I’ve come to realise, equate, ‘doing’ and ‘being’ with ‘action’ and ‘inaction’ in the way that it is spoken in the Gita, but also more widely in various traditions and practices, as the doing without the attachment to the fruit of our actions, doing as a doing of our service and doing what is in front of us, just because it is there to be done.
I find that there is something in the ‘doing’ of what is present for us to engage with, which automatically infers ‘being’. Being in its fullest sense of being present and aware and as such intuitively responding to the moment and the needs of ourselves and our environment. This being-doing has a different quality to it and on the surface might look like not much is happening but internally I might be really active. It takes attentiveness to stay present and continuously moving with the flow and not against it.
That’s where I correlate inaction in action. It can take a lot of effort to be in this space of seemingly not doing, of making a concerted effort in being, especially when we are so used to responding to the busyness of our continuously working minds. Outside of my yoga practice, I also have the benefit, privilege, and good luck to get to practice this daily in my practice as a mental health practitioner, by being with clients and tolerating the uncertainty of what it is that might come next, in order to allow for the space that each person needs to express their truth and make meaning of their own lives and distress.
My hope is that this can translate into the rest of my life, however this is not always the case. Despite the knowledge, not just cognitively but also experientially, I still forget to remember to just be. I get caught up in my own wants and desires, my own agenda and my own expectations, my own narratives, that I forget to be present. Does this sound familiar? The warning lights come when I start to feel the distress and disappointment of expectations not met. A warning light should also be during times that expectations are met but when I experience the thrill and satisfaction of that I usually do forget to remember, partly because I enjoy the experience.
So how do we know when we have started to disconnect, when we have veered too far off centre that it is time to come back? How do we know we have stopped being, present and aware, and instead have allowed for the doing alone to taken over, disguised sometimes as a helpful and functioning existence that really becomes a place to hide.
I have discovered that I am actually quite good at hiding in doing but perhaps more on that another time. Perhaps within the context of this, what is more important is that I have made this discovery because I have also become quite good in practising beingness. I might not be able to sustain it, but I will still come back to it daily.
My experience has been that developing a daily mindfulness/meditation practice can support our efforts of being, not just during the practice but most importantly the rest of the time, as we engage with the world around us. We know we are not present, because we have started to get a felt experience of what being present feels like. We know we are off centre because we took time to check in with ourselves daily to find our baseline and we know what it feels like when we are feeling settled.
The practice can look different each time, both in its focus but also quality. Sometimes what I might need to come back to the present might be to close off from the outside and come to rest my attention on my breath alone. Sometimes I might need to start from the outside first and gently bring my attention more inwardly, using my physical body in movement, being out in nature, using my 5 senses as points of reference and pointers towards the now experience. Sometimes I need to go outside and walk in nature for a while with the intention of staying present and mindful of the environment I inhabit.
There is no one way of doing this. There is certainly not a right or wrong way of doing this either. What is more important is that we are doing it. What is more important is that we turn up for ourselves daily to check in, "how am I today?", what is the felt experience of myself in this moment. And can I accept all of me in this moment? I was listening to a talk by Ram Dass yesterday and he was talking about the need to accept our spirituality and our humanness together, co-existing in this one body. It seems to me it is another way of speaking of doing and being and finding the balance between the two. And moment to moment, bit by bit, perhaps we start to know ourselves a little better and we start to increase our beingness whilst in the motion of the doing.
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*Photograph of Anthony Gormley's 'Another Time XVIII' at the Loading Bay of Folkestone Harbour.
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