Thorn asked me in the comments of the last post to keep talking about the struggle to take time for myself. I'm not really sure what she (or you!) would like to know, but here's something else that's coming up for me. (And feel free to ask more specific questions in the comments -- I'll answer them as best I can.)
Part of the struggle to take time for myself comes from a confusion or imbrication of inner and outer. That is, what I'm longing for is inner stillness, inner peace, a settled mind -- and so what I do is clean the kitchen. And somehow, cleaning the kitchen seems like it's "taking time for myself."
I end up with a clean kitchen but a volatile mind.
And let's face it -- the kitchen will be messy again in about 3.4 seconds, especially since we're working on eating at home. And so I end up with neither a clean kitchen nor a calm mind, in the end. (Side question: how the hell do people keep kitchens clean? Do they really wash dishes three times a day?)
I have some implicit assumption that a calm and serene house will magically make my insides calm and serene -- when in fact it's much more likely that calm and serene insides will help make my life -- if not my living situation -- calm and serene as well.
But what I'm struck by is not just this confusion of inner and outer, but my rationalization of it -- thinking that cleaning the house constitutes time for myself. What I want is time to collage, time to read and journal, time to meditate and do chakra work, time to take photographs and paint. What I do is clean the house, try to wrestle the finances into some kind of order, and think about reorganizing the bathroom.
And so I don't take time for myself because, in some way, I think I've already had it.
Yes, the dishes need to be washed and the laundry needs to be done and the accounts need to be attended to. But none of that is taking time for myself and my actual needs.
Worse, sometimes I can berate myself because I should be able to meditate / practice presence no matter what I'm doing -- whether it's collaging or washing the dishes. And it's true that the point of things like meditation is to enable one to be more present out in the world, but 1) I'm so not at a point where I can dispense with the actual meditation and 2) that's still not attending to the work of my soul.
Spirituality can be yet another way to berate ourselves, to trap ourselves into our bad habits instead of expanding into new ones.
As Dale pointed out, what gets in the way of the work IS the work, so here I am, attending to the work.
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