When I experience tiredness, or even exhaustion as I did for a few days last week, I notice a pattern…
Resistance to it creates discomfort, a sense of something being off, a sense of misfortune, of it interfering with plans and self-image, self-consciousness, and so on. (To be more precise, resistance itself is neutral… what creates the sense of discomfort is identification with resistance, seeing it as I, being caught up in it, taking resistance to it as I and tiredness as Other).
When there is an allowing of it, a heartfelt being-with the tiredness (and any resistance that comes up), it is revealed in another way. It is just what is happening, when there is an absence (or weakening) of a sense of I and Other. This also allows awareness to notice itself as already free from tiredness (tiredness arises within awareness, but awareness itself is not tired).
Or, if the boundary remains but the relationship between the two changes, there can be an experience of the tiredness as a support.
For instance, I taught a bodywork class Friday night with a lot of tiredness coming up, and instead of the discomfort from resisting it, the tiredness became a support for being with the body (it takes energy to fuel thoughts), for focusing on the basics and essentials, for reducing nervousness (another thing that takes energy), and helped me stay with what was happening.
This variation, of same boundary but different relationship, came up since that is what is encouraged in the context of this particular form of bodywork. (It works mainly at the centaur and soul levels, leaving out the Spirit/Ground level, so there is still a sense of an I with an Other. And this boundary is reified, or at least talked about as real, but that is another story.)
This is so good. Yes, everything is support. In the extreme, even cancer may be seen that way, with an open mind. There’s a wonderful YouTube clip at Byron Katie’s website, TheWork.com, of a man reversing the belief, “I want the cancer to stop growing.”