Satya writes: Earlier this afternoon, after unpacking the supermarket shopping, I paused and sat down on the sofa in Kaspa’s office. Our cat Fatty took his chance. He jumped up, turned into a tight ball with his chin in the air, and promptly went to sleep.
I sat there for fifteen minutes.
This might not sound like very exciting news. But for me, this was a big event. I sat still for a whole fifteen minutes in the middle of a week-day. I didn’t grab a book. I didn’t turf off Fatty and rush back to my computer. I just sat.
Over the past few months and years, something has been ever-so-slowly shifting inside me. It’s hard to put this into words, but it’s something like a move away from a dysfunctional putting-others-needs-before-my-own to a greater trust in others to look after themselves and so a greater ability to be present (and to offer help when appropriate) in a more authentic way. This also means a shift away from being busy for the sake of being busy to a greater faith that I’ll have enough and that the world will look after itself without me if I pause and enjoy some time out in the middle of the afternoon.
This shift has allowed me to stop writing a daily small stone, after many years of doing it partly because ‘I said I would do it and everyone expects me to do it’. I stopped, and nothing terrible happened. After a couple of month’s break I wrote one this morning because I wanted to, not because I felt I ought to.
This shift has allowed me to begin to renegotiate relationships where I have been taking more responsibility than I should be for the other person. This has already resulted in some of these ‘other people’ taking back some if their responsibility and learning their own lessons, now that I’m not getting in the way so much.
The shift has been arriving in my life very, very slowly, and it’s only just started. I’m not sure where it will take me next.
This kind of deep, deep change is glacially slow. The deeper, more petrified structures in our psyche take more time to soften and dissolve. The stories we hold to be utterly true about ourselves take much longer to unravel. This ultra-slow pace stops us from falling apart completely (most of the time). It’s okay that it takes a long time. It needs to be that way.
We can help these deep shifts along if we bring our awareness to how we are in the world, and stay curious. We can support the changes by being kind to ourselves, and by leaning on other people and our spiritual practice when we need to. We can look far far back into our past and remind ourselves of where we started, and how far we’ve come.
Noticing how slow this change is will help us to empathise when other people are struggling with their own icebergs. It will give us faith that something is moving, deep deep down, even if there are no signs of change on the surface. It will help us to learn patience.
Sometimes we want things to be ripe before they are ripe. Nature has its own plans. Sit with the deeply creaking ice. Allow yourself to be exactly as you are. We are always changing – you don’t have to worry about that. Take a slow deep breath. Allow it happen in its own time. Let the cat sleep on your lap.
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Glaciers by Stuck in Customs