Take a Break from Healing
Healing is a journey, not an event. It never happens all at once. And I’m not sure it ever reaches a state of total completeness. In fact, I’m sure that it doesn’t. But what I do know, is that an obsession with healing and with spiritual growth, leads to burn out.
And burn out sucks. So let’s rest. Let’s take a break from healing.
In this blog post, I cover why it’s important to take intentional periods of rest for integration and nourishment and what that can look like.
This is your permission to pause your healing.
This is your sign to choose the darkness.
I’m enrolled in a 9-month program right now, called Her Mystery School. It’s incredible and I am awe-inspired at the transformative self-growth and inner-knowing I’ve cultivated so far in it (and I still have over 3 months left to go!). I’m learning things about feminine sensibilities I never knew existed; I never could have fathomed I’d learn.
I could rave and rave about this school (seriously, if you’re a woman interested in creating depth in your relationship to your own femininity, check it out!), but for the purposes of this post, I want to hone in on something I’ve learned that I must share.
Deep rest, integration, and nourishment are just as necessary and important as active healing work.
There is a month of the school called “Dark Mother.” In this month, we learn to embrace darkness (as in the absence of light) as a state of stillness, silence, and deep nourishment.
In many spirituality rhetoric I encounter, whether it’s scrolling on social, or even in spiritual/meditation circles, classes, and school’s I’ve been part of, there’s a common theme and emphasis: cultivate light. Be the light. Spread the light. Breath out the darkness, breath in the light. Identify and integrate your shadows so you can not live in the shadows.
So, as you’d suspect, being guided towards the darkness in this program I’m in was a surprise. But our teacher taught us a new conceptualization of darkness.
I learned to not avoid, condemn, or shun darkness, but to embrace, open to, and receive it as necessary for healing integration.
It’s probably important here to distinguish something– darkness versus evil. Darkness, in the way I am describing it in this post, is vast and limitless silence. It’s an abyss. It is the moist, wet soil where new seeds are cradled and fed before they sprout. It is the place that holds the roots.
Evil, on the other hand, can be understand as anything that is not of you. Evil is not limited to the demonic– it is any form of energy not aligned with yours highest path, be it something as small as a limiting thought about yourself, to something large and destructive like the act of murder. It is any and all energy that does not serve you and your truth.
Evil is not synonymous with darkness.
And darkness is not not spiritual. Quite the opposite.
Surrendering to darkness is one of the most spiritual and generous things you can do for yourself.
Active work and motion towards healing–like actually doing the thing— is important and necessary. And, just like anything else, it’s impractical, and harmful, to stay in that flow indefinitely. We need to pause. And we need to rest. And we most certainly need to integrate.
We need to break our addiction to healing, healing, healing.
But when you come to understand darkness as a thing to avoid and stillness as lazy and unproductive, choosing darkness, rest, and integration can be hard to do. It can hard to choose it effortlessly.
It’s different from the forward motion of healing work.
Choosing darkness requires no forward motion.
On the contrary, it requires a sitting back into. A resting within.
And I acknowledge even that can be hard to do.
So then, what does it look like to take a break from healing and surrender to Dark Mother?
For me, it looks like occasionally and intentionally saying no to my normal routine of healing work. I tend to spend my evenings listening to spiritual teachings (recordings, podcasts, talks, etc.), journaling, and/or meditating. In the mornings, I meditate. I’m always reading at lease 1 ‘self help’ genre book (okay, let’s be real, usually 3 at a time). I move my body almost daily. I routinely make and eat food that’s colorful and fresh and earthy.
But sometimes, I just need a freaking break.
I need to not. I need to put the stimulating healing work away and turn on a mindless tv show to watch instead. Sleep calls to me. My being yearns to sit in my recliner and aimlessly stare out the window for as long as I damn want.
I need to choose a total silence meditation instead of a guided one that’s clearing chakras or womb tending or [insert healing guided meditation here]. I need a fucking candy bar and a good new show to binge.
And ya know what, that’s good for me. And it’s good for you.
As a mild disclaimer here, I will add that it’s important to know your limits. A body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest. The shift and transition between the two polarities can be a little jarring, depending on your depth in either. But again, both are necessary. As you know, there is no light without darkness.
Dark Mother is where you integrate all the active healing. It’s where things simmer. It’s where the seeds absorb their nutrients.
And friends, it’s so damn lovely. It feels so luxuriously good to melt into silent, still, nothingness. It’s a release. And a letting go. It’s a putting down the weight of the work and a leaning back into a comforting and regenerative hold of Dark Mother.
This darkness is purposeful and nourishing for us.
Yes, us. All of us. All of you.
See you there?
A Sitting World
Sit for a moment and
soak up this day
sipping the warmth
soothing cup of love.
Sit for a moment and
tune into the play and
the sweet chirping
of the fresh chicks.
Sit for a moment and
let the pup lick my toes and
the kitty prance her show
as the branches speak in waves.
Sit for a moment and
hear the train whistle her bell,
inhale the Earthy pine smell
and see the mushroom fruit.
Sit for a moment,
at the center of your world.The post Take a Break from Healing appeared first on Hunni Bloom.