Notice this sense of feeling obligated to a certain sense of structure of going to bed at a certain time, waking up at a certain time – as if you have somewhere to get to lest you be found slacking. As though you are being held accountable by the world around you somehow keeping tabs on your behavior, on how you spend your time, and what you are doing or more so, not doing.
Your internal clock and external behavior is dictated by a feeling that you answer to someone. Some authority. A parent. Society as a whole – coming and going as they do – and you idly fermenting on the side. Your spiritual teacher(s), God, Life.
There’s a sense in you that you need to explain yourself, explain your life. Give good reason to be. To be left alone. As though you are unreliable somehow when left to your own devices. And that you are costing others in doing so.
There’s a sense of growing impatience from the world. The more you return to solitude, quiet integrity. You feel a mounting tab on the side – people you have to get back to, things you should probably do. But all this is a blur. An old nightmare. Fear.
The nightmare has you gripped in fear. To doubt that you can live in simplicity and joy. The nightmare gives you this subtle feeling that you will be punished. That you can’t under any circumstances fully land here. Because there’s always something that needs to be done, seriously, now!
But that’s the voice of the past, the voice of the mother, the traumatized, lost mother. Flailing about in the dark. In darkness, she is. And so is everybody else.
You are stepping out of the darkness. You are leaving the nightmare behind.
And so, feel the fear, feel the urge to rush, to do, to flail. And let yourself learn slowly, that you can land here. Your landing here is God-given. God-chosen. Not at the behest of anyone else.
There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape