Nurturing Yourself

When you look at our insanely busy modern lifestyle, it seems almost wondrous that there is any vestige of nurturing left. In fact, when you look at it, alot of the so-called nurturing is really external pampering - we go to spas, or get haircuts, or pedicures or...a thousand other things, and underneath all that we are actually seeking the ability to nurture ourselves - from the inside out.

Seems kind of funny to be trying all that external stuff for something we are seeking inside, but that is a rather modern way of things. Doesn't follow suit that we have to comply though.

Nurturing ourselves can be as simple as learning Silence, as simple as giving ourselves time to read and relax, meditate, walk, exercise, garden, sit and do nothing, sit and do something - it can be many, many things, but there is one glaring thing absent: the stress of a needed result. Walking is no longer nurturing when it becomes a chore. Nothing, in fact, is nurturing when it becomes a chore.

And so the trick becomes learning to look at the series of actions we take to get through a day not as a chore, but simply as a sequence of actions. It is learning to sit with the moment for what it is, without wishing for it to become something else. It is learning to carve time out of "busy-ness" to make time for "nothingness" because we honor that nothingness as much or more than all the busy-ness in the world.

Nurturing yourself is taking time out of expectations, busy-ness, and and endless stream of must-do's to simply BE. Be with yourself. Dance with yourself. Meditate with yourself. Hear your own silence. Be so completely present that you can let every other moment in life go and love the moment you are in.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop