Just do it. Progress. ‘Merica. Build. Dream. Reach. Push. Hustle.
Even flow these days is associated with progress: instantaneous manifestation! Attract it to you!
No one celebrates the down times.
Note, they’re even called “down” times. (Not a cheerleading adjective for the poor ebb.)
Europeans do ebb. They have ebb down pat. All of August is ebb, when not a soul works. Kind of amazing to think that the global economy does not crash when a whole continent swarms to their coasts for an entire month and refuses to do anything.
New Yorkers happen to be particularly sh*ty at ebb.
And when I mean ebb, I don’t just mean, vaca.
I mean: doing NOTHING.
doing. nothing.
When was the last time we did nothing?
We allowed our business, or weekend or our child, to just, not have a plan?
And don’t misunderstand me, I am not talking about laziness and/or being stuck in a rut, because that is not nothingness, that is just fear masked as passive resistance.
I’m talking about nothingness. Because you know where possibility comes from? Nothingness.
That great ether of Universal Source is nearly impossible to tap into when we are carrying all the garbage around of who we should be or what we should be doing next.
There’s an anxiety that comes up when there is room, there is space, and we don’t know what’s next. So we run to fill it, and squash the ebb. Ebb can and will be minutes, or it can be months.
Great artists are usually intuitively awesome at ebb because they understand that after they have created something, they need to allow space for the well to refill.
The way to celebrate ebb is to cultivate faith.
Faith that the next job, creative passion, guy or tribe of friendships will come.
Ebb is just meditation in real life.
If we do ebb right: the organic momentum of world will come and sweep us up when it’s time to motivate. Not with “shoulds” or “musts” or deadlines or a need to produce fueled from a hole of needing to give rise to the ego. But rather inspired action that comes so swiftly and sweetly, we barely have time to notice: “holy sh** I’m in the flow.”
Eventually judging and discussing and quantifying and labeling drop away, and there’s no ebb or flow, there just is.
Summer’s lazy days are a perfect time to practice ebb.
Let’s try purposefully under-scheduling.
Going to the beach and not reading for an hour, but just sitting there, actually being with the beach.
Having lunch with a friend with the intention not to load off, but just listen.
Here’s the secret: alchemy only springs from the ebb. It’s where infinite possibility holds court.
Ever heard the phrase, “too many cooks in the kitchen…?”
Faith in the ebb is that the universal Master Cook, might know a little more about cycles, and nature and rising, receding tides than we do. (Um, ya think?)
