Curating the Mundane

Have you ever been in a place in life where everything seemed to stall? Personally, professionally, or financially, no matter what actions you took, nothing would budge toward the change you’re seeking to achieve in your goals or desires?

Being forced to stay in an everyday existence we’re all too familiar with; this seemingly mundane, ordinary place of sustaining our existence, is really uncomfortable. It can be stressful, difficult, and overall ridden with anxiety.

So why is stillness so harmful?

If we sit with this question, we can discover that really this agitation is coming from subtle doubts and fears that originate from deep within. It could stem from how we’re interpreting what the inactivity means. Perhaps we feel as if we’re being held hostage in a position we don’t want to be in anymore. Or we’re being karmically punished and intentionally kept away from our desires.

Additionally, this tension can illuminate insecurities we have about our abilities to achieve what we want to accomplish as we begin to question our skills and the choices we’ve made so far that haven’t helped to materialize anything yet.

Any one of these disturbances become forms of impatience. Somehow, an unconscious timetable has been created in our psyche and we begin to project some sort of significance onto this interpretation of lack of events.

In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Sri Swami Satchidinada Yoga Sutra 2.43 says:
“The direct meaning of tapas is ‘to burn,’…By mental tapas we burn all our old impressions. When we burn, we feel some heat and pain. We undergo suffering. So, tapas also means to accept suffering. If someone suffers, he or she is blessed, because by that suffering some impurities are purged out.”

In actuality, everyone’s journey is different and the more we compare our progress to others, attempt to standardize the process, or begin to place labels and judgements on this period of waiting, the more duress we cause for ourselves.

When we try to force things to happen before they should, we can run the risk of being ill-prepared or mis-aligned with the wrong circumstances.

As hard as it may be, we have to trust that this veil of idling is a necessary part of the path we’re on and we have a choice to use the space to create more of the life we want to manifest or expire by sinking into negative conclusions.

When we find ourselves in pain during silent inactivity, it’s a chance to expand our awareness and clean up our mental clutter. In this way, these unremarkable times can be productive and supports an opportunity to evolve in a way that we might not have expected.