The Layers of Unrest - Deeper Down (Part 2)
The ways we don’t tend to ourselves compound like layers of rock sediment: hardening and separating us from our core (humanness) and each other.
When we tend to one layer, it shifts in relation to others, creating rippling impact and effects. When we tend to our own unrest, it shifts in the ways we’re in relation to others, creating rippling impact and effects.
This is an accompanying, sequential article to The Layers of Unrest.
‘Of Time’, 35mm © Flory Huang, 2022.
Acknowledging and knowing that unrest is a multilayered paradox in living; it is also the portal / doorway to deepening our understanding of it. Will you continue to step through them with me?
A beautiful yet bittersweet condition of our humanity is how universal our personal experiences are, more often than not. And we see our togetherness everyday— as long as we look. Sometimes it’s for the worse because groupthink fueled by fear and ignorance are extremely harmful and dangerous, which is one of the most effective ways to create bold action. Yet more for the best, we understand community care, compassion and connection nourish rich soil for more abundance in all forms, for each and every one of us. Coming up to year 3 of COVID-19, we’ve all witnessed the many ways unrest has been unattended. It’s like a pendulum swinging between no nuance or not enough when there’s just an enmeshment binaries in what is deemed “true”. Just look at the modern connotations attached to what is thought of as political left vs right, or between people who choose to vaccinate between those who do not. The aggression, fear and violence are breeding more suffering and division. For sanity and survival, it also breeds apathy and avoidance.
In order of less tangibly measured to the most visceral and witnessed, the following forms of unrest deeply impact us by how they compound and conflate in our lives. This very accumulation creates deeper discomfort and disconnect yet… all too very often resulting in the leaking and/or eruptive energy. No realm of our lives is exempt.
Unrest is most tiring when untended, or invalidated. By anyone, but especially by our own selves. As you read through, while my perceptions and observations may not line up exactly with yours because I have a particular set of unique lenses out of the many billions on this planet, I hope it unlocks something(s) within you that can further illuminate or sharpen the focus on your own interactions with unrest. (I look forward to looking back at this and accounting for what changes and what may still hold in the future.) Needless to say, this list is not exhaustive or the only valid reality… I hope my contemplations are articulate…! May this inspire more considerations in how you see and interact with forms of unrest.
Spiritual Unrest
Most people cannot physically see or touch their spirituality, it is a felt and active vitality within us. Spiritual unrest is one of the most informative messengers we may meet in our lifetime. If you’ve ever felt that something was missing in your life, or that there was somewhere you needed to be that wasn’t where you were, or a disturbance below your conscious knowing… you’ve probably been sensing your spiritual unrest (or at least part of it). As a deeply intuitive knowing, it can coexist with things you would other define as fine, good and great; in other words, we can have all our needs met and line up all our accolades on paper yet still be spiritually unrested. This is nothing to be ashamed about and each of us will touch it at least once in our lifetime. Can you give yourself enough time and space? This is the question. Our spirituality is not subscribed to linear time, binary conditions or perfect packaging, does not care about your socioeconomic status or occupation. Typically hard to articulate with the limitations of verbal language, it can live within us and can range from a subtle nagging through to a full body misalignment affecting organs and systems. And it upturns all stones in our lives. Often, spiritual unrest is actually at the ‘root’ of all forms of our unrest.
Some people acknowledge with me that our collective humanity is currently confronting spiritual unrest: who we are as consciousness is not being fully honored as a collective. Lack of responsibility, accountability, justice and unity in the shared world reveals the different ways hurt people are hurting people through individual interactions through to systemic oppression and exploitation. Honoring the core of our humanity in its shrouded mystery of sentience (aka Source, Spirit, Soul, and on… you choose the synonym) is essential in our personal and communal care. If I am not truly caring for my humanity honestly, patiently and responsively, chances are I am very unequipped to care for someone outside of myself earnestly in these ways. Despite great intentions, the impact can be a miss, other times detrimental. Who we are is constantly becoming and in transition; our behaviors are made up of all the actions we choose over and over again. Do you just talk the talk, performing? Or do you walk the walk, showing up for it all really?
