The Balance of Being & Doing
image by Zac Durant
When we meet someone, one of the first things we typically ask is, “So, what do you do?” Now, imagine if instead we asked, “Who are you? What is the essence of your being?” People would look at us like we are crazy, and perhaps rightfully so. It is not easy for us to explain who we are, especially when compared with what we do. Our jobs or livelihoods tend to fit into a nice neat label, or at least a sentence or two. “I’m a bartender.” “I’m a full-time mom.” "I work with people with special needs.” “I run a company that specializes in manufacturing parts for air conditioners.” Straightforward and action-oriented. We love doing. The ego-mind, in particular, loves doing because it feels productive, as if something is being accomplished. The ego thrives on getting things done. Even if it is a small task, it likes things that can be seen, measured, quantified, known. Even if it is just pouring water back and forth from one bucket to another, it likes having tasks. It likes movement. It doesn’t know what to do with stillness or silence.
In fact, by definition, the ego cannot be still and silent. It is always in some resistance to the present moment, looking for something it can change, something it thinks should be different, something it can manipulate, something it can add. It does this in the hope that one day everything will be in perfect balance, and it will finally be content. But of course that day never comes for the ego. It will never look at the world and think, “All is well. All is as it should be.” It will always find a new problem, or create one, because it is ultimately threatened by the idea of perfect contentment, even though it claims to pursue it. A state of contentment and balance would allow the ego to recede, and Being to emerge, and for most of us, the ego is not willing to give up the throne. Even though we claim to want that, it is actually the thing we fear the most. If our sense of separateness fell away, we fear it would mean death, annihilation, or irrelevance. And that, of course, feels terrifying to the ego. So we, in our egos, have a real gift for always finding “what’s wrong.” In this way we are deeply conflicted, and this conflict frequently drives us crazy.
Being is not so easily defined or understood as doing, and thus we often overlook or dismiss it. Tony Parsons calls Being “the open secret” because it is hiding in plain sight, and yet we do not see it. And yet once we do see it, we cannot unsee it. It reveals itself to be everywhere. There is nowhere and nothing that is not Being. Even though it is commonly perceived as “your” being and “my” being, there is only Being. Being is the same as awareness—shared awareness. There is only Being, only Oneness, only awareness. And this Being/Oneness/Awareness manifests in countless forms, including you and me.
Ultimately, a balance between being and doing is essential. If we focus only on being, we might find ourselves 'navel-gazing,' contemplating the nature of the universe or passively floating through life. While this has its time and place, without the dynamic energy of doing, we risk becoming stagnant. The spirit in us is creative and wants to be expressed. We must move, dance, touch, taste, play, create! We are here to be expressed. How do we know that? We exist! We have bodies! We are here! Look around you. All we do is create and express.
Doing is so enticing that it has become the primary focus of how we live upon the earth. “What should we do?” is a question that drives us day in and day out. Even if not asked expressly in that way, we are constantly searching for what should be done. Politics, economics, law, science, medicine, entertainment - nearly any industry you can think of - it’s all dominated by the desire to do something. This isn’t inherently a bad thing. We are all to some degree or another fascinated with our ability to create. It is, after all, a divine gift to be able to do so. The Great Spirit is nothing if not creative, and as children of the Great Spirit we have been endowed with this same gift. But when our doing-ness is not informed by our being-ness, we can get ourselves into trouble. This is why Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching, “Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.” When our actions are informed by our being, which is always in a clear, spacious connection with Spirit, the doing happens naturally, effortlessly, without thought, without resistance. We are all unique expressions of the divine, and the ways in which our being will inform our doing will be different for each one of us.
Being could also be understood as a state of emptiness. When we are empty we become a vessel to be filled with spirit. When we are not empty it is because we are filled with ideas, beliefs, concepts, and resistance- in short, with the persnickety ego-mind. There is no room for being to inform our actions. When this is the case our doing is motivated by the ego and its efforts to problem-solve, fix, mold, and manipulate the world into the way it thinks it should be. There is one little problem there: the ego has absolutely no idea how anything should be. How could it? It is always operating with information from the past. That is the great limitation of the ego. It can only sift through its vast archival repository of prior experiences and analyses in order to muster solutions that it thinks best fit the current situation. But only our beingness truly knows. It is the only part of us that is ever in the present moment, that truly knows what the appropriate action is to take in this moment.
Whatever is happening right now has never happened before - even if something very similar has seemingly happened in the past - this moment is brand new. Even if we try to live our lives on a repetitive, predictable schedule (a favorite for the ego), it is still constantly new, constantly different. Such is the nature of life, it is ever-renewing, and thus it is unknowable to the ego-mind. The ego’s efforts may get close, they may approximate, but through the ego we can never fully connect to this sacred moment. Only Being can be empty and full at the same time as it inhabits this moment. This is the only true way to know what to do. We must start with not-knowing what to do. Then we can practice “not-doing” by remaining open to receive the wisdom of the moment, the knowingness of being. We can let Life tell us what to do, or not do. In this way, we are not efforting ourselves from a place of ego to project our own idealizations or past prescriptions onto a situation, person, or perceived problem. We are not thinking, guessing, speculating, or otherwise taking a shot in the dark, and this allows a higher intelligence to come through. This allows being to emerge. Being is vast, multidimensional, and connected to the wisdom of the universe. The only wise thing to do is allow it to lead the way.