Despair and Desolation.
Nasty characters. But they too play a part in our show called ‘The Human Experience’. I’ve met them. As have we all. Often times we come across them in a place called Stuck. And Stuck has no escape routes. In Stuck we don’t know what is up or down. Our feet are goo. Our hands are too. We push and pull, which is the perfect invitation for Wreckage and Ruin to make their appearance. And then Chaos ensues.
However, there is an antidote that turns these fiends into friends.
You might have found your own formula. As life’s lessons find us in various ways.
For me? It’s this short piece by one of our great modern-day thinkers:
Charles Eisenstein.
I’ll let his words do the soothing. They’ve helped me time and again. And brought me back to patience and peace. Knowing, that the place of Nondoing is sometimes the best place to be stuck in.
The place of Nondoing
Can you recall a time of the inbetween space, where you decided to do nothing and "it" appeared?
You may be familiar with this on a personal level. The old world falls apart, but the new has not yet emerged. Everything that once felt permanent and real is revealed as a kind of hallucination. You dont know what to think, what to do; you don't know what anything means anymore.
The life trajectory you had plotted out seems absurd, and you can't imagine another one. Everything is uncertain. Your time frame shrinks from years to this month, this week, this day, maybe even to the present moment. Without the mirages of order that once seemed to protect you and filter reality, you feel naked and vulnerable, but also a kind of freedom.
Possibilities that didn't even exist in the old story lie before you, even if you have no idea how to get there. The challenge in our culture is to allow yourself to be in that space, to trust that the next story will emerge when the time in between has ended, and that you will recognise it.
So please, if you are in the sacred space between stories, allow yourself to be there.
There is a kind of grace that protects us in the space between stories. It is not that you won't lose your marriage, your money, your job, or your health. It is very likely that you will lose one of these things. It is that you will discover that even having lost that, you are still okay. You will find yourself in closer contact to something much more precious, something that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal, something that no one can take and cannot be lost.
Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible
Tea for the Curious is actually born from this place of Nondoing. You’ve found me in a peculiar time. I do not yet know where this voyage will take us, my dear reader, but I thank you for being here with me, sipping on our curiosi-teas.