Me: “Wow the Path of Music was amazing. So energized. I can’t wait to see what is next.” 

Spiritual Guide: “Now we rest.” 

Me: “Wait. We have been making so much progress. Why are we stopping now?”

Spiritual Guide: “What makes you think resting equals not progressing?”

Me: ” Whenever I’m not doing something how am I making progress?”

Spiritual Guide: “You were constantly doing stuff on the Maya Express, how much progress on your Spiritual Life did you make?  Do you not remember where you got on and off here?”

The Illusion of Progress

See while living our day to day life, the Maya Express deploys many tools to make us constantly have to be doing something. 

The “if you aren’t working your aren’t contributing” table likes to make you feel like that vacation is hindering your work progress.  

The “if you didn’t earn it, you can’t enjoy it” tables likes to tell you that just because you are sick or injured or just plain tired, you don’t deserve “handouts”. 

The “why would people help me, if I can’t help them” table likes to make you feel guilty for not volunteering enough, and make you feel like you don’t deserve others help. 

Then there is the worst table of all.  The “resting is for the weak, the strong keep going” tells the athletes they have to play through injury not rest for their health.  The factory worker who has to work through the pain or don’t get paid. 

What Progress? 

Me:”The path didn’t change. Where I am when I stepped on, was where I was when I stepped off. But how does sitting here resting also make progress?”

We judge so many for their “laziness” when rest itself is not laziness.  Remember that family living in a van, discussed during the View on Money. How we judge their laziness for not working. We don’t know that their business burned down and the insurance agent scammed them out of any money. Costing them their home. 

The car accident, tornado, medical emergency that just can’t all be covered by everyone every time, does not make those people lazy, but we judge their bad luck if they “don’t dust off their boots and keep going”.

Depression is not Laziness

How often have we all faced depression. Masked it or just felt like giving up.  The Path of Mental Health can help prevent it, but there are times losses can just make us do nothing. 

That isn’t laziness either, that’s the mind and body saying we need some recovery time. 

Too many times, I myself have viewed others inactions as laziness, disregarding and in many ways disrespecting, what is going through others lives. 

Laziness is a table many of us sit at, in our lives.  But most the time the tables we are at are the “dark corner away from others” or the “I can’t people today” or the “I just need a break and read a book” tables. 

None of these tables are bad.  Yet we are conditioned to feel guilt or judge others when someone is at the tables. 

Asking for help

Spiritual Guide: “As we sit here and talk, it is I your guide, that shepherds you along.  Sometimes resting with others in good association, moves your path along. Other times it’s okay to just ask others to lift you up.  It’s okay to say I want to give up, will you please help me.”

Asking for help on the Maya express is forbidden. It’s seen as a weakness. Keeping us down and deploying the “ego of self-reliance”; stops us from progressing on our spiritual path. 

Spiritual Guide: “Look around you.  As we sit here and talk together on the ground, does the surroundings not look different?  You can make progress with rest. You can make progress by just being,”

Me: “What are ways I can do this?”

Rest and let it go

Spiritual Guide “learn to let the train of the Maya Express keep going.  When work is done, go home and let the work stay. When you go on vacation, enjoy the time and learn to let the work go on. When you have that headache, let the dishes pile up.  When you just are tired of life, let the floor wait until tomorrow to vacuum.”

Work, dishes, dirt will all still be there when you are done resting. 

As an icy princess once said, let it go. Let the world go on. When your time comes to leave the train cart and onto the next path of your Spiritual Journey, life on the Maya Express will continue on. 

Why stress ourselves out when we need or want to rest; when the world will always move on with or without us?  

Besides, if we don’t rest how can we enjoy other parts of life like the Path of……

Yours forever grateful.