Waiting for the mud to settle
“Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?”
This was read out at the beginning of a workshop I attended recently. All day long I returned to those words, turning them over and over in my mind. I’ve been thinking about them ever since, waiting for the mud to settle and for the meaning I could feel, but not see, to arise.
A couple of weeks before the workshop, a great quiet fell all around me. The world and its urgency seemed muffled, the usual torrent of thoughts in my head ceased. That great river of ideas, a thrilling ride in which I have sometimes paddled madly, and other times lay back and marvelled at, stopped running.
The river had not dried up. It had widened out to become a lake. I lay on my back in its centre, barely moving. Life moved on the shores. I knew the world was there, the earth still turning and people turning madly on it. I gave up straining to listen or to move. No matter how I paddled, the lake fixed me in its centre and would not give me up.
Things have been turning on their head for some time. Things that I have assumed have proved unfounded. Things I learned some time ago presented themselves again in new ways. It turns out knowing something with your mind, and knowing it with your whole being are two different things.
As soon as I lay back in the lake without needing to be anywhere else, the current caught me again. Gently, I started moving without realising. Water that runs from the mountains to the sea will make its way there, naturally, eventually.
While in the lake, a few things became clear. We know the earth will naturally reclaim herself, rebalance herself if allowed. Science tells us this. What we stop doing is more important now than what we do.
At home, on our land, it is the same. The land will, over time, regenerate itself in the best way possible for the land. In our attempts to make things right, to create a forest for example, we disturb the land’s natural processes yet again.
All through our property, I have discovered native seedlings—shrubs and trees growing naturally. These are the species that you see arrive in regenerating forest. The land is already doing it, by herself. In the past I have cleared these seedlings from garden beds, preferring to have a garden of my own design. I saw them as interlopers, and unnecessary. For a while I have been leaving the garden alone. You could say it let the mud settle and the water clear, the land’s right action arising by itself.
In my writing, I set aside all of the work I had in progress. The mud settled there too. This the first thing that has arisen of its own accord.
In my work, sharing about our ‘creative self’, we returned again and again to the relationship with have with that part of ourself. Setting aside what we think we should create, listening instead for what wants to be created through us. You could call this letting the mud settle and the water clear, and allowing the right action to arise by itself.
Allowing ourselves to be unmoving seems to be the hardest part of all. Allowing ourselves to lay back when all around us we see mud, without moving to sift and sort things. Understanding that the mud is stirred up by our own wild scrambling feels helpful. The idea of first resting and waiting first, later acting when things become clear, might be the greatest lesson I’ve learned so far.