Spiritual unrest can be overwhelming because the nature of our Spirit is innately connected to others and the cosmos. Spiritual unrest cannot be hacked, discarded, traded or sold. Tending to spiritual unrest may take us a whole lifetime, usually across generations. So where to start? I think first of integrity; you could think of it as peace of mind, inner peace or a clear conscience. These things have nothing to do with a “perfect”, “love and light” life that magically protects you from hurt— this is not actually living, ever. Yet peace of mind, inner peace and a clear conscience capture the qualities of being where what we intend aligns with how we’re taking responsibility and receiving in our lives. Our self-awareness, self-compassion, self-accountability and self-love are radical portals to honoring our spiritual unrest. Just as the ways we tire show us the ways we are requiring rest, perhaps we can translate this into the non-verbal conversation with our spirits. May we walk our paths courageously on our own yet never forget that we are not alone when we do so. What can our ancestors guide us through? In what ways does your lineage hold insight? Who is your community here?
Emotional Unrest
In both the ‘Me, Myself and I’ (hi, never-ending relationship with ourselves, it really is for ‘better’ and ‘worse’), or the relationships we have with others, emotional unrest is a facet where spiritual unrest does take more tangible shapes and verbal form. Our emotions hold data that inform our choices about how we act— or don’t. The nagging feelings or full body misalignment translate into our irritability, frustration, anger, critique, and even shame and grief.
We all have references for when unchecked emotional unrest is a chasm that takes vast amounts of energy and is felt by every humxn being who touches it (a small number of us have the sufficient inner resourcing to walk away from these instances with less effect). We can observe a parallel in our somatic connection to ourselves with the ways trauma and lived experiences define our experiences far past their occurences. Perhaps we can lean into this understanding by inquiring first what tending to emotional unrest even means.
For me it is like a well that creates receptivity for many capacities at once, a connector or bridge. Each individual’s relationship with themselves will help discern thresholds in different situations. There will be times we must let ourselves fully sit in emotion(s) just as there are times we can compassionately draw strong boundaries and parent ourselves with grace and radical love— most of the time though, we are presented with the jigsaw puzzle of embodying many points on the spectrum of these. In case I need to say this: tending to unrest in any form is not easy. Otherwise, we’d be living and thriving in a very different world.
While tending to emotional unrest also has no end destination (we will continue to feel many feelings throughout our lifetime and they will continue to extend our hearts and capacity), I believe the invitation is to learning to not only invite but really receive that different way of relating and being. I invite you to imagine and co-create a world where our emotional unrest is less untended because that will shape our behaviors, which shapes our cultures. Tending to our nervous systems is a powerful way to fully be in our emotional capacity, and so is being as aware of how we feel with ourselves and others. Do you discern between detachment and disconnect in your emotional resilience? What emotional restoration do you crave? How is your relationship with the former versions of you, including the influenced and influential (Inner) Child?
Physical Unrest
Many community members in The Rested Revolution have shared with me 1-on-1 or within groups we gather their experiences of emotional unrest manifesting densely in the physical planes of their physical bodies. Other times, emotional unrest has exacerbated their physical conditions… Unfortunately there are more stories of health crises, pain, imbalance or dysfunction than joyful wonder or exuberance. The physical body’s intelligence understands how to get our attention most when something is wrong, than when all is right. Look at placebo experiments: if you need it, there’s your scientific evidence for how powerful your consciousness— and unconsciousness— actually are. Unless we’re really mindful and committed to genuine gratitude practices! I have experienced more than enough instances throughout my own life where my internal state is echoed and experience in my visceral. .
Physical bodies experience unrest for a number of reasons. For the purpose of our deep dive with unrest, I invite you to be aware of and reflect on the forms of physical unrest that extend from spiritual and emotional unrest beyond natural and normal changes, stressors, accidents and developments one may move through in their own life based on their personal circumstance, genetics and setting. While we are living organisms with cellular biology in constant flow and change, it can be a life-changing discernment to be aware of the ways we sense tension, pain, fatigue, injury, dysfunction, hypo- and hyper-vigilance. Ever heard of chronic conditions that are clinically unexplainable yet have gone away with life changes? It’s all connected.
