learning to stay.

This week has been strange. Quiet in a way that feels both beautiful and unsettling.

For the first time in years, I haven’t produced my usual rhythm of three Substack articles, a podcast, and a meditation. ( I talked about why in this week’s episode of Embodied Divinity, you can listen below) The space around me feels wider than I’m used to. My hands keep twitching toward something to do… a task, a post, a list. My mind wants to spin, to fill, to grasp for purpose.

But my soul keeps whispering, wait.
Just breathe.
Just be.

And honestly… that’s uncomfortable.

There’s a kind of ache that arises when we stop running. It’s not doom; it’s detox. A lifetime of productivity starts to shake itself loose, and all the sensations we’ve numbed with busyness begin to hum to the surface, fear, boredom, longing, the unfamiliar weight of stillness.

I can feel my system trying to negotiate: Surely there’s something I should be doing.
But beneath that, another voice, quieter, truer, says, You don’t need to earn your right to exist.

A song found me yesterday, Shooting Star by Sean Solomon, and there’s a line that keeps echoing:

“You saw a shooting star, you wished you weren’t where you are.”

That hit hard.

I realized how much of my life has been spent either healing the past or manifesting a better future. Always looking backward or forward. Rarely treating the present as sacred.

But what if this, the fog, the in-between, the ache of uncertainty, is sacred too?
What if this is where the real integration happens?

We talk so much about awakening, but no one really prepares you for what happens after you step out of the illusion. When you can see the systems for what they are, the chase, the distraction, the false safety, but you’re still living within them.

It’s disorienting.
To know that much of the world isn’t true, and yet still need to navigate it.
To feel free and trapped at the same time.

And yet this is the paradox of being human.
We are divine consciousness and matter.
We are the awareness and the ache.
We are here to live, not escape.

So today, I’m practicing staying.
Not producing, not fixing, not reaching for meaning.

Just staying.

It’s funny, the more still I become, the louder my mind gets. It wants to make this into something. It wants to define, label, and control.
But maybe the medicine is to let it hum in the background while I choose to breathe anyway.

To let my body learn what peace feels like without earning it.
To find beauty in the so-called boredom.
To trust that my worth is not in the motion, but in the being.

And if you’re here too, in the space between, this is your permission slip:
You are in transition, the quiet kind that doesn’t announce itself with fireworks, but with breath. Your body is remembering how to rest inside itself. Your spirit is learning to root where your feet already are. Your path is deepening.

This moment in our collective awakening feels raw and tender. We’ve lifted the veil and seen the illusion, but we’re still finding our footing in the real.

Awakening doesn’t exempt us from being human. It deepens it.
We still feel the ache, the fog, the pressure.
We just stop confusing those sensations with failure.

Maybe that’s what freedom really looks like:
To feel everything fully and still know you’re safe.
To stand in the middle of the storm and whisper, this too is holy.

So if today you’re foggy, tired, or disoriented, breathe.

Make some tea. Watch the light move across the room.
And let the silence shape you.

Because sometimes, when you stop reaching for the next thing,
you finally land in the miracle of the moment you’re already in.

You can listen to this week’s episode of Embodied Divinity and my bonus body love meditation with the links below.

Podcast

CLICK HERE for Spotify

CLICK HERE for Youtube

Bonus Meditation

CLICK HERE for Spotify

CLICK HERE for Youtube

xx
Nikyla Maria