be. It seems that while I am working that takes a lot of my focus. I did, however, recently write an article for The Modern Goddess Project, in which I discussed Balance. For many of us we think of the word balance as referring to the balancing act that we feel we must participate in to have it all. We have to be all things to all people in our lives and somehow end up with time for work, cleaning, hobbies, rest, self care, to be well read, to better our education, to give back to the community, to be social… the list goes on and on…

Writing this article made me take a long look at what I considered to be Balance, what expectations I have of myself, and how I go about creating the life I truly want. By evaluating the idea of balance and writing about it from a Pagan Spiritual perspective meant really looking at the ideas I had in my head and exploring where they came from. One of the goals of my personal practice is to be more attuned to the natural flow of energies around me, to be more “natural”, writing this article made me to evaluate the ideas and standards I judge myself against that measure.

What I found, was that many of my ideas of what I (yes I know past readers will gasp at what I am about to say) “should” be doing, did come from external influence and did not seem to truly fit with the ideal of what I wanted to be. No matter how hard we work to banish the should monster, it can lurk back into our lives and rear it’s ugly head and I found myself listening to it’s voice again. This is a voice that tells me getting rest and plenty of sleep isn’t productive, it isn’t interesting and it isn’t useful- which feeds the disorder of insomnia- because the brain tells you; well if you can’t sleep you must do something interesting, productive instead of trying to calm your mind and get yourself into a routine that can help you get the rest you need, and instead you push yourself past the point of exhaustion and end up getting even less rest.

In my head I should have a perfectly spotless house, have time everyday to exercise, cook dinner for my family, work a full 8 hour day, commute to and from work, write, relax, meditate, do tarot card readings, write, clean, do yard work, crochet, and then there is the famous saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”- yet Dream-time is a very important part of a healthy spiritual life and more importantly brings me some very important insights. When I am completely exhausted I don’t have a healthy Dream-time either. Exhaustion sucks everything out of you and leaves you with no energy left to do even survival tasks. Yet some how most of us raised in this post industrial capitalist society seem to have had it driven into our heads that this is what success looks like and anything less is failure. (I must admit that I firmly believe that this is more a disorder that effects members of the United States, as I have met people from other countries who marvel at the American drive to always be doing something, and think it is absurd that we don’t honor other cultural traditions that require a person to slow down a little or not take life so seriously, but that is beside the fact) I am a citizen of the United States, I was born and raised here, and unfortunately have not had the pleasure of living in other locales so I write from the perspective of someone from the United States.

Last year gave many people time to slow down, it forced them to stay still for extended periods of time and while news from other countries didn’t seem so dire in respect to the time spent in our homes, in my homeland you would have thought that someone had skinned our puppy right in front of us because we were forced to stay in once place, limit our social interaction and take a break from the constant traffic and hustle of daily Capitalist life. Yet, for some of us it opened our eyes.

We are like Wells- if a well is fed from a spring and you don’t draw out too much water it will last many lifetimes. However if there is no incoming flow of water and you continually pull from the well it can go dry in as little as a couple of years. Rest, meditation and self care are springs of well being that we can feed our well with, yet we tend to push those off to fit the ideal of success that others have told us is how things should be.

But when we look to Nature for our way of being we see a pattern that might be more beneficial. Ebb and Flow- The tides do this, fields of wild flowers do this. They ebb and they flow. Even the Bible has a saying about this: “To Everything there is a Season” (yes the Byrds song released in December of 1965 is actually Biblical Verses from the book of Ecclesiastes- there is some truth in everything! You just have to sift it out). What would happen if we had the ability to live our lives based on our cycles of Ebb and Flow- that when we felt energetic and active we could work, play; do the productive things. and when we when we felt that Ebb in our energy we could rest, instead of being told to push through it, go farther- how much further could we actually get if we didn’t try to kill ourselves and completely drain our energy?

Do we live in a world that will allow us to do this- unfortunately no. Are there those souls in our world fighting for us to get there-luckily yes!

I challenge my readers today to find a place in your life where you can work with your Ebb and Flow- identify it, and then try to work with that cycle of energy- does it feel better? What emotions come up when you allow yourself to have and Ebb? How does working with ebb and flow in this one area effect the rest of your life? Can you apply this theory more broadly then you imagined?

The skies are the limits when we break out of external influence and begin to co-create our life with the Divine, and that begins with having the daring to think of things differently, change our perspective and to try something new- even if trying something new is the act of doing nothing or taking a nap.