Pain is an informative messenger that we interact with with bias: many people might assume pain is a single-dimensional sensation and just want to “fix” it right away, others are familiar with pain in the processes of becoming more physically fit, in our expressions of body modifications with love and art (piercings, tattoos, rituals, etc.) and cognitively understand pain is natural. Yet the pain and discomfort we experience from spiritual and or emotional unrest is very specific, inevitable and something lots of people are determined to pretend doesn’t really exist.
Tending to our physical unrest requires educated response: does your unrest need to acknowledged, felt and interacted with (moved/taken care of/resting)? Is the educated response supported by your personal trust and understanding? How can a trained professional or expert support you in the process?
As living organisms, our bodies are their own nature and down to each cell there is a clear sense of purpose/function. Perhaps you can find access to a patience that is different from the way our bodies are otherwise referred to as machines or engines that are supposed to continually function with the same output forever. I wonder what might be different if the next time you tend to your physical unrest, you go deeper than tasks or activities, and relate in a way where you’re tending holistically through to connections of the emotional and spiritual energetics.
Social Unrest
These days mysticism, magic and mending are typically discredited, disconnected and damaged because of spiritual unrest resulting from exploitation, ingenuity, appropriation, greed, corruption, fear, ignorance, arrogance and egoic illusions of separation. The affective behaviors of individual unrest that dehumanizes and diminishes others for the sake of self-preservation or self-elevation within a society that has historically been built on systems of oppression and scarcity. We can’t be surprised about the inflammatory state of the world. And, inflammatory is not only what the world is.
Unrest is a perpetually natural element that will surface throughout our lives, akin to stressors or conflict. I suspect it will always be relative to certain circumstances and I’m aware there are times we might have to compare when it’s better or worse. All forms of our social unrest are as challenging as they are limitless invitations to grow, heal, change— within respective thresholds (context and nuance matter!) What requires our time and energy with conscious attention are the ways in which we choose to relate and respond to them. Reactions, especially when unconscious or uninformed coupled with the unattended strain of unrest, pave the way for misaligned behaviors and harmful perspectives. We know social unrest is at a peak and we know we’ll focus on generative liberation with presence, celebration, joy, courage and determination. What threads move through the spiritual through to the social for you?
In my contemplation and living practice, I don’t try to quantity anything about unrest. Frankly, it can remain an unknown and seems like one of those things that is impossible to eradicate because perfection is not real. Instead, through each of my relationships, in the spaces I show up and especially here at The Rested Revolution, I continue my deep inquiry and exploration moment to moment as consciously as I can. I choose restfulness so I have the capacity to tend. Tending to even deeply allowing more joy, beauty, support, healing, vitality, connection and transformation in this lifetime. It doesn’t end here at me, it begins with me.
There is no end destination in tending to unrest. There is no material award or status to mark unrest after it’s been tended to. There is no guarantee that your tending will protect you from the unrest within others. However, when we choose to tend to unrest we are making a difference. When we choose to tend to unrest we open a pathway to endless possibility for more happiness, collaboration, liberation, enjoyment, beauty, justice and abundance. When we choose to tend to unrest we are living our values, not just marketing buzzwords or running performative social media feeds. The Rested Revolution invites the world to join the quiet, and sometimes invisible, movement (not to be mistaken with the big, deep and very real and felt impact it creates). We are all worthy of restfulness. We are all worthy of being rested in our safety, health and wellbeing. Thank you for being here with me.
Who are you when you are tending to the unrest in your skin and spirit?
How does the unrest in your life orient you towards, or away, from what matters to you?
Do you want to find out how your life and the lives of those around you shift when you choose?
In your own deeper dives, I welcome you to use the latest free tool available, Portals, to accompany you on your journeys:
