Stopping Efforting, Finding Ease

I am exploring stopping without stopping, letting things move in me that have no name, watching the mind’s hunger for fear and control, tuning again and again to the body’s language, the quiet of the heart.

What does it mean to stop without stopping, to continue engaging with life, taking actions, doing what is needed, but from an inner place of stopping the efforting, the anxious drive, the grasping, from an inner place of resting, of pausing, of listening?

I am exploring the possibility of moving from a different place; rather than from fear, control, efforting, I am exploring leaning back in myself, listening, waiting, releasing, being moved, being danced by Life.

I am exploring the body’s wisdom, the heart’s knowing. Mostly, the mind is very loud, full of chatter, endlessly proposing new strategies, calculating numbers, marketing fear to me.

So, in this transitional place, where the despair and panic I was feeling have drained out of me and i endeavor to see through the mind’s chatter with heart, i find myself very tired, depleted by the fear-mongering and its abuses of body and soul.

I use the mind to question the mind, to find more openness, spaciousness, peace.

Meanwhile, the architecture of our contemporary way of life and my own habits within it crumbles a bit. I wait for collapse eagerly. Something crumbles and erodes inside that has been trying to hold me up too long, with damaging results, despite also the apparent accomplishments.

Today on my walk as the mind proposed one solution after another, i kept stopping each train of thought and asking, What if i simply listen and let life show me the way?

Now i take time to walk, write, pause, stop, but also to see how i can act without efforting, taking the next action that presents itself. I do my best to listen to what i can actually do with love and ease.

Can i stop efforting now? That’s my inquiry. And really staying in the now as the only moment there is.

– Maxima