SPECIAL: The seeds you plant today - A confession from Stillness

I have to confess something…

I don't always practice what I preach.

For the past few weeks, I've had the best training ground I could ever imagine. And for once, it had nothing to do with retreats, courses, or certifications.
But an injury and complete physical stillness.

This forced pause made me confront patterns I've been wrestling with for years. Suddenly, they all surfaced at once and seemed to swallow me whole. When I reflect on my life so far, I see so much potential, but it’s overshadowed by a deeper reality: panic and pressure behind my actions. The constant urge to be better, to work harder, to do more, to prove my worth, to be more perfect, to figure everything out. Always forcing, pushing, controlling.

I even believed I could 'push' myself through burnout. Taking multiple courses simultaneously, reading five books at the same time, absorbing hundreds of podcasts, seeking productivity hacks, all while trying to force my own healing. And although my head is now a library of knowledge, I still mentally exhaust myself. I wasn't healing, I was panicking and exacerbating my burnout, unconsciously keeping myself trapped in the cycle.

Maybe you recognize this pattern too. Because this mechanism can live inside all of us. Especially in today’s age, where we are continuously smacked in our faces with the success of others and how to ‘hack your way through it’. 

“How do they do it?”
“Why can't I be like that?”

STOP.

Your next productivity hack or trauma-healing video won’t fix the deeper issue. What you need is to pause. To truly sit with what's beneath the urge to rush your healing or fix yourself. Stop managing your life like a project and finally listen to what your body, soul, and nervous system have been trying to tell you.

Don't get me wrong; this doesn't mean passive resignation. It's an invitation to release the relentless pressure. Ask yourself: Where are you clinging to control and specific outcomes? And for whom?

"But Mariska, shouldn't I feel driven and manifest the hell out of life?"

Healthy manifestation isn't about gripping onto outcomes for dear life. It's about aligning your energy and actions with possibilities, but without needing them to happen exactly as imagined to feel whole or happy. This is where surrender steps in.

I got so confused and rebellious from this word. And I bet you do too. How can you surrender to some situation that just plain sucks? But what I’ve learned now is that surrendering has nothing to do with passivity or giving up, and everything to do with openness. It's bold action without attachment. It says: “I move toward this dream because it excites my soul, not because I need it to validate my worth or happiness.”

And trust me, I didn't discover this sitting blissfully in meditation with a smile on my face. I learned it lying on my back, frustrated, in pain, unable to rely on my usual methods of control and distraction. I couldn't walk, push forward, or distract myself through productivity. Hell, I couldn't even dress myself.

This is when I started to see it: 
Getting into a burnout wasn’t a big enough wake-up call. I wasn't resting. I was just forcing energy to go again and was mentally going haywire, frantically looking for solutions and a way out,

I wasn't surrendering, I was suffering. And the worst part is that this is no one’s fault but my own. I created my own reality, my own prison. My eyes locked on how my current reality was so far away from the reality I wanted. Wishing to magically get out of the situation.

I wasn't healing. I was distracting myself from the deeper work I feared, the work of truly facing myself. Because that is some scary business. Underneath all that chaos was attachment to outcomes, timelines, and control. Even my idea of surrender had been hijacked by perfectionism.

I was so frustrated… HOW do we truly surrender? What does it even mean to "sit with it"?

The Untethered soul and the Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer described something interesting: See if you can notice the one who is experiencing and observing all the suffering. Much like the quiet observer behind all the drama. Again, I found myself rebelling; isn't this spiritual and emotional bypassing? Wouldn't that be a way to dissociate and go numb? But I pondered it. And I placed it parallel to other things I learned about healing. 

Imagine a mother calmly holding space behind her crying child. She doesn't become the emotion but remains loving, present, and unshaken. The child feels safe enough to fully express because the mother isn't reacting or running away.  And I think that this is what he meant about what the true observer self is. Calm, present, grounded.

When you stay anchored in your body, aware of your sensations without running, you feel more deeply, honestly, and healing occurs naturally. Rather than immediately jumping to analyze, simply acknowledge:

“I see you, sadness. You’re welcome here.”
“I’m here. I won’t run.”
“This hurts, and I won’t abandon myself.”

Then let the feelings flow, allowing your observer self to hold it all without judgment or resistance. Let the tears go and the feelings be loud. The observer you becomes the container, not a bypass.

The roots of suffering

Lately, I’ve been very much drawn to Shaolin philosophy and way of living. I was exploring the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, focusing on ending suffering by releasing attachment. Yet, this raised the same kind of confusion again: How can you achieve goals if you're not attached to the outcomes?

