I recently participated in a Hakomi weekend; a somatic-based mindfulness-training.

The message I received in the stillness and quieting of my mind was, “Just rest. You will know when you need to know.”

As my mind spun through the various scenarios in my life that ‘need’ tending or ‘fixing’, this voice stopped me in my tracks. What is most true is that any effort for me ‘to know‘ only prolongs my capacity to feel the gifts in my life right now.

In that moment, I dropped any agenda and felt the resting in my mind and body.

There are two gems from this experience that I want to share:

1. Stop and rest

This doesn’t mean crawl back into bed and take a respite from the world, although it sometimes can mean this.

To rest is to no longer feel flung around by the mind and its many distractions, stories, and tugs that keep us actively solving and analyzing.

It takes great discipline to recognize the automatic response of the mind to interpret and commentate about our experiences rather than simply abide in our immediate experience.

When we cultivate enough awareness to investigate and witness the default patterns of the mind, we can begin to make new choices and rewire the neural pathways in the brain that impact our emotions and physical vitality.

How do you stop when the mind is spinning and guiding you down a well worn track that feels comfortably twisted and simultaneously limiting.

Do you notice the subtle default responses to work harder, achieve, understand or resolve?

2. Stay with the longing

I love to learn, explore and connect with people on a deep level. I often find that my heart physically hurts as it longs for a particular kind of connection, community or experience.

Longing is a perfectly normal human condition. When I can stop here, I don’t experience any distress. When I don’t stop with the longing and I attempt to package and identify a form for these longings to take shape into I struggle.

In my efforts to ‘fulfill’ this inspiration, I forget that the intelligence born from the longing will offer the opportunity or insight in its own timing. I’m not suggesting we sit back, kick up our feet and zone out.

The invitation is to stay with the longing and to allow life to inform us through its mysterious and unpredictable ways.

There is an innate skill we have to attract experiences and information to guide us.   It requires quieting down, listening and receiving information from all sources that inform us.  

How do we listen to the messages from the subtle cues of our body, mind & life experiences?

For example, a chance meeting with someone we needed to meet or learn something from or a random Google search that introduces us to something that mobilizes a particular movement toward our longing.

When I bring this unconscious information into my awareness I experience an exquisite kind of freedom.