A Key Question for Reducing Stress in Your Life
One of the greatest questions that when answered and lived is the question asked by Shakespeare when writing in his play Hamlet,
To be or not to be that is the question?”
This is a question that if fully lived will bring you to the fullness of a wild and precious life. This is a foundational question. It is a question that asks you about the vision for your life. It asks are you serving your being or your doing.
To be is a function of being. We, as a collective called human beings, rarely if ever ask ourselves about our essence. This is the essence from which we as a collective take our name. It is a very special name. You are a human being and much, even most of the stress and suffering that has taken place and is taking place in this world of space and time and form is because we have forgotten what is is “to be.”
When it comes to living the question, “To be or not to be,” most of us have chosen and are choosing not to be. We choose to do rather than to be. Most of us spend our time doing. We complain that we have no time. We look to have quality time but when we have the time we spend it in engaging in entertainment and amusement. Often we spend our time getting a quick high. We engage in some form of addiction either in a minor or major way. Each of us has our own way of escaping from the stress of are do-do living.
Stress tells you that you are out of balance. It isn’t that being is better than doing or that doing is preferred to being. Both are needed. However, being is primary. Doing that arises from a quality of being is very different from doing in order to be-come someone or achieve something. One arises from the connection to the essential Self. The other moves from a sense of separateness and a need to create an identity that gives your life some form of identity based on what you do.
You can do many things in your life but you will not find true purpose or passion simply by following your ego desires into the ‘do-do’ of your life. Focus on learning to move from being into doing and you will begin to feel integrated. You will begin to feel integral. You will begin to feel whole. You will begin to feel At One. You will begin to feel what it really is to experience at-one-ment.
Very often when someone is unsure about how they should present themselves they are encouraged to be themselves. This is advice that has a great wisdom contained within it. Except that most people live from an image of who they are and not from their being. Throughout our lives we are told that we should be successful. If you do not believe me then witness what I call the cult of celebrity. The mass media spend a vast amount of their focus on pursuing the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous.
To live from being is to know that you are beyond the duality (2nd chakra experience) of success or failure. Success and failure are constructs of the human mind that are subject to the fashion of time and culture. At one time one was considered to be a success if you owned slaves. Success is always moving into failure and failure is always moving into success. Success and failure keep you focused on being in a first and second chakra mentality. A focus on being is a focus that is grounded in the first chakra with the knowledge that it contains the potential for total fulfilment.
Movement from being is not about success or failure but is the movement of giving and receiving at higher and higher levels of refinement. This movement is what will honestly make you feel fine. This fineness will become manifest in your breathing. It will bring you a sense of calm and a real sense of peace (4th chakra experience). This is the peace of the heart and is a peace that is beyond the tension of opposites – the tension of duality.
To be or not to be- that is the question. It is an essential question. It is a central question for those who wish to live a wild and precious life. Being is central to life. Life is not separate from being and being is not separate from the experience of humanity. Only you feel separate. If that is how you feel then your focus is on doing. As a collective called humanity we have gotten ourselves in the do-do of doing.
Start your day with a focus on being. Many will not know what to do with this instruction. You will ask, “How do I learn to be?” The answer is a paradox. Learning to be takes discipline, commitment, courage and practice. It is a paradoxical practice. You learn to be by learning how not to do.
The greatest exponents of being are small children. They have not yet learned the do-do of existence. They are still tuned into being until they are asked what they are going to be when the grow up. By which we really mean is what we get asked at adult dinner parties, “What do you do?” The question should really be, “What is your being going to express and serve as you grow?” The growth we invite here is not the growth in material wealth but the expansion from the 1st chakra to the 7th chakra. The movement from personality to co-creator with the Divine and beyond. The movement from the limitation of “I am” to the infinity of I AM.
Being expresses the quality of spirit. To put it another way, being expresses the quality of being inspired. Movement from doing is not inspirational. It tends to be merely functional and productive (or destructive) rather than joyful and creative. Doing often focuses on productive activity as a means of feeling a sense of accomplishment and worth whereas being moves from the fullness and knowing of your preciousness.
The living of a wild life is not the living of a life of an enfant terrible but the living of a life that is wild with creative potential and that is ever new. It is a life that is really going somewhere but moves from the still point centre within. Being knows how to do. It knows how to do better than you. It is an antidote to the stress of the do-do of life and the need to feel you are required to be more than you are.
Except that many people find it hard to practice a discipline of non-doing. Their time is filled with lists of things to do. They go on courses to learn more effective time management. When they learn more effective time management the time they create is then filled with more things to do. This is a recipe for a stress filled life. This is the experience of living a half life at best and never, and I mean never, brings you to the full awareness of your birthright.
There are many practices that begin with the intention of connecting to being. These are the practices of meditation, prayer and yoga. Whatever one says about these practices one does have to say that they are an engagement with paradox. You have to do them in order to learn to experience what it feels like to get into what might be called the zone or the gap.
With commitment, with discipline and practice being becomes not so much a word but a state. The more you experience this state the more you want to experience it and you will begin to drop those activities that distract you from this state of being.
With practice, commitment and discipline this state becomes what is called a station. It is a station on the real way to living a wild and precious life.
Why is it precious? Because you move from Love into action. Because you move from being to doing. There is no karma accrued to the action. There is no stress and no do-do to clean up.
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