Just to Be

"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."

-- 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.

Experiencing Being

"Nothing is easier than to experience life as 'one damn thing after another,' to live permanently under the pressure to meet induced needs and imposed standards. Nothing is easier than to forget ourselves. Simply to experience myself as being is to feel the being of all there is, the mystery that being is. And no one who has ever had this experience will ask what is the use of it."

-- Sebastian Moore

Being is core, is prime, is sacred. All comes out of being. And yet, we get lost in the all. As the Tao Te Ching says we abandon the Tao and get mired in "the ten thousand things."

Returning to being is both a return to our true selves and a return to our primal unity. My being and your being are merely different shades, different permutations of Being, itself. `

Being is useless. It cannot be used to get anything because it is at the heart of everything. It cannot be manipulated to be a means to any end. It is both the beginning and the end of all that is.

The ten thousand things will always be with us. Seeing them as "one damn thing after another" is to lose touch with their true being, with our true being, with the mysterious core and essential unity of life.

Out of unity comes duality and then multiplicity. When we return to unity, multiplicity loses its sting. It is no longer confusing, no longer pressure-packed or overwhelming.

When we live from being, we live out the mystery. We no longer feel a need to make sense of it all, much less to manage or control it all. We are in it, we are it. No separation, no battles, no stress.

Being, alone, is enough. Doing and having happen, but let's not confuse them with who we are. We are the mystery of all. Long live the mystery.

Loving Yourself

"Loving yourself while you are doing nothing is the ultimate practice of self-esteem."

-- Phil Laut

What do you have to do to earn your own self-respect? What must you accomplish in order to feel good about yourself? Any answer, other than nothing, creates barriers between your self and your self-esteem.

What if I told you that you're perfect just the way you are? Would you belief me? I doubt it.

OK, so you're not movie star body, Einstein brain, Mother Teresa compassion perfect. Big deal. Nobody likes a clone or a copycat anyway! You're 100% real, genuine, authentic you perfect, just as you are, right here, right now, and you don't have to do a single thing, other than keep breathing! And if you quit breathing, you're dead perfect!

You see, no matter what anyone tells you, there are no "doing" requirements for this life. You don't have to do anything. The only requirement is to be. Even loving yourself is not required. It's just makes life nicer when you do.

On the whole, doing is highly overrated. Doing nothing, just being, on the other hand, is highly underrated. We're human beings, not human doings. Somehow we keep forgetting that.

So, today, take a little time and do nothing. Hell, everyday, take a little time and do nothing. Observe how you feel about yourself as you do nothing. Enjoy doing nothing. Enjoy yourself. If you watch really carefully, you might even see that enjoyment morph into love.