What Does Orunmila Say About Indolence?

If we stay in indulgence or debauch patterns long enough, another reactive pattern that we might move into on the emotional level is indolence or inertia, which is caused by over-giving or over-extending ourselves. This is the feeling of being overly tired, drained, depleted, exhausted. There is a tendency to over-give, or randomly over-extend one’s self.

It’s filling up other people’s needs and wants to the brim to the extent that we have just enough energy for our body, or barely enough energy – mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

It is important to know what our limits and boundaries are and to be able to set limits and boundaries.

When we feel this way it should be a reminder that we are in a place of over-giving, over-compensating, over-extending ourselves, and what we actually need is to know what our limits and boundaries are and to set limits and boundaries, particularly in those arenas of our lives where we have emotional investment.

A question we should ask ourselves when experiencing this emotional level is what do we have when we move feelings into conscious mind. Introspection, reflection, an effort to understand our own emotions.  When we enter our own mystery, we return to the experience that is preverbal, the quality of which cannot be captured in the loosely woven net of language and therefore cannot be shared.

Whether we make the journey through dream work, meditation, active imagination, or ritual, we must go alone when we enter into our own darkness. And the darkness always brings us to a higher place of self.

When we have stayed in indulgence or debauch patterns long enough and move into on the emotional level of indolence or inertia, we cannot skip the painful stages of confronting our own shadow and use the “spiritual” to mask work left undone, truths left masked. It is a time to be brutally honest with ourselves.