I just got back from a fine retreat in the mountains of Spain. Being mountains, and being spring, it was the perfect weather for closing my eyes and Ascending: often cloudy, wet and windy.
There is nothing like snuggling down with a blanket when the rain is lashing against the window. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to get, nothing to prove.
All in all, an awesome 10 days of becoming more solid in the sense of me that doesn’t rely on someone else’s approval or getting something.
If you haven’t begun this journey, or you are just beginning and aren’t too sure why you should continue, I strongly suggest you start and/or keep going. Forming and deepening a relationship with the part of you that needs nothing, that is content with this moment just as it is, is one of the most beneficial things you can do.
It’s not losing your edge as so many seem to think, but balancing your creative force with one that is satisfied with here, now, and with the acceptance of who you are in all of this.
Doing and achieving is a great thing, but necessarily it takes time.
Waiting until you have the thing you think you want means you wait to live … but be careful with waiting to live because you may never get around to it. Make the most of what you have.
It’s counter intuitive. Stopping – either to take a retreat, for a weekend, for 10 days, for 6 months, or a mini-retreat by taking 20 minutes in each and every day – seems to be like slowing, taking a detour.
There is so much to be done, so many responsibilities.
You live a busy life (“it’s alright for him!”), but I live a busy life too, honestly: I can become as busy as the next person. I've just learnt to prioritise something a little different from many because I realise that it means I can be the person I want to be.
When youprioritise this time out, when you experience the clarity and simplicity and rest that comes from such a stoppage, you learn to trust that nurturing your sense of being is an essential act for anything you want to do in life.
Stopping recharges and refreshes and calms and gives you clarity. Developing that relationship with your Self means you free yourself from self-disgust and violence, you live honestly, independent of anxiety, fear, grasping.
You become the greatest version of you, and that’s most certainly what the world around you needs.
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“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do … Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”
— Marcus Aurelius
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The fact is we all have unconscious habits: programmes that run without much awareness, at least at the time we are in the middle of them, and create results that we would rather didn't happen.
Going within with something like a practice of the Bright Path Ishayas’ Ascension means these programmes and limited reactions become less fast, less a “button push” moment.
You can step back from your situation and behave in the ways you wish, not the ways you regret.
Going within neutralises these programmes, so you can genuinely behave freely, with true wisdom, compassion and kindness.
Which is well worth investing some time in.
Give it a try.
Back From the Wilds