Can you imagine if the Tide decided that it didn’t want to ebb, it wanted to keep on flowing? Imagine the effort, the strain, the pressure, the struggle. Imagine the force of energy that would be required to stop the tide from ebbing. I’m guessing that it would be a losing battle. Eventually the tide would have to ebb, giving up exhausted. I’m also guessing it would extend the ebbing time. Instead of 6 hours 13 minutes flow, 6 hours 13 minutes ebb, the tide would waste a few hours of ebbing time trying to flow…but it would still have to ebb for 6 hours 13 minutes so the ebbing would take longer.
Now of course, this would not happen, the tide is influenced by the sun and moon, it does not have a contrary nature and for it to try to flow when the time comes to ebb would be absurd. But we humans on the other hand, are conflicting, contradictory, inconsistent, stubborn and wayward. When our time comes to ebb (when our energy is low and we ‘don’t feel like doing much’), we call ourselves lazy, idle, slow and unindustrious, and we try desperately to keep flowing. We want to be in that high energy, flowing, fast paced, creative state all the time.
Unfortunately, fighting the ebb tide exhausts us even more, drags down our energy and ensures the ebb tide will last even longer. I do this a lot. I know it’s an ebb time and there is no point heckling myself, flagellating myself, being mean to me and being contrary. BUT I wanna be flowing, I wanna be moving, I wanna be creating, I wanna be out there doing the do. So I fight the ebb. And it is a total waste of time. I am just coming to the end of an ebb now, it feels like I’ve been ebbing for ages and I’m getting frustrated…I want to flow! Is my frustration helping me flow or just extending the ebb time even longer? Yep, you guessed it…the latter. Note to self: allow self to ebb!
Modern lifestyles don’t really allow us the luxury of honouring ebb and flow, there is too much to be done, a job to be kept, family to take care of, friends to spend time with. Our society reveres industrious action, but the ebb times are just as productive – like winter, the low energy phases are times of great change underneath the surface. The more aware we can be of our natural states of ebb and flow, the more effective and productive we can be, we can use our energy more intelligently, and perhaps most importantly, we can enjoy both our ebb and our flow.
Love
Donna.x