DO LESS
A lesson in surrender from plant medicine
In meditation, we’re encouraged to release effort; relax the face, relax the body, return to the breath. Within minutes, I can feel the tension begin to melt away. My nervous system regulates. My mind wanders, sometimes resists, but eventually I surrender. And the rest becomes medicine.
Profound answers don’t always surface, sometimes it’s just deep rest. An opening.
Clarity creeps in. I’m more embodied than when I started.
For 49 years I’ve lived as an overachiever, constantly doing, my mind always scanning for my next move, no rest. Trying to meet unfair expectations or arbitrary goals just to quiet the part of me that feels unworthy when I’m not producing.
ALL. THE. TIME.
I’m reminded of the mantra that emerged at a psilocybin retreat I attended last March, a life-changing experience:
DO LESS.
That was it. That was the instruction.
During the journey, I was forced to surrender again and again. At times the medicine seemed to laugh at me (or perhaps with me) about all the ways I’ve wrestled with life, the areas where I strain, stress, and force. And I found myself laughing too at how utterly meaningless so much of it is in the scheme of life.
“Quit working so hard.”
“Stop forcing everything.”
Messages I heard on repeat. My whole life had been fighting and striving. It was time to let go.
As I’ve struggled hard through this last week, I felt old patterns creeping back in. I was wrestling with life again. In meditation this morning, the words returned: DO LESS.
And doing less means allowing more.
It means allowing myself to simply be.
When I return to being instead of constantly doing, life flows again.
My first experiment in flow is simple: do something I enjoy every day, purely for the joy of it. Not to build something. Not to make money. Not to move a project forward. Just because it calls to me.
This is one of those things.
Writing this, my first Substack essay, simply for the joy of writing. For the cathartic nature of it. For the possibility that it might resonate with others here.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And if you didn’t, that’s okay.
I did.
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