Doing and Being: Thread The Needle of Life - Week #3 of The Awakening Journey
We are already in Week 3! Okay, here is the purpose of these posts: It’s really a high level of some deeper topics. Any topic or practice, or all of these can deepen your awakening process. What I’m doing is this: attempting to give you a feel for a few things, and if you like it, let me know and we can dive a little deeper.
Back to this week’s topic: Doing and Being. The two common things I hear from people when we talk about Doing and Being is: “If I’m just Being, how will I get anything done?” And if the person is comfortable with Being, there is often discomfort or fear associated with getting lost in the Doing.
What exactly is Doing and Being?
Being is who we are, at our essence, on the inside. Our inherent nature, when we are quiet; when we are still. The way we are when we are born into this world. Just here and present. It’s where creativity lives as well as our imagination. This is where our greatest possible potential lies waiting.
Doing is the action we take in the world. It’s the outer achievement, the thing we can “see” with our eyes, feel with our hands. It’s tangible. Coming from our left brain and prefrontal cortex, masculine, the yang of the yin and yang.
And… The truth is that we are humans, being in this world. By virtue of reading this, you are human and humans do, it is part of the reason why we have evolved. We get stuff done. Yet, somewhere along the way, we may have gotten lost, or at least lost sight of the fact that being is the second part of the phrase “human being”. And it is absolutely essential for our wholeness & well-being to embrace both of these parts of ourselves.
What’s the problem?
When we are separate from our “being” part, we are imbalanced. This imbalance within us creates separation from ourselves. This separation with self creates separation with Others and prevents us from awakening further. We then treat others as objects and not... human beings.
Treating others as objects makes it easy to make others in our families wrong, be passive-aggressive on social media, or justify small actions that lead to disconnection at work and in our community. This directly creates divisiveness in our world. We are experiencing this divisiveness on our planet everywhere right now.
This is ironic because what most humans really want is to be connected. To themselves and to each other.
What do we do about it?
We re-balance the equation. Very simply put: we reconnect our Doing and our Being.
How do we reconnect our Doing and Being?
Think of a Being as the round head of a needle. It’s a sacred circle if you will. And the doing is the thread that I bring through the circle, through the being. I bring Doing THROUGH Being. With this threaded needle, I weave together the tapestries (experiences) of my life. It’s like coating the doing with being. And so HOW the tapestry gets sewn together unfolds in an altogether different way. The tapestry and my experiences are more vibrant and alive.
I used to be a person who got stuff done. A handler. If something needed to be taken care of, I executed. I really liked lists, loved to check off the boxes & cross things off the list. I enjoyed the dopamine (a chemical released in the brain when we accomplish tasks) that comes from this sort of doing.
Then, I began awakening and focused almost exclusively on being. I had all sorts of practices to get me into this place of being. I didn’t do them all at once, just sort of tried them out as I came across them. Absorbing what worked and letting go of what didn’t.
Later, when I decided to go back into corporate America, I brought my knowledge, wisdom, and also my being practices with me. My capacity for output was incredible but more importantly, my capacity to develop others was exponential. The feedback I got was confirmation, leaders I had admired would comment: “I want what you have.”
What do I get from this?
When you bring the Doing through the Being, the quality of what gets created is exponentially more resonant and powerful. The essence of conversations, your career, and work in this world is authentic and in alignment. Your relationships shift, even your parenting is aligned to one of conscious awareness.
I’m trusting that you are starting to sense what I’m pointing to here. You don’t need to understand it all at this moment, just trust that you are getting it on some level. To deepen this sense of yours…
Here is your challenge for the week:
Practice getting present and connect to your inherent Being with some kind of tool.
Spend a minute noticing what this feels like. I.e. peaceful, calm, quiet.
Now set an intention: Take this feeling from above with you into your very next short task. Whatever you need to “do” next.
At the end of the task, sit still for a moment and reflect on the quality of your doing. What was different?
Next we will talk about The Thinking Mind - How to Free Your Own Mind!
Until then remember, the present moment is where your best life happens!
With love and gratitude,
Darla