The Art of Doing Nothing

Tags

consciousness, meditation, nothingness, purpose, relaxation

One annual rite of passage at the start of summer is the making of the ‘reading list’. At my daughter’s school, the ‘requirement’ is to read a few thousand words worth of books from a list of their own making. As her first week out of school came to a close on Friday, she decided that we ought to give the library a visit so that she could get started.

The library, after over a year or so? Well, yes! Paper books. Yay! And I would have plenty of time to browse the “New Books” section because her list was a dozen and a half books long. Maybe I would find a new title on poetry or spirituality. We would see…

Thirty minutes of browsing, pulling and putting books back, and nothing was ‘speaking’ to me. And then, a small hardcover in white that said, “NIKSEN – Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing”. This was it. How did the library know that I had been exploring the Zen practice of “Wu Wei” or “purposelessness” over the past week or so?!

Needless to say, “Niksen” came home with me and I have been enjoying it. At first glance, the phrase “doing nothing” seems like an oxymoron because it combines ‘doing’ with ‘nothing’. If we are ‘doing’, then it cannot be ‘nothing’, right? The paradox can be resolved by adding ‘without premeditation or defined purpose’ to the ‘doing’. Think of an unplanned, spontaneous detour on a road trip. Or a trip into la-la land as you pause your brisk morning walk to look at the geese and new goslings cross the street. Or…

In moments where we suspend the churn of mental, emotional and even spiritual activity, we can find ourselves in a state of ‘doing nothing’. It is a state of just being. Some would equate ‘doing nothing’ to ‘being useless’. Even if that were true, the Tao philosophy posits that it is the balance between the ‘useless’ and the ‘useful’ that gives meaning to life. The pursuit of ‘being useful’ accumulates stress and tension in our lives. Embracing the useless by doing nothing, even for a few moments, can release stress and renew us.

We have all experienced those moments where we ‘lost ourselves’ to the world as we immersed into nothingness. Gazing at a butterfly landing on the azaleas, watching the kids rolling down the hill at the playground, listening to a favorite piece of music or dozing off in a lounge chair during a beach trip. You get the idea. Doing nothing can be so much fun because it feels like play! So, why don’t we do more of Niksen or Wu-wei?

We have our reasons, real and imagined. We have responsibilities, deadlines, project reports, home-stuff, school-stuff, work-stuff, the stuff of life and death. How are we supposed to find time for conscious nothingness in our busy lives? Maybe we can ask a different question. Where are we headed if we don’t make time to ‘do nothing’ and give the ‘useful’ moments of our life a chance to rest?

Let’s make time. If necessary, schedule time to do nothing. It’s going to be uncomfortable for some of us ‘go getters’. If it helps, let’s consider your ‘doing nothing’ time as a new growth opportunity. Who knows? We may find ourselves niksening in the “what’s new” section of our local library and even discover some new (inner) treasures.

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to join our weekly Twitter chat on Sunday June 6 at 9amET / 630pm India. We will play with the idea of doing nothing in #Spiritchat! Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunrise happens while we do nothing…

On Slowing Down – Again

Tags

celebration, heart matters, mindfulness, relaxation

There are one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. If we slow down to count from one to one hundred and sixty eight – slowly, deliberatelty, mindfully – we can become aware of the amount of time that we potentially have access to. Even a slow count from one to twenty four, in the moments that we first awaken in the morning, can help us to reflect upon the treasury of the new day that has been opened before us.

Those few early morning minutes can indeed be ‘trend-setters’ for the rest of the hours of the day. In those early moments of the day, our minds and hearts are like flowers laden with dew opening towards the rising sun. The dew will surely turn into vapor as the heat of the world around us rises and we plunge into our daily routine. Yet, we have an opportunity to begin our day with a few moments of slowing down, a relaxation.

In an age of acceleration, nothing is as exhilarating as going slow. – Pico Iyer (via @GaryGruber)

We often slow down, relax, unwind at the end of the day, rather than the beginning. We are usually ‘running late’ in the morning, so we tend to plunge head-first into the river of action. We often leave little time for ourselves to appreciate the interplay of fragrance, moisture and morning light. I am well aware of this ‘reverse order’ of slowing down, because I did the same for many years in my life.

And then one day, I decided that I was going to reverse the order of ‘slowing down’. All it took was ‘giving up’ some minutes of sleep in the morning. But I really didn’t give anything up because I discovered that I really loved ‘slowing down’ more than I loved ‘sleeping in and rushing into the day’. I didn’t give up ‘slowing down’ at the end of the day either. In fact, the acts of ‘slowing down’ have become the primary bookends of my days.

