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We live our best lives when we operate from wholeness and love. In wholeness we are complete and in love we are gentle, respectful and strong. There are many times in our lives when we need to rest more and daily we need to take time to reset, regenerate and replenish. If we have ideas about how we should be or want to be that conflict with what we need, it is helpful for us to examine them so that we can replace them with a more aligned understanding that allows us to create belief systems that lead us to practice self love without feeling conflicted and experiencing the suffering that inner conflict creates.

To live from self love is a simple concept which becomes difficult to practice when we have become used to feeling always dissatisfied, always craving something more, always trying to gain to prove that we are worthy, to feel whole and well and connected. In love we are present, alive to each moment, able to tune in to our inner wisdom in order to know what we need to do and how best to do it.

In love we are in truth and in truth we know that we are all that we seek, that there is nothing outside of us that can make us feel all that we wish to: the love that we are. In this space of connection, peace and clarity, we embrace rest, we know that ideas that we must be busy, that we should be productive, that we want to do more than we can are just happenings in consciousness and we turn away from them knowing that they do not have to be believed in, invested in or followed.

Self love is knowing that our worth is inherent and aligning with it regardless of what we have or have not achieved in our lives.

When we remember that self love is our most natural act and we return to loving ourselves, we allow rest. Rest is imperative to our experience of health. We need time to relax and refocus, to release and recharge. When we are operating from wellbeing, we recognise this, we embrace this, we allow this. It is healing and wholesome and graceful and joyful to live this way and it doesn’t mean that we don’t get things done, it means we are present to the experience of life that we are creating, flowing with life and taking action in a way that allows us to enjoy, to be efficient and to take rest time when we need to.

When we are not consumed by thoughts about how things should be, how long they should take but are intuitively responsive to the way things are, we are so much more relaxed and better able to do what we need to to have the energy and presence to live well. Rest is crucial to us. Ideas and concerns that we cannot rest, do not have time to rest and do not want to rest are born of the notion that we have to be productive by continuously utilising our time here. These are the beliefs of the limited mind. The eternal soul exists outside of time and in its wisdom guides us to know that we are so much more than all that we have thought ourselves to be and that we cannot lack, be separate from or unworthy of what we are: the energy of life, love, light, health, happiness.

Considering those ideas and beliefs we wish to hold and invest in and reflecting on our reaction to them can help guide us in overcoming the obstacles we have created to living well and are innocently holding in place. When we are facing away from wisdom, we feel it. When we are operating from wellbeing, we are centred and alive to our intuition and instincts and guided to treat ourselves well.

Consider:

I allow myself to rest
I allow myself to relax
I allow myself to reset
I allow myself to recharge
I allow myself to release
When I need rest, I prioritise rest
I embrace my need for rest
I trust in my choice to rest
I embrace a simple approach to rest
I am allowed to rest
I deserve rest

Allowing rest time is the act of loving and appreciating ourselves, knowing we are worthy and deserving of rest and overriding dominant unhelpful beliefs that tell us otherwise. You deserve your own light. You deserve your own kindness. You deserve your own forgiveness. You deserve your own comfort. You deserve your own encouragement. You deserve your own support. You deserve your own love and you deserve to give yourself the care and time that you need when you need it.

On the path of healing, self realisation and expansion we come up against the limited mind and this can feel too confronting to move beyond at times. In the moment that we feel as if we cannot continue on our journey of self discovery and change we can take a break, a rest and we can realise that although we may be feeling low or lost or even broken, feeling better is a possibility. Deep down we know we have the ability to realise peace and freedom from suffering and we are being guided to remember it in the times we long for relief.

Rest is not only necessary physically, we need it mentally and emotionally too. When we are feeling overwhelmed or unsure, it can help us to take a moment to breathe, to consciously notice our breath and to focus on this one action. As we do, we let our thoughts flow; we might be aware of them but we are not distracted by them, instead we pay attention to the sense of calm and stillness becoming known to us. We are then able to come back to what we need and want to in a healthier feeling state of mind. And in this way we are gentle and firm with ourselves, knowing when we need to take care of ourselves and choosing to.

When we are well rested on every level, we are clear and connected, inspired and creative, resourceful and resilient and we feel confident in ourselves.

We must take time for silence and stillness and relaxation. During the times we need more rest than usual or than we have before, the limited self can struggle to feel at peace with this but love leads us to remember our truth, our ability to change our minds, to experience new thinking and feeling about a situation and to return to the light within that is always guiding us and and lighting our way through times that seem dark.

Much of the reason we have so much issue with rest is because we have been taught to view rest in ways that assign it meaning it does not have. And when we know we need to rest and are at the same time influenced by our unhelpful conditioning and programming about it, we struggle. If we instead acknowledge that we need to rest, seek out ways to do so and commit to allowing any more complicated thinking about it to pass us by, we are able to be at peace with taking the rest time we need to.

