I Paced the Floor Like a Caged Animal

I heard these words "I paced the floor like a caged animal" from two women when talking about trying to do some self-care, relax, do nothing, or do something pleasurable just for themselves. If you know me, you know that I take words pretty seriously..something about one of the Four Agreements. But they are also a way for me to feel into what is happening in the collective of women in my "field". Those words hit me really hard, and I had to respond. Feeling like a caged animal when not "doing" the to-do list, because of worry about what "has" to get done and is not if you take a moment for yourself. These women literally could not stop the monkey-mind, could not ALLOW themselves to not do.

This is a pandemic.

And I am not being overly dramatic here. The numbers of women with heart disease and other stress-related diseases proves it. Not to mention depression, anxiety, and addiction. And I really don't know what to do about it. I can share what I know, and how to stay in sovereignty to yourself. But I can't do it for you. The way we have been conditioned makes me sad and angry. And make no mistake about it..

You have been conditioned.

You have been conditioned to go, go, go..do,do,do as if the world is going to come crashing down if you don't get the to-do list done (trust me it won't). And you have been conditioned to think that no matter how much you do it is not enough. Trust me it is, and so are you. And what is the to-do list for, if it does not exist to serve your visions and your dreams? Which I hope like hell includes having a joyful and happy life. But pacing the room like a caged animal, does not sound very joyous to me. We are constantly in comparison to women who seem to have all their shit together on social media. We are following women who say to "crush your goals" like hungry dogs wanting some of what she has. She is crushing her goals, making a million dollars, all while changing diapers and making gourmet meals, wearing high heels and going to the gym. Yeah right. By the way, energetically speaking, why would we want to "crush" anything? How about I live in flow and fluidity, I enjoy what I am doing, and I do things that bring me pleasure (besides work). I hope the goals you are crushing include those things. But from what I observe they don't. What I observe is a lot of overwhelm, inability to let go, inability to release attachment to the goal list, and an inability to relax or do things for pleasure that do not involve work.

If you have transformed and transmuted yourself from this conditioning, I applaud you. With the world and the social media madness matrix swirling all around us, it is not easy to rise above the message we receive about doing more, instead of less. Although there are plenty of those messages out there as well, and I wonder, in fact I am asking you, why don't we listen to them? One of the most common messages I see out there:

You can't serve from an empty vessel.

I hear this being said, have said it myself, see it posted and written to the point where it has become cliche. Because everyone is saying it, but no one os doing it. Why is that? We know this to be true intellectually. So I am going to spend some time here turning that saying upside down. Sharing some other ways in which we have been conditioned by well-meaning people, teachers, gurus, and the antidotes, as I see them. You absolutely don't have to agree with me. But many of these teachings around self-care, quieting down, and in particular manifestation, have over time been distorted, like the telephone game, the words take on different meanings.

So let's look at the word SERVE, and how if we fill our vessel we can serve our beloveds. I use the word being of service often. But being of service DOES NOT mean being in servitude, and it doesn't mean doing everything for everyone. And I think this is where we get ourselves into trouble. And being the nurturers most of us are, we have "trained" our beloveds to expect us to do it all, because up until now we have, and that is why it becomes so hard to start saying no and shifting responsibility back to our beloveds for their own care-taking, or handing it off when for example, our children are ready to do for themselves. I know for me I was doing "all the things" because I realized I needed to be needed, it was serving my own ego, and being needed meant being loved. But the moment I shifted my relationship around responsibility, things began to change, and my family certainly did not love me less, in fact everyone was happier when I released my own story around all the things I NEEDED to do, and relaxed.

Now let's look at your vessel, and filling it vs. emptying it. I think we got that one backwards as well. In my Divine Feminine lineage one of our seminal practices is to EMPTY our vessels, not to fill them. Now I understand that the "quote" means to fill ourselves up with self-care and goodness, and joy and light, but how many of you consider those things yet another list of things on the to-do list? I know for a fact many of you do, and so its why either you don't do self-care/spiritual practices, or do not remain consistent. And so those things become more "doing" instead of being. We love to "time stuff" even when we have moments to ourselves we tend to stuff them with well....stuff. Even good stuff. So maybe a re-frame that says I am going to "empty" my vessel, I am going to spend at least 5 minutes a day doing absolutely nothing but sitting and breathing (preferably outside in nature) , and do a little more each day, and resist the need to do anything, and see how things begin to shift for you over time.

So lets begin to serve ourselves from an empty vessel, so we can freely share our gifts from that place.

Which leads me to another way that I have seen a lot of conditioning going on, particularly from coaches and social media gurus. And that is, that in order to be living our dream, we have to work for ourselves, that working for someone else is soul sucking and can't possibly be fullfilling. And so what I see is a lot of entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed, burned out, and actually not fulfilled, and who are barely putting food on the table, and work around the clock. And really don't love a lot of the aspects of running a business, they love what they do, but they don't love any of the other parts of running a business, which in the beginning is at least 75% of your time. That is pretty stressful. Let me tell you, if I did not love the business of doing business I would not be doing it. I would be happily sharing my gifts for someone else, get my paycheck, and end my day at 5 or 6 and have weekends off. But I love both running businesses and doing the work of my business. But how I think we have really been conditioned is to believe, that sharing our gifts has to be a business or an income producing activity. It doesn't. And sharing our gifts with the people around us, just for the sheer joy of it, is actually a beautiful thing, and has none of the financial stress attached to it.

So for you take a look at the ways in which sharing your gifts with others fulfills you. Is that through a business, is that through working for someone, being part of a team, or through no work at all? Just being you and sharing who you are?

I would love to hear from you, what your relationship is with relaxing and doing nothing? Do you love it, do you hate it? Does not doing, stress you out or make you blissful?

Love and Light,

Dina

PS. As we approach the time of year when I go into the "visioning time" of spending more time just "being" and creating and visioning which I do between now and mid-January, I have a few events left on my calendar for the year and then I take some space. I am not sure if I will be writing weekly during that time or not. It depends on if something deeply inspires me. But I may take a little break. If you don't see weekly writings from me that is why. But no worries, I will be back to my regularly scheduled program in January.