-- Abraham Heschel
We live in a culture of achievers. We are expected to keep busy, dammit! And it's even better if that busyness produces some sort of tangible results. It doesn't seem to matter to most people whether their busyness or productivity is enjoyable or not. Work is not supposed to be fun! And it's all about the work. How in the hell else can you achieve your full potential?
What we forget is that being is the bedrock of existence; being precedes doing. There are alot of people running around doing a whole lot of stuff who can't just be to save their soul. They define themselves by what they do, by what they achieve, and even by what they fail to do. Being doesn't even cross their minds because how can you stand out and differentiate yourself merely by being? Damned if I know.
Doing feeds your ego, but no matter what you do it doesn't change your Spirit one iota. Spirit is about being and living, not about doing, succeeding, or achieving. When you recognize the holiness of life, the wholeness of life, just being is enough. That doesn't mean that you stop all doing, merely that doing becomes a spontaneous expression of being rather than a means to a desired end. Awash in the blessing of being, you happily live rather than do this or that in a desperate attempt to be happy.
Almost every legitimate spiritual path recommends that you begin each day with being rather than jumping right into doing. Meditation, contemplation, prayer, tai chi, yoga -- all are ways of helping you access deeper levels of being before you undertake surface level doing. By coming out of being, both your mind and your doing are transformed.
But it's a noisy, cacophonous world. Tuning into being requires awareness and conscious effort. Being who you are is both completely natural and extremely difficult. You must wake up to life's holiness again, again, and again. A good time to start is now.
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