Doing Vs. Being
We recently posted about society’s recent tendency to focus on reductionist, mechanistic thinking, eschewing big-picture, heart-centered, faith-filled vision.
Society also tends to focus on ‘doing’ things rather than ‘being’ a certain way.
Let’s address that tendency, shall we? <grin>
Doing things is awesome. The world doesn’t evolve much without physical actions occurring.
On the other hand, doing things with little to no focus on how we’re being while we do them, can generate some interesting situations.
Example:
Helping people is a wonderful thing to do: donating money, food, etc. is awesome, most would agree.
How about doing the above, while being self-justifying and performing the actions in order to assuage our own guilt? Or how about doing them out of boredom, confusion, or a follow-the-herd-mentality? How about donating material things without being loving while we act?
Now, consider the act of standing up and telling a child that you’ve given them enough candy? Yes, it would be denying them some wonderful treat they like. Is it hurtful and harmful, denying a simple pleasure out of spite? Is it loving discipline, helping the child to grow and handle themselves in the world?
It’s an action, and it’s an action that could be taken, out of a sense of care for the child’s well-being and care for yourself not being taken advantage of.
It could also be an action taken out of rage at the child’s incessant pestering, and out of one’s own issues with repetitive persuasion techniques employed by the child.
Certain intentions can be indulged in, and certain qualities of being can be brought to the actions that we do.
Not only that, but actions can arise spontaneously, beautifully and at times ‘more powerfully’ out of stillness and non-action. Learn more about this practice using this simple Aikido training technique.
Both are ‘important’, both are integrated and entwined with each other. They do not exist in a vacuum.
As a slight corollary to our Valentine’s Day article (Love & Sex: The Magnum Opus), let’s look at how this applies to the act of submitting, following, or receiving another person.
We can engage in the act of submitting to others in a dis-empowered state of being, or we can submit to others as a form of beautiful strength, willingly choosing to follow something that feels loving and right to use in a certain moment, to us personally and individually.
We can dominate others in a playful, co-operative, everyone is comfortable with this for now way, or we can dominate in an unwanted, competitive, abuse-of-power way.
Society’s current tendency towards heavily respecting and praising action, while simultaneously judging and eschewing non-action and states-of-being is a symptom of an overly aggressive, hyper-active, traditionally ‘masculine-’ focused culture. Which is fine, it’s merely something to be aware of.
It’s certainly nice to transcend the duality of masculine + feminine, as an individual and as a society, but either way, it’s no big deal.
This article isn’t intended as a criticism, it’s more of a ‘heads up’ to people to perhaps observe their own personal tendencies towards judging people who may be stuck as workaholics and busy-bodies, as well as (more likely) judging those who are being still, loving, kind, and who’re focused on inner-development. Judging generally helps very little and life generally encourages and maintains an integrated balance of doing and being.*
*On a larger scale, society can lean heavily towards one side or another, for a time, but eventually life will balance things out with the opposite.
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Tags: action, being, doing, domination, polarity, stillness, submission
Written by Jason Fonceca
Jason Fonceca is a visionary/creator with 25 years experience in writing, art, technology, spirituality, and many other disciplines. He's the author of the upcoming book "Idealution & Thoughtsperity," as well as the founder of SpiritSentient.com & JasonFonceca.com.
