Do you ever hit a wall of frustration and would rather binge watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on repeat? Or maybe for you it’s Mad Max? For me, it would probably be Stargate SG-1. But is our need for checking out from the busyness and pressures of life just adding to the chaos? Could it be a hinderance to what we really need? In the striving and attaining of our wants, is there any space left for stillness if we are constantly turning to stimuli for relief? And then does the cyclical nature of our experiences just continue to regurgitate with no resolve? If we are feeling off, perhaps it’s because we have unknowing externalized what can only be calmed from within.
With so much demanding our attention it is no mistake that our energy leaks out in the direction of our concerns. And how many directions are actually feeding energy back to us? The problem with being chronically occupied is that it is hard to notice when there is no energetic return. We willingly lay ourselves down for our jobs, our families, our communities and in our down time can develop addictive habits to substances and screen time in the form of entertainment, social media or gaming. And while some of these things isolated may not be particularly ‘bad’, a lot of principle human behaviors and needs get pushed to the side when all our time gets filled or numbed marching between one hour of the day to the next.
The quality of our experiences lay dormant and untapped. Being human is such a rich juxtaposition of symbiotic and contradicting dynamics that are indeed interesting to navigate. But it seems instead of a curiosity towards our own nature, we have unknowingly accepted the means of experiencing false recreations of reality to avoid our own shadow. Most of which, are in the market for mining and selling our highly personal data, information and behaviors to push and improve their own marketplaces. It seems like this information should enrage and empower us, force us to pull the plug on these shady forces that are benefiting from our user engagement, our attention, and put directly; our life force energy.
But what even is life force energy? Life force energy, or ‘Prana’, is absorbed into the body via the breath, but Prana itself is a vast interconnected field of energy in which all things exists. Every breath you take brings in much more than just air. We live in an expansive universe where it has been scientifically validated through quantum mechanics that everything functions as particles or ‘wavelengths of energy’. Therefore we draw from our external environment for energy just as much as we do for air. This may appear a grand and dizzying concept to wrap ones head around, but your heart has an easier time conceiving this truth.
Grounding practices like taking your shoes off and walking barefoot on the earth, holding company with someone you feel loved and understood by, making time for sitting in silence, taking a short or long walk, reading an adored book, taking a bath or shower, cooking a healthy meal, checking in with how your body feels by stretching or moving, creating lists of things you have to do and then releasing your mental threshold – getting back to being connected can require using a combination of techniques. But the important part is to ask yourself what do you want to experience in this life? What matters the most to you? Where do you feel calm and relaxed? How can you loosen the stronghold of doing and ease more into the simple act of being?
Truth is you are the only person who can put a stop to your own cascading carousal of obligations and make time for the things that help you to feel well. To find moments where time can be irrelevant, if even for a short while. We come up with excuses day in and day out to why we continue to stand in the way of deepening our connection with ourselves and others, but the truth is that an interconnected, benevolent, omnipresent energy is patiently waiting to be recognized within each moment you are willing to give life your openhearted attention.
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
David Orr