Inertia, Heaviness and Inactivity
Today I want to share my thoughts with you that arose out of a talk given by Gil Fronsdal on Sloth and Torpor. Gil was speaking about sloth and torpor as being one of the mental hindrances that arise and block our forward momentum. A coping mechanism that can get in our way or lead to suffering.
The first thing that struck my heart was that Gil said that one natural reaction to the very real difficulty of life is to withdraw; go numb; or become inert, heavy and inactive. In a sense we become disinterested in making an effort, any effort at all. We may even hear ourselves think something similar to, “What’s the use?”
This resonated deeply for me as I have often found myself in this very same pattern or hindrance. With mindfulness I have started to notice that as discomfort arises, there is in me, an almost instinctual movement towards withdrawal and inactivity.
Thankfully he offered tools with which we can cut through this inertia and heaviness. The first comes from the idea that this discouragement and resistance to what is happening in our life is not as inactive or passive as it feels. His words are, “It’s not, not doing.” It is instead a self imposed and active dampening of our feelings. It is key to recognize there is actually an energy and movement behind the inertia of sloth and torpor. While it is a very natural and normal reaction for all of us to what is difficult, it gets in the way of our “creative vitality”, a vitality that is sourced from a very different well than our aversion and resistance to what’s occurring in our life.
Recognizing the energy behind the feeling of torpor helps us differentiate it from true feelings of fatigue or depression. Once we are able to perceive the difference in the feelings, sloth and torpor can “evaporate in a heartbeat”. Something that’s not possible with true fatigue.
The next tool comes from another differentiation. This is between the dull, frozen, afraid, immobile stillness of torpor and the beautiful, spacious, soft and gentle stillness of mindfulness. The second stillness is not immobile but instead a quiet, settled and voluntary stillness. While sloth represents a heavy, stiff and rigid stillness, it is remains a stillness. A stillness that none the less is very close to the beautiful stillness we experience in nature, during meditation or during acupuncture.
What we might consider is that our grief, fear or anger, the feelings that lead to the sloth in the first place, have a kind of vitality of their own. A vitality that forced us to slow down and become still. And in the stillness of our torpor we have the opportunity to relate to the beautiful stillness. To do so, we need to ask ourselves how can we relate to the stillness we are currently experiencing in a more beautiful way. How can we stop making a problem of it and recognize instead that life has slowed us down so that we can see more clearly, and look around, and see the beauty around us and tap into our creative vitality and find the way forward once more.
Be kind and gentle with yourselves,
Teo
