Moving From Medium To Slow

Today’s Miracle Moment is about the miraculous power of moving at a pace of medium to slow.

We believe that a truly spiritual life is one where you feel deeply connected to the energy of the universe – to a power and intelligence greater than yourself – it doesn’t matter whether you call that power God, the Divine, Nature, the universe. You might experience true spirituality through your own traditional religious practices perhaps while you’re in church or temple, or maybe you experience it during rituals or chants or meditation practices.

Or perhaps through being in the present moment…or maybe you experience spirituality during those times where you remind yourself to see the good, the God, the perfection in everyone and everything around you. Spirituality is something that can be ignited and once it is, the goal or aspiration is that it’s not something you turn off and on but rather something you live every moment of every day.

A great teacher of ours was the renowned cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien, who sadly passed away in 2014. A cornerstone of her teaching was that in order to live a meaningful and peaceful life, one of deep and profound spirituality, we need to look at and emulate nature and nature’s rhythm, which is medium to slow. The only time nature moves fast is when it’s in danger or when it’s pursuing its prey to survive…and then it will move fast for fifteen to twenty minutes and once again return to medium to slow.

Since we’re creatures of nature, we’re affected by this rhythm as well.

Angeles goes on to say that when we’re always moving fast, we’re out of sync with our nature and the result is that we don’t have the time to integrate our experience, to deepen our character, to live true spirituality – as this requires silence and reflection.

When we’re always moving fast there’s no time to be fully present, to really listen to our hearts, to really see the God in others. Angeles suggests that we need to be aware of our addiction to those energies that have begun to dominate our lives and nullify the energy of medium to slow such as obsessively checking our e-mails or our smart phones, or cramming our calendars so there is no space to breathe, or needing outside stimulation to feel alive.

She also asks that we take a look at the high we get from over-achieving because if we continue at this fast pace we’ll most likely be forced to slow down through business disasters, illness or accidents, and there is no reason for this to happen—or at least it is much less likely if we move medium to slow.

Last year I (Debra) was on a safari in South Africa…and I know this will sound odd but when I was watching as the rhinos were ambling across the plains at a speed of about a few hundred yards an hour…maybe, or observing the elephant families lumbering along seemingly not going anywhere in particular, or saw the giraffes doing nothing other than munching on the treetops, or when I sat near the hippos as they just stood in the water looking at us for endless hours moving only to get out of the water and then turn around and get back in…

On the first few days I was actually in pain and wanted to say to them, “How can you be content just standing there? Get a life! Read a book! Get a job! Go do some volunteer work if you have so much time on your hands!”

Then as I unplugged more and more from the “real” world and surrendered to the present moment, to moving medium to slow, I looked into the eyes of these creatures and I knew that they were the ones that had the knowledge of the perfection of all that is. I felt that they wanted to convey to me the message of “just chill and see what happens. Move medium to slow and be here now and all will unfold in perfection.”

I felt like that wanted to tell us all, “Don’t try so hard people. Everything is in divine order. We are all part of the circle of life. There is no need to try and control everything.” They had no judgement, they just had a simple message to communicate.

So we invite you to join us in moving medium to slow, to be present in the moment and see what miracles unfold in your life.

And we’d like to end this Miracle Moment with a quote from Angeles Arrien:

Have a miraculous week tuning into the rhythms of nature. And please share a comment below about what today’s message means to you…