In Defense of Laziness

Often when people get the inner silence they crave, they judge it as laziness, sleepiness, indolence, weakness, or depression. Often people spend years trapped in this mind-set, sabotaging their own inner peace. Read more...

Many other cultures know how to relax and move at a much slower pace; they live in a flowing sense of time, an eternal now. Americans (and Australians) are very gung-ho, with a lot of creative energy and enthusiasm. Beneath our manic energy lie a Puritan heritage and a work ethic that never rests. We tend to abhor silence and emptiness; space and time must always be filled. Our culture is so obviously afflicted with this surfeit of doing and poverty of being that it is even endearing in a pathetic sort of way. But just knowing that what you're up against is culturally relative can give you freedom of choice.

Scientifically speaking, when you meditate, you are resting more deeply than in sleep. The feeling is luxuriously lazy. If you find resistance to such relaxation, be aware that you literally need to feel through this reaction and face your fear of laziness. Insecurity comes up sometimes from simply letting yourself be.

Many women admit to difficulty in allowing themselves rest, with supermums at the top of the list. Men seem to find it easier to work hard and then let down and play. Because women are used to self-sacrifice nad are trained to care for other people's needs, they tend to feel guilty taking time for themselves. How much of this is necessity, and how much is conditioning? Try this little experiment: what happens when you consider these statements?

The judgment against down time is also a family pattern. If not interfered with, most children will naturally meditate — by staring at the ceiling or visually tracing the lines on the wall. If it wasn't safe for you to 'space out' this way in your own childhood, you may still expect attack or hear the adult voices from long ago telling you to get to work, to be sociable, to help out. "What are you doing? Get up. Be productive. You're wasting your time!" When parents come barging in on you, fear is created. A mother can often intuit what her child is doing in the next room. If she is fraught with tension herself, her nerves may tingle with oversensitivity. When there's a shift of attention in the child, a concentration or relaxation, the mother feels it. This is the dark side of intuition — an invasion of privacy.

If there is depression in the family system, just sitting still may evoke the fear of mental illness. Constant chatter and activity may cloak a silent dread — that some secret might be todl, or someone might go nuts — some elephant in the living room that nobody will admit.

The story of Nora, a therapist in her sixties, reveals how deep the taboo against resting can be. Her family structure was riddled with depression and denial, a manic mother and a sibling suicide. After decades of inner work and much improvment, she is still haunted by anxiety when she has the chance to rest. Such patterns are deeply ingrained, and Nora may always need to counter this pattern with conscious body wisdom, an understanding she now imparts to her patients. We all have these life challenges, places in us that require special care. They are the wounds that can become our teaching gifts.

When you do have the space to rest, what you crave comes to your attention. This rattles your status quo; you can expect that. Many of the cravings that we awaken to in meditation are not new. Meditation gives you the resources to face them. Allow yourself to explore your cravings — for example, the feelings you had as a ten year-old that had to be denied because conditions were not safe. You put them off for later, postponed them so taht you could get on with your life. They got stuck in your attic, under a rug, or in a closet. When you give in to the cravings, parallel feelings come up, perhaps on several tracks simultaneously. You feel the aftereffects of having denied your needs and desires. You also feel the fear of them actually being fulfilled.

Learn to be lazy, consciously. Meditation is "much ado about nothing," as close to doing nothing as you can get. This rest takes getting used to, but it is a favour to yourself that you'll never regret. The famous meditators of the ages were actually diligent couch potatoes. So call it "sacred laziness." The lazier you are for concentrated periods, the more you can recharge and thten approach your life creatively with renewed balance and vigour.

Excerpt from Meditation Secrets for Women: Discovering your passion, pleasure and inner peace by Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche, Ph. D.

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