This does not mean that we do not allow and process our feelings but that we remain grounded in wellbeing and truth and self love as we do. In this way we release what it does not serve us to hold onto whilst having compassion for the suffering we have been through. It is never wrong to think and feel what we think and feel, only helpful to realise that when we feel conflicted, we know that we are paying attention to what is untrue, unclear or unhelpful. You know what is the right decision for you, even when past thinking disagrees. When you take right action in the moment and are flexible and fluid in your approach to continue doing so, you flow with life, you learn from life and you align ever more fully with your intuition and higher awareness.

You know the way to living your best life, to prioritising your health, to reading the messages your body, mind and soul are sending you.

Relaxation is a state of being not just a means by which to rest and recharge. When we are relaxed, we are not braced against life, we are in flow with it, we are in a state of trust and awareness so we spend less time being caught off guard or triggered by past ideas and beliefs and reactions and default more frequently to helpful responses and action when we are. We do not have to fear the thoughts flowing through our minds when we know that we can consider them without believing in or struggling with them and when we do, we uncover conditioning and programming that we may still be unaware of.

We know that when we operate from peace and wellbeing we feel healthy, calm and free. That we experience clear perspective that allows us to examine our experiences, beliefs and behaviours from a higher consciousness that guides us with clarity to insight, understanding and revelation. In this space we are loving and compassionate with ourselves and we commit to making this our primary state of being. When we trust in our ability to live this way, in the moments we are triggered, we do not doubt our worth, our wholeness, our resilience and our ability to heal, rather we allow ourselves to rest in the stillness of wellbeing so that we can come back to ourselves, reset, recharge, move on.

We do not have to fear stillness. As past memories and the experience of them occur, we can allow them so that we can release them. As we do, we also allow reflection, investigation, understanding. Is there past pain we need to heal, are there past mistakes we need to forgive, past actions or events we didn’t understand at the time but can gain clarity on now? Perhaps what surfaces for us in times of pause and contemplation is brought into the light by our wisdom, guiding us to know what to let go of, what to reprogramme as well as what to dismiss.

If we feel our way through allowing and releasing, we will be open to the messages of our inner knowing that help us move forwards, assimilate learning and bring clarity to anything we need to address.

When we feel off balance, we are receiving an alert to return to centre so that we can tune in to wisdom and wellbeing. Knowing this gives us the strength to be still, to face what comes up and to process and release it as we are designed to. Rest comes in many forms and release allows for relief which relaxes us, restores us, allows us to reclaim our time, attention and energy. Our minds are powerful and we are designed with a guidance system that lets us feel our thinking. We do not need to avoid or repress or worry about the feelings that certain thoughts create because we get to choose how we consider and respond to them. Resting allows us to choose not to follow our every thought and when we are rested we see the wisdom in doing so. Rather than be constantly alert to, attempt to flee from, struggle with or deny what we experience in stillness, we allow our experiences to lead us to deeper understanding and self knowledge, freeing up the energy of fight or flight, shutting down, hypervigilance and control.

There are no right or wrong thoughts and it is not right or wrong for us to think and feel. We cannot change what thoughts occur to us but we can decide on the meaning and interpretation and power we assign them. If thoughts are simply potentials for experience, we can refuse to engage with those that turn us away from peace, clarity and health. Practicing this response allows us the distance to consider whether recurring thoughts have a message for us about what we might do to live better because if something keeps coming up for us that we fear and try to avoid, we may do well to allow ourselves to be present to it so that we can realise our ability to consider it in a new light, compassionately, objectively, peacefully and listen to our wisdom without worry.

We cannot entertain the same thoughts and dwell in the same feelings and become new people. Rest allows us to recover our sense of health and wisdom, to relax our thinking and soothes the tension in our minds and bodies, replenishing our energy stores and creating a sense of freshness that refreshes us. Deep rest offers us the opportunity to view ourselves anew, to find out that who we have believed ourselves to be is a creation and who we truly are has access to everything we will ever need within.

True rest connects us with our inner resources of calm, clarity, strength, resilience, wholeness, wellbeing and love that shine a light on self misunderstandings and guide us towards expressing our truth.

You not only deserve to be happy and well rested, you can be by prioritising your own needs and becoming curious about your self image. Rest is cessation, relief and many mindfulness, self care and realisation practices guide us to rest, to stillness, to relaxation and release, to a return to centre in order that we relax into true being.

When we try to run from ourselves, it is because we feel there is something we need to escape in order to feel better but we cannot escape what we are ourselves creating: wherever you go, there you are. It is when we realise that there is nothing we need to run from within that we are able to live well. Until we aware of what lies within us and are motivated by our knowledge to embrace and face what we have been trying to run from, we give power to it. When we stop, when we sit, we breathe and we allow ourselves to be present in the moment, able to process and digest what we have trying to get away from, whether we do this alone or with support.

When we rest, we return to stillness, to simplicity, to slowness and gentleness and if we do not fight our need for rest but accept it, we will find that when we return to our routines, what is draining, too fast paced, overwhelming will be recognisable and we can trust our instincts to let go of what we can and request help with what we cannot. One of the things we might notice when we are well rested is the pattern of our thinking and the experience it creates within us. When we are in flow, creative, inspired, expressing joy and health, our thinking is flows too. When we are not in alignment, our thinking is frantic, obtrusive, repetitive, wearing. We feel this just as we feel in flow thinking and the refreshed mind can distinguish between the two and take action to reset when it needs to.

