Sloths & Slowness

*This is from a series of writings I did a few years ago now. In particular this was an audio that I recorded after a journey into my inner landscape. I want to honour my process over time. Some threads have continued on and others have dropped away.

Last night I lay on my bed and went into the in-between realm. As I was doing so I realised that my body had become a Sloth. My arms and legs moved into the air as if holding onto an invisible branch and I allowed myself to experience what it is to be Sloth.

There really is no other way to describe it… it just felt delicious. The deliciousness of doing nothing. Of just being. There was no sense of the future or the past, it was just this eternal moment that contained everything and needed to rush for nothing.

It was such a beautiful experience because it’s been a long journey for me to own my slowness. And I certainly still have parts of me that think I should be a cheetah, that I should run forth into everything. But it’s becoming more and more clear, as my life goes on, that mine is a path of slowness, and softness, in terms of just melting in to what is, and truly allowing life to unfold from that place of not doing. 

As I see it, there is not a lot of support for this in the world. So much of the spotlight is on the fast, quick, instantaneous results. People want the growth now. They want the answer now. And it’s true that sometimes we have to run at life with a brash, bold speed that says yes and just does it. But we’re often missing out on the slow, subtle world that lives below all that activity. The simple, sweet beingness that is just so delicious, and honestly, so transformative. 

I mean to be slow is to move at the pace of integration. It means not rushing ahead and not leaving parts behind. There’s a willingness with slowness, to wait until the whole being is ready to step forward, so that whatever happens, whatever action takes place, it comes from this rich, deep fullness that is natural and genuine.

I guess what I mean by slowness here is to move at a pace that is true. Not just running into something because that’s what the world tells us to do, but really allowing our being to guide our own process. Allowing it to set the timing of things. Not some outside cultural or worldly clock that says this is what we do now. This is how we live. Because we are the only authority on what is true and right for us. Slowing down is a way to access that truth. We can’t hide in slowness. We can’t pretend or deny or avoid what is within. To slow down is to meet and see it all, to be with ourselves completely and fully.

And this isn’t overwhelming in slowness. It’s beautiful and nourishing, because we’re not forcing or pushing or rushing, so our nervous systems can handle what we see. They can handle all that is there behind the doing.

And from this place so much can happen. So much is happening.

Slowness is definitely not a state of inertia. In fact, life can often grow with more ease, more grace, more magic because all-of-us there, all-of-us is ready and willing for what wants to take place.

There is nothing to force or fight or chase. Nothing to resist.

If our whole being is ready, life will dance through it.

I mean, the Sloth just is and life just happens through it. 

Ahh back to that, I really just wanted to share how much I adored this delicious hanging-from-the-tree nothingness last night. What else is there to do but be and exist as one is? And to move from that beingness…

So I’m giving myself permission to own this slowness even more and just melt into my slothness.

Letting myself be slothy and slow.

Slowly slothy.

And I want to invite this more into the world. To make it ok to move at a slow, simple pace.

Yeh join me…

Sloths unite.