Little by little

I have been noticing a pattern in myself that is so obvious now that I see it, and yet I have managed to overlook it for a surprisingly long time.

Too much, too fast.

Since consciously entering this journey of surrender and learning to trust Divine guidance, I have also been trying incredibly hard to get somewhere, but not really actually seeing it ie. being conscious about the ”trying hard”. I just had a pace on determined by my nervous system. Run, run, run.

Quickly. Deeply. Completely. There is something almost funny about realizing that I have been trying to surrender with enormous force.

And the harder I have tried, the more resistance I have encountered.

I have spent so much time looking at that resistance as the problem. Another shadow to work through. Another blockage to overcome. Something in me that still refuses to surrender, trust, open, move.

So naturally, I tried harder.

Only now am I beginning to understand that some of the resistance may have been created by the force itself. The more I push, the more things slow down.

Yesterday I managed to push my nervous system into such an activated state that eventually I could barely do anything. My system simply stopped cooperating. I slowly found my way out by drawing and listening to an audiobook, doing things that asked almost nothing from me.

And today something became very clear.

Resistance is not always asking to be overcome.

Sometimes it is saying: slower. less. not like this.

I noticed the same pattern in something almost ridiculously small. I have been taking maca, which is great fro balancing female hormones (in the right amount) and for some reason I had ended up taking a huge amount of it. This morning, while contemplating this strange dance between maximalism and minimalism, I actually stopped and listened to my body. The amount that felt right was perhaps one tenth of what I had been taking.

One tenth.

It made me wonder how often I have done exactly this with life.

If something is healing, take more. If something opens a door, push it wider. If something feels meaningful, immerse myself completely. If there is a path, walk faster.

But living systems have their own rhythms. More is not necessarily deeper. Faster is not necessarily further.

There is a golden middle way here that I am only beginning to understand through my body rather than as an idea.

The turtle came to me earlier this year carrying this teaching, and apparently I needed some time to catch up with the turtle.

There is something beautiful about that too.

Because today I stopped pushing. I slept long. I began gently. I asked less of myself. And suddenly there was movement again. I found myself singing. Things began flowing without being pulled.

Maybe this is one of the simplest ways to recognize our own rhythm.

When every step requires enormous force, when the body contracts, when resistance grows stronger the harder we pull, the answer may not be another heroic effort to break through.

It may be a smaller step.

A softer hand.

A little more space.

I am learning that resistance contains information. It is part of the conversation. Instead of immediately asking, How do I overcome this?, I can ask, What is this resistance trying to protect, regulate, or show me? Am I moving faster than some part of me can genuinely follow?

There is a very different kind of strength in allowing transformation to happen at the speed at which it can actually become embodied.

Maybe surrender has never asked me to become better at pushing myself toward God.

And sometimes the most aligned movement is almost imperceptibly small.

Slowly. Softly. Peacefully.

At the speed of a turtle, if necessary.

The turtle still gets there.