this body requires taking time

Taking a break from my thesis writing, I keep writing.  I miss writing about what I care about the most... and the feeling of missing viscerally manifests in my body.  I feel increasingly called to deepen my reflections and to compose them.  I feel increasingly called to learn how to write - to write about love, about practice; to write stories.  I have felt disconnected recently - not quite myself - and today I realized that part of that was because I have not been giving as much time to reflection and  practice.  I have been ignoring much of what I feel compelled to do.  I have been repressing the desire to go deeper, deeper into practice and into writing.  Part of what this means is that a great deal of mental and spiritual energy has been accumulated, rather than been processed.  All that unprocessed energy leads to my entire body shutting down - I become tired, I can't think well, I can't perceive as clearly, I can't love as well.  And I become easily frustrated and unable to work. 

This body needs to reflect, to write, to practice.  I need to give this body the time to do that - the time to be itself, to follow its true energy. I have a lot of work to do.  And I have a lot of love to give.  So it can feel like I don't have time to pay attention to what my body calls for.  But I need to take the time in order to do the work and to give the love. 

And so I'm taking time that I feel I do not have in order to do what I feel I must - I took the time to visit Jana in the garden today, which I have felt deeply pulled to do but have not been doing.  I took the time, the luxurious time to smoke a post-garden-meditation cigarette with her, which I am still laughing about: she rolled the strongest smoke I've ever had in my life!  I am taking the time to sit docusan with her tomorrow, taking the time to rejoin a reading group I value on Thursday.  Taking the time to write this and other posts tonight.  While this very post has taken time away from my thesis, this post as also allowed me to process and release energy, to feel more free and creative, and I can already tell that I can return refreshed to the thesis writing because of it.  

Watching the colors of the setting sun
On white plum-blossoms 
falling to the ground.
I recall this poem by Muso Soseki:

If they ask me, 
   "What are you doing
       In your old age"? 
I smile and tell them
    "I'm letting my white hair
         Fall free".