This Is Not Nothing: Reclaiming Rest as Sacred Participation

This morning I sat beside Lake Batur, cradled by the arms of Mount Abang and the sky. The mist moved slowly, as if time had taken a deep breath. There was no noise, no demand, no agenda.

And yet, everything inside me felt full. Alive. Connected.

I wasn’t “doing nothing.”

I was participating in the sacred.

Let’s put to rest the lie right here: Rest is not nothing.

We’ve been taught that if we’re not producing, performing, or progressing—we’re wasting time.

But I say this gently, as someone who spent years tangled in that story: that narrative is a lie. It’s a distortion handed down through colonization, capitalism, and trauma—systems that severed us from land, from cycles, from soul.

Rest is not idleness.

Stillness is not laziness.

Observation is not withdrawal.

They are acts of radical presence. Of trust. Of tuning back into the sacred frequency of life.

The Old Me Wouldn’t Have Known

There was a version of me who couldn’t sit still.

Who wouldn’t have known what to do with the silence between thoughts or the ache of a sunset stretching across the sky.

That version needed to achieve to feel safe.

To help everyone to feel worthy.

To keep moving to outrun the grief.

She believed she was her work.

But the truth? I was always more than that. I just hadn’t slowed down long enough to remember.

Being Is a Form of Devotion

When I sit with a mountain and simply be, I am doing something most sacred: I am witnessing.

I am remembering that I am not separate from the land, from the water, from the wind.

I am engaging in deep relationality with the world—not as a consumer, not as a conqueror, but as kin.

This is not passive. This is not absence.

This is reverence.

This is the active practice of surrendering urgency, peeling back the armor, and allowing life to touch me again.

It takes strength to rest in a culture that rewards depletion.

It takes clarity to be still when the world tells you movement is meaning.

It takes wisdom to know that presence is power.

This Is the Work Now

We need new words. Because what I experienced this morning is not “nothing.” It is not a break from life—it is life.

It is what the body remembers before the noise.

It is what our ancestors knew before the machines.

It is what the Earth sings to us, every time we are quiet enough to listen.

So when I sit by the lake, when I lean into a moment without needing to extract anything from it—I am not opting out.

I am opting in.

To wholeness.

To wonder.

To the holy work of being alive.