As part of my simple realization that “Wow, I need a break”, I also felt this kind of change in my energy that I didn’t even notice until after the change how much I had been in a certain state.
It’s this feeling of being very active, applying the will, projecting into the universe, deciding what I’m gonna do and just steaming forward, just like a machine that is just rolling, and I am taking action.
That’s a certain kind of energy, and it’s very useful energy, one that I found kind of suppressed for a lot of my life, because I was just so laid-back and passive, that I didn’t have that drive to just like burn through the universe and just charge forward.
So I was building that up more and more, of going to that state of mind where I am being fully productive, I am applying all my energy towards my mission, my project, and I am just surging through the universe.
And then it reached the point where, well, I need to have a break.
Finally gave myself permission to have some unproductive time.
It’s OK to waste a little bit of time.
So I just stopped and let myself relax.
And suddenly, I felt this kind of warmth and softness that was this kind of a passive and receptive energy that I had been sort of pushing aside for so many weeks as I developed my will.
I was really going into a state of just feeling that it’s all about applying will, and focusing on that as my main drive, my main view of life.
It’s all about developing my will, self-development, advancing, becoming stronger, doing things better, doing great things, achievement.
And all these things are wonderful things, but there’s something missing from all that.
It’s all action.
And life cannot be all about doing things.
It cannot be all about action.
Because when you’re in that simple, charging forward, projecting state, it’s all about doing things.
There’s no room to absorb the universe, to absorb life, to soak things up, to really pay attention to what’s happening around, and really the experience of life.
Action itself, while being so critical to getting anything done, of course, and to making things better, to make better experiences in the future we need that action, but the action itself is not by itself a complete life.
Because if we’re just pure action, we are just machines.
We need to have action and experience.
We need to be passive in order to have experience.
I mean, the word “passive” has such a bad rap, really, because so many people, including me, have been just too passive, and just letting life happen, and not taking enough action and taking our will into our own hands and choosing what to do, applying our will, taking action in the world.
So much about self-development is about developing that active faculty, to be able to actually make changes in our lives and make things better.
But by itself, if we’re pure action, there’s no room for sensation, there’s no room for experience, even no room for consciousness itself.
Even the consciousness itself of being alive requires a receptivity.
We have to be passive.
We have to stop acting for a moment in order to be able to soak up what is happening around us, to be able to perceive things, to let things come in, to let the universe come in, let the universe speak to us, to allow ourselves to receive the universe.
And that’s pure passivity.
If we don’t have any of that at all, then we are just a machine charging forward, completely insensible to anything happening.
So this, of course, classic alchemy, these would be called the masculine and feminine energies.
Could be debated how much they apply to the gender.
But it does seem clear that these are very powerful, basic energies or dispositions in life and in the universe, that there’s an active energy and a passive energy, and we need both of them.
So I was so focused on developing the active energy that it wasn’t until I took a break that I suddenly just felt this softness and this warmth and just relaxing and allowing everything to be OK, and just absorbing the experience of life.
So I’d be curious to hear how you feel about this idea of the active and passive energies, and what does it mean to you? Are you feeling like you are overly on the active side, overly on the passive side? How do you blend and balance these energies?
#energybalance #needabreak #activeorpassive