While driving the other day I noticed a car way behind me, swerving in and out of traffic, passing everyone in a hurried way, apparently without time to even use his turn signals. He zoomed right up behind me, so close I couldn’t even see his bumper in my rear-view mirror, and proceeded to rocket past in the left lane and quickly accelerated into the distance.

The funny thing is, about a half mile ahead I noticed him sitting at a red light where I eventually gently pulled up right behind his car as we all waited for the light to change together. Admitting that the roles had been reversed in the past, finding myself passing people in a hurry to get somewhere – only to come upon a red light and have them all fall in right behind me – this episode really gave me reason to pause and reflect on how we can let the pressure of time affect us by getting into a rush in our lives, but actually gaining nothing in the process and truly going nowhere.

To qualify the last sentence with greater resolution, when I claimed that we are ‘going nowhere’ when we get into a rush and zoom around, whether with our own bodies or in the moving body of our cars, what I am referring to is the quality of those movements. Sure, you can rush to work, driving like a maniac and clocking in with only seconds to spare without anyone really batting an eyelash about it. But how does moving like this really affect our bodies and the quality of the way we work during the rest of the day?

Having been one of those people who left for work or other appointments at the last second, I can definitively say that when I was always rushing it made my whole body feel racy, tense, anxious, nervous, sometimes angry at other drivers who were ‘in my way’ and generally stressed out. So that was the state of being that I would start my day in. Naturally this anxious energy would cascade, through its momentum, into the work I was engaged in, affecting my relationships, ability to focus, and the efficiency of my movements and productivity. I would at times find myself almost going in circles, forgetting a tool I needed, having to go back and forth multiple times to get the things required for the job that I could have gathered more systematically if I had simply arrived at work early and given myself more space to allow what was needed to come to me without that ‘buzziness’ in my body getting in the way.

Imagine for a moment you are standing in the middle of a swimming pool that has waves and choppy water sloshing around from many people jumping into it. Would you notice any change in the water if someone slowly walked down the steps into the pool? Probably not, but if the pool had perfectly still water all around you, you would naturally be able to see the ripples of water radiating out in waves towards you when someone entered the pool from the other side.

Using the above analogy, when we arrive at our destination after rushing around and with a lot of nervous energy in our bodies, we not only lose our ability to be aware of what is needed to best support ourselves in what we do, but can also have a detrimental effect on other people. These ‘ripples’ of anxiousness can spread to those around us, making them feel more stressed-out if they are not as centred or grounded in their bodies. This can also lead to them taking on your emotional issues as if they are their own. I surely know that I have many times, out of sympathy or in an attempt to ‘save’ them, put the burden of other people’s problems on my shoulders until the weight of both their issues and my own were too much and I realised I had enough to deal with myself without all that extra ‘weight’ to carry!

This gradually led me to the way of allowing people to come to their own realisations and conclusions in life and trusting that they can and will do so in their own time. Sometimes we actually are imposing on their natural process of personal development when we try to help, out of our own self-inflicted issue of not feeling like we are good enough simply as we are, without proving this to others or ourselves through what we do.

So, when I began to allow myself extra space before work or an appointment to prepare my lunch, pack up everything I needed, and drove to my destination chilled out with plenty of time to spare, I noticed that during this new process my whole body breathed a sigh of relief and I arrived much calmer, more settled and better able to handle anything that came my way.

Whereas before, it would not take much for me to feel a bit overwhelmed with the tasks at hand, as I was already ‘swimming’ in that choppy water of racy emotions previously described that can stop us from feeling the power of our stillness, which gives us the confidence to do what is needed – no more, and no less.

Staying connected to my body and focussing my mind on only the task at hand, without getting ahead of myself or thinking about something that happened in the past, has been key to developing more stillness in my body and thus a more settled mind. But the times that I have hurried to finish something, with the intent to check it off my ‘to-do’ list – or because I have taken on the pressure imposed by someone else to complete the task quicker than my body is telling me is possible or healthy – I have been left actually feeling more ‘empty’ at the end of the day, as if I have ‘sold-out’ in a way and gone against what I know to be truly valuable.

This pattern can then lead to the desire to fill that emptiness with food or other forms of entertainment in a desperate attempt to make the day feel more complete, even though all we had to do was listen to what our bodies were telling us is supportive of them in the first place.

Even though rushing may get us somewhere quicker than if we slowed down and provided a more spacious way of preparing and organising our daily activities, if the end result is that we are in a state of being that is disharmonious to our bodies and possibly to others, how can we say we really got anywhere? If anything, I would say from a viewpoint of the evolution of human consciousness, we in fact went nowhere in this instance, as living with this kind of anxiousness caused by rushing is not in line with our body’s natural balance and only causes a multitude of mental, emotional and physical health issues.

Without a doubt, the teachings of Serge Benhayon via Universal Medicine have been paramount in providing the tools needed to re-connect to the intelligence of my body, which can feel the truth of any situation and guide me to living with more love and understanding every day, knowing that there is no need to rush in returning to our true way. We are all just going in circles, as the Earth spins and orbits the Sun, going nowhere until we are all ready to evolve together to a higher consciousness that we know deep down is inevitable.

By Michael Goodhart, Aircraft Technician, B.A. Psychology, Lover of people, Nature and the philosophy of Universal Life, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Further Reading:
Rush, Rush, Rush
Yoga of life – to rush or not to rush?
Abiding by the Law – Driving on the Speed Limit, and Enjoying It!