It has been a slow, deliberate process that has been almost eighteen months in the making. Meaningful change does not happen instantly. The decision to change may happen in an instant, but the actions necessary to effect that change in the long term takes a commitment to practice. And I wonder if that is why so many of us, including me, have a challenge with ‘slowing down’ in the long term. We may slow down intermittently when we are exhausted, tired of rushing around. We may slow down intermittently on vacations, in (spiritual) retreats or on the ‘weekends’. But the challenge is to create a lifestyle which makes ‘slowing down’ as essential as breathing.

Indulge me when you have a minute. Sit, and close your eyes. Start taking an in-breath. Visualize the air near your nose enter the air passageways as it makes it long way through the trachea and into each lung. It is now traveling through smaller and smaller passages until it reaches the alveoli. Here, the oxygen from the air is exchanged with the carbon-dioxide from the blood brought from the heart. This exchange happens across a thin membrane that makes life possible. Both the air stream (the purifier) and the blood stream (the receiver) have to virtually come to a standstill so that purity can be effected. You have slowed down, and yet only taken half a breath. Now, watch the air leave the lungs as it reverses path and leaves through the mouth or nose. You have completed one breath. One, slow, deliberate cycle of life.

Maybe our spiritual heart works the same way. Is it possible that the medium that purifies our spiritual heart needs us to slow down, to relax, to perhaps even surrender – so that It may do its work of purificiation and renewal?

Let us pause to consider. Let us be aware of the moments that create beauty and joy in our heart. Let our (spiritual) practice help us create more such moments for ourselves. Let us eventually create an environment for those around us that will invite them to create such moments for themselves. For it is then that ‘slowing down’ will create lasting change.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

I invite you to ‘slow down’ with us in #SpiritChat on Sunday, July 30th at 9amET/1pmUTC on twitter. We will celebrate another year of our weekly Sunday morning conversations with the community, as we launch our seventh year of practice… Thank you, fellow travelers!

A New Day

On Slowing Down

The Joy of Relaxation

Tags

current, electricity, potential, relaxation, spiritchat, spirituality

In physics class, we were taught the basic principle of electricity – for a given “potential” (voltage), the amount of current that flows through a “circuit” is inversely proportional to the amount of “resistance” in the circuit. The practical application of this principle can be felt in many areas of lives, if we view our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies, each as interdependent “circuits”. An increase in the amount of “resistance” in any one of our “bodies” will add to the overall resistance of our holistic electrical system, and hence reduce the amount of “current” that is available to us…

So, why is this analogy of “life-current” important? We can view our “life-current” as that energy which comes available to us on our life-journey. Yes, some of us may have more or less of latent, unrealized potential. However, regardless of the amount of potential we may have, that potential can only be manifest when a certain amount of “resistance” is encountered by us in our daily lives.

Too much “resistance”, and our potential manifests as lowered life-current ~ this can decrease our dynamic ability to work, to live, to love, and to experience Joy. Too little resistance, and we tend towards very high life-current ~ this can eventually overload of our life systems, where we develop the typical “Type A” personality, and eventually “blow our fuses” or “burn out our circuits”. The good news is that we have the ability, through our daily practices, to monitor our “internal resistance”, and modulate it to produce the amount of current that we need in a given moment for the task at hand!

How do we monitor our “internal resistance”? A first step is to become observers of our thoughts and emotional patterns. The triggers that increase our “inner resistance” are often the well-known culprits – too much attachment, greed, jealousy, anger, lust, stress and so on. We feel our life-force slipping away, our attitude tends towards negativity, and we start seeing all that is wrong with our world. The good news is that we can counteract these resistance-raising culprits by cultivating our Joy-giving friends – compassion, friendliness, empathy, empowering action, simplicity, equanimity and inner peace.

When we carry our inner-peace with us in an unruffled, steady, relaxed physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state, it manifests a balanced, optimal life-current for us. Relaxation restores balance in our lives, when we learn to enjoy it, make time for it, take Joy in it. With so many tools at our disposal, including the ever-present availability of nature, we perhaps need to make the “Joy of Relaxation” a priority in our lives. What do you think? Do you make time to balance your “inner resistance” create Joy in your life by making time and space for relaxation? Do you do this on a regular basis, like brushing your teeth in the morning? Or do you do it on a “time available” basis? When you do relax, how do you know when you are truly, deeply relaxed?

If you have read this far, I invite you to come share with is in our “relaxed” weekly chat on twitter in #SpiritChat on Sunday, March 1st 2015 at 9am ET. Share your favorite relaxation tools and practices, so that all of us in the community can learn from you and create more Joy in our lives.

In closing, I hope that we find Joy in the knowing that there is an opportunity to relax in every breath 🙂

Namaste,

Kumud