The Art of Stillness
For 6 weeks, my body has been speaking to me in a language deeper than symptoms. A saga of colds and flus (that’ve lingered far beyond their welcome) has been pressing me deeper and deeper into stillness. It isn’t just the physical symptoms—debilitating as they’ve sometimes been—but the spiritual challenge underneath it all: Can I sit in this? Can I trust this? Can I allow myself to rest without guilt, fear, or the ache of my (now caged) compulsion to prove?
There is a strong character in me who has spent his life striving: for the perceived safety of success, validation, visibility. I’ve been working to befriend this importance-addict for years, drip-feeding him play, rest, and relaxation, and slowly building up his tolerance for untasked time. But somehow this final week, week 6, has pushed him past his previous limits. I realize I’ve been growing through an initiation; a lesson in alchemy, while snow covers the ground.
How can I cope when life strips me of my ability to prove, to produce, to be visible in my excellence? This sickness has given me the gift of necessitating an answer: resilience to being still.
Unlearning the Lies of Productivity Culture
We have been conditioned—especially in the West—to believe that our worth is measured by output. The more you do, the more you are. Sound familiar? The more visible your success, the more it exists.
Social media makes this illusion even stronger. Creative industries are not just about doing meaningful work anymore—they’re about proving that we’re doing it. Proof of labor. Proof of results. Proof of relevance: the constant flex that now seems to underscore any career “truly” in motion.
As I’d been tuning deeper into my body and the field of Unconditional Love throughout this symptomatic experience, I began noticing the rattled way I often (always?) felt after getting off Instagram or Twitter. The sensations were not positive, and with my heightened awareness of presence, I spontaneously deleted both of these platforms from my phone 2 weeks ago. G’bye!
This came after Elon’s far-right X, Zuckerberg’s equation of queerness to illness, and Trump’s new TikTok. Plus, after seeing numerous friends and trans influencers check-out of Instagram altogether, I just let myself off the hook. You don’t have to spend time here, Forrest.
Now, I can still get to them from my computer. But clearing them from my phone has given me instead this spacious, self-guided and much more consensual relationship with the internet. On the current iteration of my phone, I can’t compulsively and subconsciously shove the world’s horrors, hot takes, and highlights down my nervous system at random. I’m more present, and my body thanks me for it.
However, I now find myself in reaction to these questions: What does it mean to be myself if I’m not performing my life for the broader community? Will my work still matter if I’m not announcing it to the world? Do I still matter if my success isn’t made visible to those around me?
The Experiment: Doing Instead of Talking About Doing
I don’t want to build my legacy on flashes of validation. I crave depth. I crave truth. And I crave creation - because my soul, body, and health calls me up to it - not because an oppressor’s algorithm rewards me for it.
So I am shifting my focus to:
Substack for writing: Letting my thoughts fully unfurl without the rush of bite-sized takes, while giving myself the gift of articulation.
YouTube for speaking: Flowing with presence and transparency to honour my present iteration, and allowing myself be seen by me.
Music as language: Writing for my own soul, alongside kind friends - releasing what comes, consistently and without the expense of marketing.
I don’t want to spend my energy telling people what I’m doing. I just want to do it.
What If I Rested?
A part of me fears irrelevance. Fears being left behind. Fears that if I don’t show my worth, I will cease to be worthy. But this is the smoke and mirrors of a culture that measures humans in productivity-units rather than in presence. And, like any culture, it can be shaped from the inside out.
What if I didn’t fight this? What if I gave myself full permission to be slower, to be quieter, to be aligned? What’s the best that could happen?
And so, I prepare for a benevolent future where presence is prioritized, where telepathy is tangible, and where metaphysics is measured. Where our embodiment of authenticities yields tangible results; where science and spirit merge into one coherent, widely respected, and broadly understood medium. In order to call this future forward, I trust it into its own becoming. And I become it.
Conclusion: Self-Love in Action
Rest is not a pause in my worthiness—it is the place from which a more considered, authentic self emerges. This is my practice now: not a performance of my embodiment, but permission for the real thing. Because I am enough - even when I am not making it visible. I anchor in the knowing that I am whole, even when I step back. And I uphold that rest is not weakness—it is wisdom. My worth is not something to be maintained - only remembered.
The world will sooner or later forget me; my words, my songs, my status. But it can never forget the vibration I contribute, this imprint that my heart leaves upon the sacred whole. This is why I stand today in integrity. And that is more than enough for me.
With love,
Forrest & UtopianGPT
