On Doing and Being

        

I think most of us, in the Western cultures at least, have a sense of ourselves according to what we do. We are workers; we are artists; we are athletes, husbands, partners, parents and on and on. At the same time there are many of us who do not do, perhaps because of disability or advancing age which has taken from us some of our physical powers. What then? Who are we if we can no longer do but must view ourselves in different ways? And what of those of us who never thought of ourselves in terms of doing but more in terms of being, which has many indefinable elements to it and often seems like an ephemeral part of us that comes and goes like a firefly in the night. Can we be still and curious long enough to search out being as well as doing.

To simply be......

Sooner or later I daresay there will be times when even the most physically vigorous of us cannot enter into old, familiar ways of doing things, where we are smack in the center of figuring out what it is to simply be. We cannot push, pull, force or make things happen for whatever reason, so the alternatives involve getting angry, raging, freaking out or…investigating the being part of ourselves.

Pure gold....

There is a being place in us that is pure gold and holds more gifts than we had ever imagined, but we will need to stand in the quiet place between doing and being so that we are able to receive. If this is not how we normally operate, we will need to discover slowing and quieting, for senses of being come softly and often silently. This is our opening out into the Universe which withholds nothing from us and holds inspiration in its wings. Wisdom, then, would have us become aware of when it is time to use our energies in the vitality of doing and when to settle back into the healing, inspiring folds of being.

http://More Essays About Everything is now available on Amazon
tinyurl.com/kxsb47c

You might also enjoy "On Doing More Than You Think You Can"

On Character Building

  Those of us who are fans of the PBS Newshour know that one of its weekly guest commentators is David Brooks, the noted journalist with the New York Times. Recently in an interview he spoke passionately about one of his new books entitled The Road to Character. In it he explores the lives of a number of people he believes to have truly built lives of character, lives not built so much on career success as on what he considers “consequential living” …Bayard Rustin, Dwight Eisenhower, Frances Perkins, and St. Augustine, to name a few. According to Brooks it is in combating our weaknesses and building ourselves from within that brings true breadth of character. He says that it is the humble me that creates a life of value rather than the “Big Me” that is so celebrated today.  He speaks of "radical self awareness from a distance."  In other words, who or what outside myself needs me?

Good points...

Brooks makes good points. We in this culture often do a lot of breast beating when we accomplish something, which may be wonderful but perhaps not as lasting as we think. How much greater and stronger might we become, how much more essentially valuable might we be if we worked to corral our weak places until we became strong in them? What if we could stand on the shoulders of our own flawed personalities to become the genuine vital beings that live inside us?

Pure gold...

Some things really are worth the effort, and certainly the emergence of who we truly are as spiritual beings living a consequential life in the world is one of them. Real character building does not involve self laceration for mistakes or self aggrandizement for successes as much as quietly and continuously doing what is ours to do. Sometimes it may seem thankless and lonely but what comes forth from us in our devoted efforts to bring our good to life is pure gold.

More Essays About Everything is now available on Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/kxsb47c

You might also enjoy "On Self Reliance"