The Safety of Slowing Down
La Seguridad de Desacelerar
A student explores the pattern of pushing hard toward goals and feeling depleted, and the teacher points toward the fear underneath the drive, suggesting that true freedom comes not from managing fear but from becoming intimate with it.
The Safety of Slowing Down
A student explores the pattern of pushing hard toward goals and feeling depleted, and the teacher points toward the fear underneath the drive, suggesting that true freedom comes not from managing fear but from becoming intimate with it.
Something that's coming up for me, to add to the conversation, is that it almost feels like more of a risk to approach what we want in a balanced way. My mind tends to find safety in extremes, and that's not healthy either. The pushing, the coming at it from that driven perspective, has always left me so depleted and confused, thinking I need to try harder after I've already tried so hard. I feel like this pattern plays out not just in my human experience but also in my spiritual journey. I'm really noticing this common theme playing out on so many different levels of my reality.
Often, when we're putting a lot of energy out into something and there's a kind of weight of depletion, which I think is what you're describing, that's a sign that something we're listening to isn't the right thing. It's tricky, because the direction could be somewhat right. But if we end up depleted, it's likely because we're chasing something that isn't actually the thing.
The difference between the goal and the idea of the goal
We could, for example, really want some version of success, and if we don't get it, we push harder. But it's not about that success. It's more like what was highlighted in the example of the movie: it's not that if he loses, he's all messed up and has to push harder to win the next one until he ends up completely devastated or exhausted. There's a way to pursue what we really want that has been described by Buddhists as unattached to the outcome. In that way, it's more natural and easy to do it in a balanced way.
I'm pointing to the possibility that there might be more subtle beliefs and ideas about what we're pursuing that end up producing what you're describing as unhealthy. It could be, for example, "Yes, I want to pursue a career in X," but the way I'm doing it is unhealthy because I'm following something that isn't the deepest thing. And then that's going to be depleting.
There's a difference between being exhausted because we pushed hard, then restored, and then a vitality at a deeper level is ignited. But if the vitality itself is getting drained, it's most likely because we're pursuing ideas. This is something that's hard to tell quickly. It takes time and a lot of back and forth and exploring to clarify.
Yeah. For me it just feels frustrating, I think. But that's just because I have expectations, right? When I make a decision, I want to go for it. I can just focus on it. That comes very naturally to me, to respond that way from an action standpoint. But I feel like life is constantly trying to pump the brakes on that expression and really slow me down.
When pushing becomes avoidance
Yes, because likely the pushing you're describing is possibly a way to avoid certain sensations, possibly fear. There's going to be a contraction, and that's going to be an unnecessary expenditure of energy. As you're saying, the expectation is an idea of how things need to end up. There's going to be an attachment to the outcome: it has to end up this way, and if it doesn't, I'll just push harder. That usually ends up being unhealthy, as you described.
But it's in that process of pursuing that we learn. You can't figure it out before going on the journey. Because you're putting energy out, you start to learn: "Oh, this is creating a lot of contraction and frustration." Then you can begin asking, "What's happening? How is this movement? How could this be more wise? How can I clear things here?"
The natural pace
You're describing it as a slowing down, and it's often that we are either going too fast or too slow. There's a way of moving, metaphorically but also literally in how we walk in the street: if we're in our heads, we're going to be walking either too fast or too slow. If we are walking at the most natural pace, our mind is going to be more calm.
The same applies to pursuing what we want. There's a way to pursue it where there's integration, where we're aligned, and then we find the more attuned pace. We're going to know when to pause to eat. We're going to know when to pause to rest. We're going to know when to push harder and sprint. Not in a conceptual sense, but because we feel it.
Yeah. I'm definitely recognizing that more and more, and it feels like a process of trusting that it's safe to move through life in a softer way, in a way that honors my own energy.
Looking into what feels unsafe
The trick there is to look into what feels unsafe. If you move differently, it's going to bring up a sense of not feeling safe. You're saying, "Well, if I trust that it's safe..." But another way is to be more intimate with the sense of unsafety. For example, if you're used to going fast and pushing and you start to slow down, you're going to feel a restlessness: "It's not safe because I need to keep pushing." Is that what you're describing?
It's partly that, but it's also about not having the rules. I think it's coming from my conditioning. My parents always said, "These are the rules. Follow these rules and you'll be fine." But there was no emphasis on listening to what's right for you.
A similar challenge. If you follow the given set of directions, things are going to be safe and okay. But you're doing that and it's not working out, so you start to feel, "I want to listen to what I feel is better for me." And if you start doing that, there's a sense of not feeling safe. Is that what you're describing?
Yeah.
Fear as the doorway
That sense of not feeling safe is what I was describing earlier about uncertainty and insecurity. At the deeper level, it's a fear. And we can't resolve it by trying to wish it away. It's not a bad thing to explore trusting, but trust is more of a way to initiate, a way to begin exploring something that feels scary.
Once you're in that movement and you're feeling this sense of not feeling safe, this insecurity and uncertainty, it's ultimately a fear. And that fear, we can become more intimate with it. By feeling it, sensing it, understanding it (not in an intellectual way, but through a touching of it, an intimacy with it), then safety can come through that process. But it comes through the fear, when we are able to be with the fear.
The safety starts to become the natural thing, but not through managing the fear, or pushing it away, or strategizing, or trying to overlay it with trust. Trust is good to initiate a direction, but we can't wish the fear away through invoking trust. At some point we need to meet the fear and meet it in all ways, in a gentle way as well: to sit with it, to inquire into it. By inquire, I mean not think about it, but touch it. What is this? And it's going to go deep.
Intimacy with what we run from
The deeper we can go, the more we can touch this really core sense of not feeling safe. That's the door to a true freedom. Because once we're able to be in full intimacy with deep fears and deep pains, then we have nothing to run away from. All of the mechanisms we have for avoiding fear and pain, which are mental constructs, are no longer necessary. All of the confusion and conditioning and misdirection that comes from the ways in which we avoid fear and pain: all of those drop. It could happen gradually or quite fast, once we're able to meet and be intimate with the fear and the pain. And then it's easier to listen and know what feels right at every moment.