Integration time: progress through doing nothing

“The tension between willpower and surrender”

The process of becoming aware is characterised by phases of action and rest.
Observing and letting go.
Contraction and expansion.
It unfolds in a wave-like motion.
And that flow cannot be forced.

Looking at my own process, this is something I have repeatedly found myself ‘resisting’.
Ideas, visions, plans, desires. The feeling: now it’s going to happen.

Stepping on the gas, wanting to go faster, taking action, action and more action.
Feeling a powerful energy wanting to flow through,
while the windows and doors of the body remain closed.

On the one hand, a deep life energy that wants to flow through,
on the other, resistance time and time again.
Wanting a way out of the current state,
because it hurts at that moment.
It therefore requires trust to stay in the process.
Especially when it takes a long time, whilst it seems to flow for others.
As if they are moving forward effortlessly and you are still standing in the same spot.

The art of surrender
I forced things for years before I realised that forcing it makes absolutely no sense.
Although I’m now quite aware of this, it can still happen to me.

In the creative process I’m currently engaged in, this comes through very clearly.
As I write this, I can feel in every fibre of my being that I want to start something for myself.
Setting up this platform is part of that.
Building a website, writing blogs, finding a nice place to work, and so on.

I have a lovely sense that I’m in a transitional phase.  
At times, the creativity flows beautifully, and at other times I still want to rush things.
Blogs don’t get written through haste or on the basis of quantity.
They write themselves when the right moment arrives.

And that still means, on a regular basis…
biting my nails.

Tipping point
Or could these periods of rest actually be a little more pleasant if you just let yourself go with them?
Can you learn to appreciate them?
I’ve long seen it as a ‘necessary evil’, but in this creative process I can go with the flow beautifully.
Recognising more and more quickly the moments when I’m in a rushed, forced flow.
When life isn’t cooperating, but working against me.
And then surrendering to it.

It often helps to slow down.
In nature, for example.

And then…
it falls silent.

The body slows down.
The energy sinks inwards.
The will to do things disappears.

What remains is something that has hardly any place in our society: integration time.

Misconceptions
Integration time is not laziness.
Not stagnation.
Nor a lack of discipline.
And certainly not a sign that you are ‘falling behind’.

Yet it is often experienced as such. Especially by people who do deep inner work and at the same time possess great vitality, vision and drive.

The mind wants to move forward.
The body says: not now.

That tension can be painful.

So why is integration time so useful?
This is the phase in which the system updates what has shifted internally.
What has been faced is processed. In the nervous system, your body.
And this takes time.
The body, ‘runs on’ afterwards.

Although it seems quiet on the outside, a lot is happening on the inside.
If you allow yourself to do nothing, you may well find yourself gaining insight.
Old patterns dissolve, the body recovers, and new insights are allowed to emerge.
The energy rearranges itself, as it were, and space is created.

Perhaps you first need to go through the narrowing.
Precisely by re-experiencing the part that used to cause pain.  

The paradox
What makes this phase so challenging is the paradox.
It is precisely when you do nothing that something new emerges.

In my own process, I have seen this happen time and again.
On days when I can barely do anything (physically, mentally or emotionally), ideas, phrases or images can suddenly arise.
As if a little hatch has been opened for a moment.

Not because I have tried hard to come up with them,
but rather because I have allowed them to happen.

The integration period can therefore appear to be a void,
whereas it is actually a fertile silence.

Progress through doing nothing:
sometimes it really can be that simple.