Ep. 15: Giving Yourself a Break
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With Andrew Reed and The Liberation. It's a serious question, one worth pondering. Am I living the life I want, an intelligent life, or something else? How can I have a better experience of life?
Speaker 1:These are some of the questions explored in this series of messages without the brag and the advertisement, getting beyond even human institutions and society into the wilderness, nature, the reality of how life actually operates on this planet. These messages range from intimate recordings from the awakened forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts on a wide array of philosophical topics.
Speaker 2:I know that a lot of you have listened to my messages, and you know I emphasize, of course, organization, making written lists on clipboards and yellow pads and all that. And of course this is a factor of those that achieve great worldly success. I mean, it's all over the place. Why? Because we need something to help us focus because there's so many things happening all around us that it takes away our focus, our intention, our love even.
Speaker 2:But there's also value of being listless. And of course, that's a word and it means literally that, listless. That is maybe some days you get up and you're a bit aimless. You don't have a specific direction. That you're just experiencing life.
Speaker 2:That you're just enjoying ordinary things. It doesn't have to be the big things of building the business or the building or the church or making a hit song or worrying about where you are regarding society and status and all that. But in fact, you're just enjoying ordinary things like washing the dishes, running the water, smelling the lemon scented joy and the feeling of your hands going into that warm cleaning something up. I always find the act of cleaning to be a wonderful thing. I would be a fantastic man servant.
Speaker 2:Or just tidying things up or even this idea of luxuriating and walking around all your possessions admiring all the photos, the pieces of art that you surround yourself with, luxurating in a nice leather chair, reading a book, sipping your coffee, observing all the entertainment that nature provides if you're in a setting like this, listening to the wind. Yeah. Luxurating, giving yourself a break, a gap, and stepping out from the hustle and bustle of society and pleasing others. Now with this said, this message is about what? Giving yourself a break.
Speaker 2:I think the ideas around productivity, efficiency, production, success are often overemphasized. They're important, they're part of life, but they're not the whole deal. Because the bottom side of the oscillation of life is the lower ebb where we learn to take a break, to rest, to luxuriate as I like to say. And I love the power of words. That word luxuriate resonates with me because there's this B movie, science fiction of course, about the Martians and here the Martians were invisible, cohabitating with the humans and suddenly they get to interact, yet they had been coexisting.
Speaker 2:The Martians, of course, had been there much longer and they talk about these ideas. Asimov evolved species of coexisting, of making common cause with nature, understanding the natural process of life, and learning to luxuriate with nature. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in this be science fiction movie. But yes, give yourself a break. Slow down life.
Speaker 2:There's no point in rushing through life as my uncle Earl always pointed out. I mean, was a man that was very methodical about what he did. He was not a fast doer of things. But anything he touched was going to be of high quality, whether he was building a boat, whether he was building a cabin, a structure, a chair, anything he would touch was going to be quality. And he said, There's no point in rushing through life.
Speaker 2:Slow life consumed about being productive, that we hurry around life, we don't really live, we don't taste our food, we don't smell the air, we're not sensitive to our bodies, or if we just learn to relax a little bit more, Take the time to reflect because thinking is what human beings do and reflection is an aspect of that. Reconsider our lives, to ask ourselves the important questions of life. With the central one again, what am I throwing my life away on? Where am I taking my life? Am I living an intelligent life?
Speaker 2:Because most of us want to. But this idea of taking a break, giving yourself a break, allowing yourself to have time to get sensitive, sensitive about your true feelings about the world, about the relationships you're in, the work you're doing, the marriage you're in. And that is just so part of the journey and it's natural. And I tend to think that everything ultimately has a positive upward momentum. That we're always moving forward and I think this is undeniable.
Speaker 2:Why? Because we are moving forward. We are moving forward in time. You cannot stop time. Right?
Speaker 2:So, if it's going forward, then it comes down to the will. What is the attitude we're going to have towards life? Are we going to have the hostile attitude, it's out to get me, eat me up? Or are we going to have a more favorable, light hearted attitude about life like, This is going to be interesting. What is life trying to teach me?
Speaker 2:Again, personally, I think that all life is designed really for our personal benefit and it does a fine job at that. Even those things we don't find very delighting in the moment. When you stub your toe, I know you're not gonna have probably the best attitude in the moment, but there's still probably something to that. But this idea of allowing yourself this gap, this space, this let down, where you don't have to put on your makeup, where you don't have to dress a certain way. You can run around in your old clothes or whatever attire you want, where you're not particularly thinking about society and what would please the masses or anything like that, but you're really getting sensitive about yourself, your feelings about things, even your body.
Speaker 2:I think about the German woman, and this was approximately one hundred years ago, and her prognosis was cancer and that she was going to die, so what did she do? Because there was no medical hope, she went off into the Black Forest in Germany, isolated in her cabin hermitage, and just got sensitive, just got sensitive about her body. She explored her mind. She explored what made her feel worse. She explored what made her feel better in a slow way, and she recovered.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of wisdom to getting in tune with yourself. And I'm not saying you don't find yourself in being productive, right, in being efficient, in accomplishment. I mean, again, that is part of life, so that should not be demonized. But, boy, we need that gap where we can reflect and contemplate, ask the important questions, what would satisfy me, what would make me content, and then maybe chart a slightly different course or maybe a completely new course. And these gaps, these gaps, I think about Mother Teresa who happened to calibrate at over 700 on the scale of consciousness, which is high, if a thousand is at the top.
Speaker 2:I remember she talked about these periods of epic and dry. And, of course, we make movies about the epic experiences of building great businesses or things or overcoming great obstacles. I think of myself, I'm building this church now. Well, that's an epic event, which would probably symbolize progress or productivity. But she said, you're gonna have these periods also of dry where you're in the desert, you don't feel like very much is happening in your life.
Speaker 2:But make no mistake, you're making great progress in those times. If you're in the job you don't like, if you're in the marriage you don't like, or in the relationship, or whatever position or status state that you find yourself, well, you're making progress in that time. At least you're figuring out what you don't like. And you're building the energy towards that next breakthrough because so much of life is about breakthrough. Just like the plant coming through the ground, being a seed and again you don't know when it's gonna happen, but once it gets sufficient energy, boom, it happens and your life is like this.
Speaker 2:This is where it's beyond command. This is the idea of the awakened forest or the awakenings that all of us have. And they surprise us. And then I think that's part of the excitement or entertainment of life. We do not know when we're going to become enlightened, when the illumination or discovery is going to come, just like learning.
Speaker 2:So give yourself a break. Give yourself some space. Just recognize that you're gonna have dry times and maybe don't get so panicked about it. Relax. You're making more progress than maybe you suspect.
Speaker 2:And I think that's good counsel.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you need anything further, just go to m b life.