Indulgence: Breaking the Spell of 'More Important Things'

First time here? Welcome. I’m Sarina, Mother, mentor, artist and writer.

Fully Expressed - holds us to a truer, braver expression, while we shamelessly inhabit our unique brilliance and beauty.

No one’s giving us permission, so we do it anyway 🔥

For more, read here.

Subscribe for fortnightly flushing out of what does not belong to this one wild and precious life.

“I’ve wanted to write for years. But it just feels indulgent.”

YES! - I wanted to shout back at the voice note from a dear friend.

This is EXACTLY why you need to do it.

I could not fathom my friend reaching the end of her life, never having explored the ache in her heart to write, having dismissed it as inappropriate, selfish, or a distraction from ‘more important things’.*

It pains me that any of us deem an ache to express ourselves as anything but divine guidance to indulge it.

Indulgence is not a self-absorbed distraction from more important things,

it’s an essential component of embracing and relishing in this one precious life.

If we act like it’s selfish to take up time and space within our own bodies, within our own lives, we’re tragically missing out.

We’re wired to indulge. And we do it anyway, even if unconsciously.

Indulgence is a natural impulse to bring deep relief to the body, to set a boundary with the noise and demands of the outer world and the anxiety and hyper-vigilance of our inner world, and luxuriate in our own being.

It’s no wonder after a long day of meetings, or meeting the constant demands of others, we might crack a bottle of Pinot, already exhaling at the sound of glug-glug-glug, finally dropping into our own timeline, calling back our autonomy from a day that didn’t quite belong to us.

This kind of indulgence is probably, most often, a lifeforce-taking act. Sure, at times it can feel life-giving - an intentional, joyful moment of dropping into ourselves. But that’s our responsibility - to awaken to the energy behind the ways in which we indulge.

The problem with the word indulgence is it’s become distorted. We have separated it from the divine and instead associate it with greed or gluttony or selfishness, something almost sinful.

How convenient.

How convenient that in a system designed to extract our time and money for work and causes not aligned with our heart, we should shun indulgence as something more selfish than sacred.

*Obviously I told my friend allll about Substack

emiliano vittoriosi unsplash

Write, my friends. Paint. Dance. Sing… Indulge your true desires. Understand them as sacred guidance to indulge them.

Perhaps this is one of our greatest assignments in this lifetime?

To indulge in life-giving acts, and know it as inseparable from the divine.

Divine indulgence is dropping into the hum of your own existence, suspended beyond the demand of anyone else’s timeline, where you meet the privilege of being a sentient, sensual being, blocking nothing that arises inside, forcing nothing to happen outside.

Can we become more courageous in dropping into ourselves, acknowledging the vulnerability this takes

- to declare “I’m worthy of experiencing this pleasure, I’m worthy of feeling this pain, my body is designed to sensate, my breath is designed to remember itself and I will not allow the spell of ‘more important things’ to steal this from me.”?

Furthermore, in this performative paradigm we’ve found ourselves in, can we get comfortable not documenting the ways in which we divinely indulge?

No footage. No pretty-fying the act. No ‘Check out how embodied I am!’

We’re collectively bored of that shit, let’s not pretend we’re not.

Remember the saying back in the early Insta days, ‘If it isn’t on Instagram, it didn’t happen!’?

We are all energy readers and we know better. If it IS on Instagram, it likely only half-happened, because we stole the experience from ourselves by documenting it.

Not judging, I’ve been there.

Indulgence asks us to untangle from the head-fuckiness of our daily lives, from beating ourselves up for not making shit happen faster, and asks us to meet with the beautiful grief of how we’d forgotten our divinity, just as we remember it again.

And in this lies the confronting realisation that our divinity never leaves us, but we are conditioned to leave it, for as long as we’re under the spell of more important things.

If I hadn’t rewired myself to embrace indulgence, I too would not be writing.

I would not be painting or making ceramics - for pleasure’s sake.

Of course, ‘more important things’ lingers in the background, tugging at me often.

I should be making more money or I should be cleaning the house first, ‘earning the right’ to make my art by attending to more important things first.

P.S. One of the ways I break the spell is to begin writing first, or roll out some clay first, then get to some housework. When I put indulgence first, duties feel more gracefully integrated into my day and less like they’ve stolen my pleasure.

---

To rewire how you feel about indulgence, if this is something you feel called to do, you could begin indulging your body’s sensations, luxuriating in the divinity and fragility of being alive, in a space where you’re held. (If you are keen to be held through some sensually indulgent practices, there’s an opportunity available for all subscribers which I’ll get to at the end of this post).

There’s a sense of comfort in encircling our indulgence with a specific timeframe; that for one hour or two hours, you’ll be held through the vulnerability of slowing right down, where you get to meet your beauty, your grief, your relief.

For me, the simplicity of sitting in tea ceremony and going to Yin yoga are some of the most profound indulgences. They’re sensual, intimate experiences with myself, that I get to experience alongside others, while held in the comfort of a container where the very intention is to drop in.

Maybe indulging ourselves by taking up time and space in our own bodies and our own lives, is the point.

Maybe the spell is meant to be broken.

---

Is there something you ache to indulge in? Something you will commit to?

Let’s support each other in the comments to break the spell and indulge our heart’s desires. X

---

[Coming soon, free to all subscribers of Fully Expressed and

Sarah Ward

’s Sex & Style is a 3-part guided practice to reconnect with your sensuality and creativity through the body. Make sure to subscribe to Sex & Style and indulge in some Sarah’s powerful work.]