Noticing the pattern and content of our thinking and the feelings it creates gives us insight in to our belief systems and habits of being so that we can decide what we continue with and what we work to change and transform.

Letting this be simple allows us to stop running from those thoughts we would prefer not to have and the experiences we create when we engage with them and instead, consciously direct the power we have to think new thoughts and feel new feelings. As we do, we begin to experience the inner silence and stillness that allow us to sit with what we once ran from, aware that we are not the experience itself but the creator and witness of it.

It is an identification with who we are not and what we cannot do or be or achieve that creates tension and struggle within us. When we try to run from this in any way, we find the experience continues and feels increasingly difficult to deal with. We simply cannot escape from experiences of our own making that are actually signalling to us that we are turned away from who we really are, faced away from health and happiness and healing. It is only when we stop running that we discover this.

It is only when we consider from the space of wellbeing the experiences we are creating that we uncover where they are coming from. When we do we find we have nothing to run from, that we are able to relax and that past states of being recur with less frequency, are less intense and eventually fade away. If they do occur again, we can remain in the space of self love and self trust and clarity so that we are not caught up in them and instead are able to notice them arise, allow them to pass and consider why they may have resurfaced if we feel guided to.

Rest gives us the opportunity to discover more about who we really are; we are not what we do, what we produce, what we provide.

We are infinite spiritual beings, we are of and one with the energy of life. We do not have to fear staying still, we do not have to feel frustrated about missing out, we do not have to weigh up whether we are worthy of a break, we do not have to feel guilt or shame about taking one. When we realise this, we stop running, we come face to face with truth, we meet our real selves, we find the only place we have been trying to get to is here, where love, peace and health reside. And in love and peace and health we allow our feelings to arise without judgement. It is okay to feel, it is okay to release. It is helpful beyond measure to know we are not our feelings so that we do not identify with our experiences and allow ourselves to create new ones.

Rest allows us the pause for reflection that guides us to doing things in ever more helpful ways if we relax into acceptance and refuse or release what turns us away from wisdom and reroutes our energy towards insight, realisation, evolution, expansion and rejuvenation. When we become still and centred, we come home, the world comes alive to us and we are free to live in the moment, embrace our ability to think and feel and enjoy as we choose to. We experience rest and relief without needing to go anywhere or do anything.

Once we begin to investigate new ideas about life that lead us to change the way we think about ourselves and how we show up in the world, there may be some around us who are uncomfortable with our new understanding and approach, who even try to persuade or prevent us from changing. And this is okay. We cannot control their experience of life but we also do not have to take it on or allow it to influence us and we can again release any unhelpful beliefs their behaviour triggers. You are whole, you are strong and able, resilient and resourceful, a being of pure potential, able to return home to the peace and wellbeing within in any moment.

You do not need to prove your strength, your potential or your choices to anyone. You are allowed to transform and evolve, to practice self love and self care, to rest as much as you need and choose to.

Until we wake up to the way we create and experience life, change can seem destabilising because when the world around us changes, we lose a sense of who we are. At times, others are so heavily identified with their ideas and beliefs and so dependent on their environment to reinforce their sense of self that when those around or close to them change, their sense of identity becomes threatened. Understanding this does not lead us to allow anyone who reacts to our growth the right to dictate to us how we should think and feel and behave but provides us insight into their behaviour so that we do not take responsibility for it and reduce ourselves to make them feel better.

When we find a better way, we can take it and know that it makes no sense to give it up because of how it makes other people feel. Instead, we can return to stillness and allow our innate compassion to guide us in considering why another person might feel affected by our decision to care for ourselves, to rest as we decide to, to process our experiences in order to learn from or become free of them. We can wish them the very best on their own journey of growth and transformation, continuing our relationship with them if this feels good to us and ceasing it if we feel otherwise, resting in the space that this provides us.

We are always only operating from our level of awareness in the moment. None of us are more spiritual. We are all on a journey of remembering. Recognising that we too have moments of misunderstanding and identification with the limited self allows us to respond to others from a place of loving kindness whilst we prioritise our right to live in alignment with our truth and in harmony with our wellbeing. When we do, we do not stay small or halt our evolution to make other people comfortable or get caught up with them in fear. We are guided to continue to change as it makes sense for us to whilst holding space for others to embrace who we are becoming if we can and releasing ourselves from doing so if we cannot.

You are the only person who can decide for you that you can live well, who can choose for you to embrace rest and relaxation and allow the release and relief that rest provides.

You do not need to justify or explain your approach to rest, to others or to the limited mind which will refer to past programming that claims rest is in some way not okay, not allowed, to be refused, done without or limited. When we understand this, we give up thinking that tells us otherwise so that we allow rest, embrace rest, indulge in the peace and healing and time for reflection that rest affords us and choose rest when we need and want it, releasing what within us struggles against it so that we can come home to and centre ourselves in the silence and stillness and health and wholeness that rest uncovers for us within.