feeling guilty
Hello everyone!
I'm already starting to feel a little guilty just with the short amount of time I've invested in the pre-cleanse. This is a super busy stressfull time of year for my husband, I see him put in about 18 hrs of work a day. In the mean time I'm getting ready to do IMPORTANT work that doesn't look like work to him or others compared to what they do. I'll will have just finished my nice bath and will be heading off to bed when he comes home to put in another 2 or 3 hours! I'm thankful he is an easy going, understanding person who wants what's best for me and will support me....however I think I'm hung up on the "it doesn't look like work" thing. Being a competitive person ....maybe I'm thinking I might not "win the race" resting and taking baths!
WOW do I have some STUFF coming up or what!
posted by Anonymous @ 3:04 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Melinda,
Maybe it will help to remember that rest and recuperation is an important part of every competitor's schedule. Only through rest can an athlete improve to the next level.
By stepping back and taking a week to calmly assess ourselves and confront our habits, we enable our ability to move forward with greater commitment, clarity and direction.
The "race" will wait for a week.
Well stated Jeff!
In our competitve nature remember we must remember our yoga practice and what it teaches us: balance. You already acknowledged your competitive nature; seek to find the "middle path" with a bit of rest and replenishing your heart, mind & body with good things. A week without competition will be a real challenge in itself!
i can relate to Melinda's feelings of guilt....(although i am reminded that true guilt should only be for a real wrong which has been committed)and we are doing a good thing for ourselves and families by being balanced.....I am just not there yet.
My husband is a workaholic. I have been dealing with these feelings of guilt since I quit my job to explore what I should do with the rest of my life. It has been almost a year now and I am still searching....my hope is that the cleanse clears my mind so that I can see my path. I would love to give my husband the opportunity to take time like this someday.
I feel the same way!
This is definitely a big challenge for us heroic Americans - when will be be able to give equal weight to success in business and success in inner peace? We put business successes on pedastals, on magazine covers and invite them to speak at our graduations! But when was the last time you heard people talking about how amazingly peaceful and centered Mr. SoandSo is and how we covet his inner calm?
I think we feel guilty and reticient about "indulging" in caring for our Selves, our spirituality, our bodies/nervous systems, and the healing of our minds because our culture does not value these things - it values professional productivity and financial success. So, when we're not feeling part of the professional circuit and aren't producing financially, we feel like we're doing something wrong, or that we're not doing enough.
I think we're seeing pretty clearly what working 18 hours a day gets you. Perhaps money and success at work but definitely stress and it's related dis-eases in the body. I think these days you simply can't be stress-free and work that much WITHOUT taking significant care of your BEING, not just taking care of your DOING.
Our cultural beliefs, things we didn't necessarily chose to believe but just do by default, are the root cause of our guilt here. It is entirely possible to invest significantly in your joy, your ability to love fearlessly and your equanimity all in the spirit of SERVICE to others. You don't just contain that good stuff to yourself, as part of a collective, human beings, this becomes your contribution. Love, Joy, Equanimity, Tolerance... Should we really rank these qualities against Money, Promotion, Possessions, Acclaim?
One of the benefits I am discovering in my pre-cleanse is all of the extra time I have. Why is this? I'm beginning to realize just how much time I have been spending covering up (in kind of a constant-state-of-emergency mode!)all of the agitation I regularly feel. Eating bad food really consumes a lot of time! As does too much time at the computer, and too much time stopping to hear the news repeats, and looking at junk mail and catalogs, and accumulating stuff that agitates me even more because I'd rather just not have it around! All this is coming from someone who has had a bad habit of staying up too late to "create more time."
This is not to say that all of this "extra time" feels like a bonus. The first couple of days of pre-cleanse it weighed heavily on me and made me wonder why I would even want to look in the mirror in this way. But today is good....or at least this hour is good.
Cleaning up all of the agitation under that mindless coverup activity....let's hope I focus on making good use of the time.
Namaste, everyone.
The power of the kula is awesome, and I thank you.
Dorothy
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