Productivity demons & running away from death...

I posted this on FB just now, but wanted to expand on it here... a dear newish friend & brilliant astrologer wrote this post reflecting on the pandemic through an astrological lens, which is super worth reading. But I was drawn to this part in particular:

“My fear is that so far, we have been taking the old normal and streaming it on Zoom— our work, our yoga class, our dance parties. Aquarius is such a tech-head in part because it has trouble staying present for uncomfortable feelings. That could also be why we’re on the internet so much. What if, instead, we felt our discomfort and loss of control? Felt our fear of loved ones dying? Felt the pain of feeling unworthy when we’re not productive? Learning to rest is one of the most important skills we need to break away from capitalism.”

I have indeed been trying to sit with the fear in me of being unworthy when I am unproductive, which feels like such an old friend/enemy at this point. It’s been eight years since my being was snapped out of its workaholic patterns by burnout / illness / spiritual crisis, more violently than most. And I’ve spent much of that time fighting against myself, learning to rest, resisting rest, resisting the resistance, coming into stillness, listening to the terror of stillness in me that comes from trauma... indeed it’s near-impossible to summarize the murky tender inner weavings of that period of darkness. I guess I'll probably write more about this, it feels like it wants to be written about, but I am also still nursing the rawness of it, especially right now.

Because this time of quarantine and indeed weeks leading up to quarantine has been one of revisiting these things, of tending nuances that I’m finally deep and slow enough to notice and thrash with anew. And in many ways, it's sucked. It feels like incredulity: have I not learned these lessons enough? How am I STILL fighting this part of myself? But it's that higher turn of the spiral - I must admit I am seeing it more clearly than before, and that I am becoming more deft at being in the midst of that horrible discomfort.

Years ago, when I was temporarily staying in the cottage, I sat on the dusty blue couch in late afternoon Seattle half-light, feeling the intense need to "do things" running crazily in my solar plexus, and at long last I let myself collapse. I literally collapsed onto the arm of the couch, my body draped like a limp rag. I gave into my exhaustion, the exhaustion of constantly running inwardly and fighting myself and the fog and the fatigue and I thought of it as letting myself die. I really did. Because to stop - truly stop, not only outwardly but inwardly - felt like death. It felt like death would catch up with me if I stopped, and with effort, I let it. I let the feeling of dying run right over me. And I felt the Christ in that moment. I felt him with me. I still remember that.

I feel a lot of tenderness, and grief, about these things - they feel like whirlpools, or puddles, collective gatherings of energy like water. What I said in my public post is that I want to believe that I have much to share and teach about the healing of productivity demons, about the disastrous measures of worth and accomplishment we are taught to enact within the vastness of our beingnesses. And there is a fear in me that I can't do it, that I won't be able to, because I am *still* riding these waves and there are still days like today when I feel and struggle with the frantic beating of wings inside myself, the strangling that feels like death catching up and threatening to incinerate my very being.

But I want to believe.

And I know this fear is part of it. That some of it is still this desire to run from death by doing, by becoming a great teacher, by having a Work Softer business, by proving to this haunted part that I am still good enough.

It's about evolution, not perfection. About the process, about the learning within the struggle, the teaching in the healing.

And hope. Hope that this healing is possible for me. That I can come out the other side. And also recognizing that it's not up to just me to make these shifts, they are embedded in our collective systems and so holding hope for that shift within our collective systems, for the patterns that sustain and mold our lives. I want to believe that this is a time when that healing becomes more possible. But we have to have the courage to listen. To not run, or if we run, to notice that running, and ask why, gently, tenderly, inexorably...

It occurs to me, as I type the post title, that it's what aomaoms are experts at - maneuvering and running away from death. Orchestrating whole marathons away from death. It's what The Farthest Shore is about, and FMA, and so many stories. So it occurs to me that as I find and work with the trauma-terrors in me, that I am also touching on some of the root tendrils that evil tugs on. Good times. No wonder it feels like shit sometimes. *Feels slightly more compassionate towards myself*, haha.

<3 Tessa