The Hidden Reason We Feel Uninspired (And How to Break Free) | Blog
Letting Go of the Middleman & Experiencing More of Life
I was recently reminded of a wild swimming session with my coach, Tine, in Scotland.
During lessons, Tine would sit on her kayak next to me, giving feedback on my stroke or helping me stay aware of my body in the frigid temperatures of the sea. On this particular day, she set the target, a buoy about 1/2 a mile away, and I started out.
After swimming for a bit, Tine stopped me. I looked at her, expecting to get pointers on my arm position, keeping my hips straight, etc. Instead, she said, “Barb, look at the water. Isn’t it beautiful? The way the sun is dancing off the waves? Do you see how the mist is clearing off the shore? Look to the horizon.”
Surprised, I did as she asked. And she was right—it was beautiful.
She said, “Can you feel the water on your skin?” I replied, “I can now – yes,” while also wondering where this was going. I mean, I had to buoy to get to.
This was a little out of the ordinary for Tine. This is the same woman who said to me, “The best thing for you would be to get your first jellyfish sting out of the way.”
Uhhhh…what? Here I was hoping to NEVER have that “first”!
That day, however, she had something else to teach me – to show me.
Tine then said, “You are working really hard. Your feet are going super fast. You’re pushing yourself. Would it be possible for you to relax and enjoy the swim?”
“Get present to the water; let it carry and support you. It’s there for that. Take it slow and easy and glide. Work with the water – don’t conquer it.”
I started to laugh. Busted!
I didn’t realize it until Tine stopped me, but as soon as we set the target, I got into “doer mode.” I was no longer present – I was getting somewhere. I was not taking in anything. I had unintentionally, out of habit, switched into a singular focus – get to the buoy.
That swim lesson stayed with me. I began to see an opening—an opportunity to experience more of life along the way rather than moving from one target to the next. One task to the next. One meeting to the next. One day to the next, in a haze of doing.
That lesson took on a new depth in a conversation with my friend Rohini a few weeks ago.
I’d been in a bit of a funk, feeling blah and uncertain about things. In my efforts to help myself, I had been trying to see what was happening or why it was happening. Did I need to adjust my work, did I need to get more focused, did I need to re-evaluate everything?
Not surprisingly, none of those pursuits made me feel clearer or less blah. In fact, I started feeling more weighted down by things, so I did my best to leave it all alone.
It was during a conversation with Rohini that things started to shift. We talked about the blah.
Blah usually indicates that we’re living in our minds more than we might realize. Life has lost some of the pizazz or joy – not because it’s joyless, but because I’m doing a lot of thinking.
To say it another way, I’m living in my mind more than IN life.
Similar to the swim that day. I’d been one step removed from things. I wasn’t present. I’d been under the influence of trying to sort things out – via thinking. I’d been assessing, evaluating, contemplating, and problem-solving.
The more I do that, the further away I am from a direct experience of what life is offering me – here and now.
Our ability to drop in allows our senses to experience the fullness of the moment, to go past all our thinking and take in what is present – THIS is when we feel alive.
I had forgotten that and mistakenly kept looking for relief in what I was doing. The blah would be corrected if I found the right thing to do.
That day, the question that would open up a whole new awareness and depth was, “Barb, can you meet all of who you are, all your feelings, fears, and uncertainty without interpreting them? Can you allow all of it, give it your full presence, without the mind being the middle man?”
I can have a busy mind. I’ve also seen that I can rush to my mind to solve problems and figure things out, but it’s often never as fruitful as tapping into the creative intelligence beyond my intellect. Over the last 14 years or so, I’ve come a long way in trusting the innate wisdom beyond the intellect.
But I knew, I could feel, that Rohini was asking me something different.
She wasn’t saying, trust, and you’ll get an answer. She wasn’t saying feel your feelings. Rohini was inviting something more profound and liberating.
Could I stop resisting what was in the here and now? Could I hang out longer with the sensations and let them carry me, move through me, without doing anything with them or trying to understand or overcome them?
This is allowing a direct experience of life.
The phrase “direct experience of life” – resonates with me. There is something there that feels expansive and enriching.
Letting go of the need to solve, resolve, or understand feels liberating.
At times, we all use our minds and problem-solving as a way to cope. We feel something we don’t like; we are tense, stressed, fearful, or anxious. We’re afraid of something falling apart or of failing. You can fill in the blanks here.
Once that discomfort hits, it happens quickly, and we’ve jumped to our minds. While that might create relief, many times, it doesn’t. It keeps us in a cycle.
What if real freedom and relief come when we allow the full range of the human experience? All of it.
What if we don’t need the middleman or the mind to interpret or make sense of it, and instead, we feel it?
There is a distinction here that might be helpful. There’s a difference between following the “story” of a feeling and following the “sensation.” The story takes us away from presence into the mind – the sensation moves through us.
When we follow the sensation, like all energy, it moves through us. We don’t have to avoid it; we discover we can handle it. We not only handle it, we thrive.
There is so much more for me to see and learn.
For now, though, being IN life, allowing a direct experience of it when I can, shows me something beautiful that is hard to put into words.
I think, though, it has something to do with why I’ve always loved this Joseph Campbell quote,
“I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
I invite you all to ask yourselves, “Can you meet whatever is present, your feelings, the sensations, without interpreting them? Can you allow all of it, give it your full presence, without the mind being the middleman?”
And in that, discover more of who you are and come more fully alive.