LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Abby Reyes!
Rest in that
Dear Lovelets,
A few years ago I was going through a creative dry spell (it happens!) when I simply had no new or interesting ideas whatsoever about what I should be writing. Every day I would write in my journal, asking my Spirit of Unconditional Love this question: “Hey, is there something I’m supposed to be working on right now?”
And for many months in a row, I would get the same exact answer: “When we’ve got something for you to write, you’ll be notified.”
Far from relaxing me, this message caused me to stiffen in alarm.
“What should I do with my life in the meantime?” I would ask — because, of course, I always have to be DOING SOMETHING.
“Nothing,” came the reply. “Just hang out. Rest. Trust us. When we’ve got something for you to do, you’ll be notified.”
Just hang out? Rest? Trust?
Have you met me?
These are perhaps the most difficult instructions that Love has ever given me, because if there’s one thing I don’t know how to do, it’s to freaking hang out, resting and trusting. (Resting how? Trusting whom? Hanging out where?! GIVE ME MORE INSTRUCTION!)
But I’ve been getting some messages from Love lately that I need to be resting more. And I see by reading the letters you’ve all been posting, that some of you have been getting those messages too. Funny, isn’t it, how the Spirit of Unconditional Love never sends us messages telling us to put the pedal to the metal, or to really gun it, or to push ever harder until we collapse? I suppose that’s because Love never seems to think we are doing anything wrong, or that we are in need of correction or self-improvement of any kind whatsoever.
Resting is very difficult for me, because I was never taught to do it. But Love is teaching me how. Last week, I went on a vacation to the beach with some dear friends, and one morning my letter from Love gave me this instruction: “Just for today, we need you to do an imitation of someone who is resting. You know, like you’ve seen in books and movies.”
So that is what I did all day: I imitated someone who was resting. (Cut to an image of me lying stiffly on a hammock, looking for all the world like someone earnestly wondering, “Am I doing this right?”) But by the end of that day of pretend-resting (no work, no texting, no producing, no solving any problems) my spirit felt restored, and my heart was so open and gentle that I almost started crying at dinner, in the realization of how much I loved the friends I was with, and how precious this time with them was.
Maybe that’s why we need to rest — so we can soften into remembering the inherent and miraculous preciousness of life? So we can cry happy tears over our half-eaten burritos?
How timely, then, that our special guest this week, the extraordinary writer and climate justice leader Abby Reyes, introduced the concepts of rest and stillness in her letter. Abby is deeply engaged with international issues of environmental and indigenous rights, and I suspect that for someone who is trying to literally save the world, it must be difficult to rest. Maybe that’s why it’s so important — because maybe an exhausted heart cannot love the world, much less save it. (I highly recommend Abby’s TEDx talk on just this subject; called How to Come Home, it’s a reflection on what she has learned about becoming “strong in our communities and in our bodies in the wake and presence of trauma.”)
This week, our topic is rest. What does it mean to you, and what does Love have to say about “just hanging out”?
I cannot wait to learn!
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about resting?
Little efficiency expert, little marching mistress of productivity, please — before we say anything else — let us try with all our power to convey to you that you are not in trouble.
Nobody is in trouble.
Nobody is doing anything wrong.
We spent five days in the dark with you recently at that meditation retreat trying to really get you to understand this absolutely foreign and bonkers (for your mind) concept, and we feel we must lead with it here again:
Nobody is in trouble.
Nobody is doing anything wrong.
We say this because whenever the subject of rest comes up in your culture these days it seems to contain a shaming message — as if any of you dear hearts need any further shaming!
But the shame is there. The message is: “All of you are in trouble, and everyone is doing everything wrong. You’re not resting enough!” And so you are scolded.
“You all need to rest more!” you are told. “Your lifestyles are killing you! Twenty-four-hour-a-day consumer capitalism has disrupted everyone’s sleep schedules! Your screens are killing you! Blue light is killing you! Social media is killing you! The media is making you terrified and your anxiety is keeping you awake and staying awake is killing you! Your attention spans are diminishing! Your children aren’t sleeping enough! Your elders aren’t sleeping enough, and that’s why they have dementia! The toxins in your pillows and mattresses are killing you! Light pollution is killing you! Your gut is not producing enough melatonin! Sugar is keeping you awake! You all need to stop drinking coffee! You all need to stop drinking alcohol! You all need to drink more water, except for in the few hours before you go to bed — don’t you dare drink any water before you go to bed! You all need to be practicing good sleep hygiene! You all need to fix your hormones! You all need to be meditating! None of you can breathe right, so you aren’t getting rest! BREATHE BETTER!”
Sweetheart, does any of this sound like something we — the Spirit of Unconditional Love — would ever say to you, to anyone? Why would we make your lack of rest worse by accusing you all of destroying your own rest patterns? Why would we scold you? Why would we command you? Why would we tell you that you need to change anything? When have we told you that you need to change anything? Why would we tell you that anything about you is wrong?
We are love. We are not in the scolding, yammering, commanding business. You have enough of that going on in your culture, and enough of that going on inside your own brain, in the voices that you contain within your own consciousness that never stop telling you that you are in trouble because you are doing something, anything, everything, wrong.
You are not in trouble and you are not doing anything wrong. Rest in that.
No, seriously. Let us say it again:
You are not in trouble, and you are not doing anything wrong.
Rest in that.
You are loved beyond any measure your mind can currently understand.
Rest in that.
And we understand you. We understand absolutely everything about why people are having so much trouble resting, including you. We understand completely.
You are seen, you are loved, you are understood.
Rest in that.
You cannot rest, after all, if you do not understand how perfect you are. How could you ever relax your vigilance if you do not understand the depth of your intrinsic, undiminishable, unshakeable preciousness?
Without knowing that you are loved by a force that never blinks, never wavers, how could you ever find enough mental safety and emotional peace to close your eyes for even five minutes? And how could you ever expect your nervous systems to ease up and slow down if you are still carrying even the slightest trace of shame — even the slightest hint of “I’m doing everything wrong, and I am bad”?
That is what drives the collective dis-ease and urgency and unrest, sweetheart. Not the need for money or power or control, but a fear that all of you seem to share, that you are doing something wrong. That you are bad. That’s what everyone is trying to outrun. It’s exhausting. And it’s not anybody’s fault.
So what do we want you to do?
Nothing.
Except: know this.
We just want you to know that you are loved beyond measure. That’s it.
This is not the message you were expecting to receive to the question, “What would you have me know about rest?” You were expecting us to deliver a list of commandments and corrections about how many of your behaviors you need to change so you can learn to rest.
But what help would that possibly bring a world as fundamentally afraid, ashamed, and tired as yours?
So instead we tell you this again, again and again: you are loved. You are safe. You are held. You are seen. You are understood. You are cherished. And you are not doing anything wrong.
Rest in that. Nothing else will do.
Prompt
Our subject this week is rest: what does it look like, when do we need it, why do we resist it? It is always a wonder to me that some fundamental messages show up again and again in the thousands of letters we’ve generated during the two years of this project, and this is one of them: we are often reminded to step back and care for ourselves in order to care for others.
So! This week, join me in posing this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about resting?