Buddhism identifies three root causes of suffering: greed, aversion, and ignorance. And the more I explore myself, the clearer it becomes that they’re rooted deeply in me, but also in all human behavior. 

Yep, Welcome to the real dojo...
I think that between Eastern detachment and Western manifestation lies the edge where real transformation begins. And yes.. greed, aversion, ignorance… they do live in all of us. That’s the starting point. 
Let’s untangle the paradox so it stops messing with your head. Most people achieve goals by clinging fiercely to outcomes. Yet most are anxious, burnt out, and unfulfilled. Why? Because they mistake attachment for commitment. The subtle art is this:

Be fully committed to the process, yet unattached to the result.

You keep dreaming, acting, building, but you stop tying your self-worth, peace, or joy to whether it works out exactly how you pictured. Buddhism doesn't ask you to suppress your drive, it teaches you to free yourself from the prison of needing life to happen strictly on your terms. You regain so much more energy if you stop trying to control the things that you can’t control. (Let Them theory by Mel Robbins, anyone?)

Let me give you some real-life examples:
1. You’re building your career. You want to be the expert. You want it to grow.
That’s intention, love, and commitment. But if your peace depends on the number of compliments, goals, or a perfect product, you're suffering.
2. You’re healing your body and working toward strength and beauty.
You train with purpose and care, from a place of self-love, but if you hate your current body or fear failure every day, you’re stuck in aversion and attachment.

Motivation without clinging is possible. Make space for your vision, but release your tight grip:
“I’m aiming for this, but I trust life might lead me elsewhere for my growth.”
“I’ll give everything, but I won’t break if it turns out differently.”
“I choose aligned action, not desperate attachment.”

It’s not about removing all desire, it’s about removing the need.

Attachment vs. Non-Attachment

Attachment, to me, means gripping how I think things should be: how fast I heal, how my body looks, how successful my business becomes. It’s that mental loop many of us are stuck in: “I’ll be okay when…”. and then never arriving there because it is never enough and you are always moving the finish line. It creates tension, guilt, exhaustion, and therefore suffering.. 

In Buddhist terms, it causes suffering because it creates a split: reality is this, but my mind is clinging to that. And in that space between what is and what I want it to be, I lose peace. I feel like I’m failing when I’m not. I feel stuck when I’m actually in process. Attachment takes the natural flow of life and turns it into a fight.

Non-attachment, to me, doesn’t mean I stop caring. It means I stop demanding. I can still want the vision. I can still create, dream, and work hard. But I let go of the need to control how or when it happens. It’s the shift from gripping to trusting.
This shift actually frees me because I'm no longer fighting reality. I allow life to move me, teach me, and unfold naturally. And from that place, I can act without being emotionally enslaved to the result. It gives me access to peace now, not just in some future version of life that fits my ego’s checklist.

And to be honest, that is what I’ve always wanted: Just to have fun and play with life instead of taking everything so seriously. 

True freedom doesn't come from achieving every ideal. It emerges when you loosen your grip, soften into the present, and remember that nothing external needs to change to return home to yourself. Looking back, what began as confusion around surrender and manifestation turned into a full breakdown of everything I thought I had mastered. But sometimes, life doesn’t just teach you through knowledge, it teaches you through stillness, discomfort, and the courage to let go. And in that space, something real starts to grow.

Watch your thoughts; they become your words.
Watch your words; they become your actions.
Watch your actions; they become your habits.
Watch your habits; they shape your character.
Watch your character; it seals your karma.

To live the life you desire, true change must come from within. 

And that brings everything down to this core question: What are the seeds you are planting today?

So now?

I'm slowing down. Not because I have to, but because I finally get to.

I'm learning to trust that I don’t need to fight my way into the life I want. I don’t need to fix, force, or figure it all out in one breath.
I need to become the soil that’s safe for good things to grow in.

That means planting:
🌿 Presence instead of pressure
🌿 Trust instead of tension
🌿 Compassion instead of critique
🌿 Devotion instead of desperation

I’m not doing it perfectly.
But I’m doing it honestly.

And that feels like the truest success I’ve ever known. I’m finally loosening the grip. Not giving up, but giving in. Giving in to the truth that life might just know better than I do. So I lay here on the couch while writing this, in that soft surrender, I think I’ve found what I’ve been searching for all along:
Not another insight.
Not another fix.
But embodiment.

I get to practice what I preach. One small step at a time. And this is where my next chapter begins. And if this touched something in you, maybe it’s where yours begins too.

With love & softness,
Mariska | Amapola healing