Shadows on snow are so . . . restful

C:12.5  You are looking for the rest and quiet joy that only comes from love.

Yes, it’s a new year, but can it wait a week or two? I am new to rest; barely beyond the stage of needing excuses. Do you know what I mean? “I’m so tired I need to rest . . . but why? What have I done that was so draining?” Or how about: “Jack, June, Judy, Jeff, Jill, Joy, JoEllen, Jan and Jackie, all did more than me, and they’re not tired! Why am I?”

Yes, I have moved a bit beyond needing excuses; a tad beyond comparisons. But I sure haven’t forgotten the many years I spent with them and I have felt them nipping at my heels the past few weeks. If there’s a time of year when old patterns are going to return, this is it. There is, for one thing, lots of family engagement for many of us, and in our own families, some of us now meet the diversity of the world: various races, ethnicities, religions, battles over territory, and food competitions, not to mention the combining of generations; people born as many as 90 years apart and everything in between!

All that aside, there’s another kind of rest that I’ve felt moving in. Rest from thinking. Now this kind of rest is really interesting and even harder to understand than the need for physical rest. It defies explanation. I once felt it was confined to things like tax season dread during which I’d internally wail, “My mind doesn’t work that way anymore.” That was simply true! Another truth (or at least easily digestible fact) has been my, “I can’t wrap my head around that,” alarm over new technology. I could go on: the aversion to planning! The “Oh please, don’t ask me to think that far in advance,” or to consider the details or the strategy! All of this is nothing new to me.

But there is something new going on.  Whatever it is . . . I like it.

The movement from mind to heart energy can cause a lot of angst before it begins to dissipate. Letting go of thinking is almost the first instruction of A Course of Love, and is probably the last to be accepted . . . the last letting go. But the benefits are, (as spoken by a novice), incredible: a new kind of more restful energy that is trusting and creative and adventurous.

That it’s coming to me after seventeen years with this Course may not be a great feat, but my slowness doesn’t mean anything. Nor does this new “restfulness” feel like the result of anything I’ve done. And yet, the cornerstones of A Course of Love are entirely capable of leading even the most diehard thinkers to “new thought,” new feeling, and new ways of doing. I’d put those cornerstones something like this:

1. Know yourself
2. Accept yourself
3. Allow yourself
4. Love yourself

Rest.

C:9.22 My words call you to the eternal, to nourishment and rest of the spirit rather than the body.