‘To do’ or ‘not to do’

Have you ever tried ‘doing nothing’ for an extended period of time? Few hours, few days – feels great, but how about longer? How about a few months? Doesn’t sound very exciting does it?

‘Doing nothing’?

Doing nothing doesn’t mean that you literally have to be staring at the ceiling all day. Its more in terms of how you perceive activity. Most activity in which we claim ourselves as ‘doing something‘ is usually towards some kind of goal or accomplishment – It leads us somewhere where we get something, takes us to a better destination than where we are at right now. If we are doing things without any purpose or ‘goal’, then in essence it would be termed as ‘doing nothing’.

How does it make you feel?

There’s a lot of romantic talk in the world of ‘just being‘ or ‘doing nothing‘ or ‘to simply live‘, but if you begin to implement these seemingly ‘simple’ aspects, you begin to realize what a struggle it can become. Suddenly you feel irrelevant, unimportant and really find no value in your life. Those dreaded feelings of low self confidence, low self worth, ‘being lazy and incompetent’ begin to make their way into your life rather quickly. In sometime, you begin scavenging to find something ‘meaningful’ to do, before you fear you may completely loose your mind!

So then can you really enjoy ‘doing nothing’?

I’m not sure ‘enjoy‘ is quite the right term here. ‘Doing nothing’ entered my own life rather unwillingly several years back when I underwent some major health issues and injuries. As I lay there on the bed, body mostly broken, staring at the ceiling, I remember experiencing the pain of a fully functional and active mind, decapitated by a dysfunctional body. I so badly wanted to ‘do something’ but the more I tried, the worse my situation got. I didn’t give up so fast though. For years and years I tried to keep going, doing something to remain relevant and meaningful. Until I had no choice but to finally stop.

And when I stopped

Early this year, I finally had to stop. I had to step into the dreaded zone of ‘doing nothing’. I decided I was going to ‘do nothing’ for the next year, particularly the next few months. I had to take the time to regain my health as sitting and standing, typing and painting had all become painful for me. It was a forced shift, one I had been avoiding for years.

I stopped everything that I considered work or maybe ‘doing something’. I needed to become aimless, goalless, to heal myself and let life flow through me. In some ways, I experienced it like ‘death’, as though I had allowed myself to jump into a black hole, except willingly.

I watched my self confidence dip, all my fears and anxieties of ‘not making it’ crop up, my ideas of my talent and competency find their way to the gutters. But maybe some where I had enough madness in my wild heart, that I decided I wanted to let myself experience these raw emotions fully. I let myself feel these feelings within myself completely unrestricted- the anguish, the resistance, the utter sense of worthlessness they created within me. But as I began to watch these feelings of unworthiness and insufficiency, it was as though something magical began to happen….

For the first time, I felt these feelings of inadequacy loose their grip on me. It was as though I had faced the tiger in the cage head on, and realized that it was just a stuffed toy! Those fears that bound me to compulsively ‘keep doing’, began to settle. I wasn’t scared of being a nobody anymore.

The power of ‘doing nothing’

This year I realized how very intricately ‘doing nothing’ is tied in with our sense of self worth, as with our sense of security and balance. I can’t say I came upon this realization through my own intelligence, it was borne out of my health struggles. But today I am grateful that I have experienced this power of ‘doing nothing’. I am grateful to be able to relax into being a nobody.

In ‘doing nothing’ I have become more alive, more attentive to the little things that are otherwise so unimportant – the chirping of birds, the plants growing a little everyday. As I become obsolete, unimportant…I feel utterly free and still. In ‘doing nothing’ in absolute trust, I realize that my need for security by ‘doing something’ diminishes. I feel secure and safe, just being in faith. I gain the freedom to be involved in activity with absolute abandon, and yet experience the restfulness, the stillness, the absoluteness that ‘in-action’ brings.

‘Do Nothing – Paint a picture’

When I paint in absolute abandon, no goal, no aim, just ‘doing nothing’ then too I experience the same power. It is as though I cease to exist and the painting finds a life of its own. Some of my best art pieces have been created this way.

Why don’t you too experience the joy of painting a picture ‘doing nothing’?

Next blog I’ll share with you some ideas on how to paint ‘doing nothing’….. Stay tuned.

Seriously!

“Don’t be dead serious about your life – it’s just a play.” – Sadhguru

I’ve been around a lot of ‘dead serious’ people recently. Usually they carry a rather long ‘serious’ face, pay attention to only the rather ‘serious problems’ and consider themselves ‘very responsible’. Don’t ever try to tell them to loosen up! ‘If it’s not serious, it’s not important’ is their motto.

I’m not one to really judge how serious or important some aspect of ones life are, maybe it really is very important to that person. What boggles me most is the lack of perspective! It baffles me how they become so engrossed in the enormity of whatever it is that is so ‘serious’, that they are unable to take a few moments to consider how tiny their problem really is in the larger perspective of things.

What I’ve come to realize over the years, is no matter how absolutely ‘huge’ a situation feels at the moment, even in the face of death, if one can just pause a few seconds and watch ones own tiny’ness’ in the enormity of this existence, then ones self importance fades away. You feel small, tiny, insignificant, unimportant and relaxed. Suddenly, life feels like a play, where you have to go out and give your best, without any control over the outcome. Seriousness naturally gives way to ease and lightheartedness. This simple shift into ‘insignificance’, this simple change in perspective, is all it takes to move from ‘seriousness’ to ‘playfulness’. Seriously!

My gypsy soul

And so they say……

Wandering is defined in the dictionary as ‘travelling aimlessly from place to place’. I guess I didn’t wander entirely aimlessly, somewhere it was my intense desire to experience well being in my body and mind, feel exuberantly alive and in touch with my deepest inner core, that took me from place to place, occupation to occupation, wandering to settling, to wandering once again. Wandering was what probably saved my gypsy soul from crumbling under the rights and wrongs, the pressures of societal bindings. Wandering led me in directions where I would have probably never tread, had I succumbed to the fears of my very ‘risk averse’ mind.

13 years ago, is when I first took a detour from my ‘very normal’ life. After being laid off from my techie job, i went through a sort of existential crisis of why I was doing things that meant nothing to me and what it was that I really wanted from my life, what was it that made me tick. As I got offered a job in my ‘dream company’, I let it go, with the only explanation to myself and those around me that – ‘my heart wasn’t in it.‘ I questioned my own ‘very abnormal’ decision along with others, wondering if I had lost my only pivotal chance of a bright future and if I was now doomed to failure. But there one thing which I had no doubt about – I had for the first time actually had the courage to listen to myself and let my inner voice speak. That day is when I first began ‘Wandering’.

Wandering led me back to India, where I met my Guru. Yoga came into my life, opening up a dimension within me that I never knew possible. I felt as though I had stepped onto a roller coaster of sorts with life happening at an enormously crazy speed. It was as though my life were completely out of control, and yet I knew it was not so. Every action, every moment took on a new intensity….sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, I could feel myself come exuberantly alive. I had come home.

Within myself I felt as though I had finally found what I had always been searching for, and yet my physical body, my mind, started purging, going through a cleansing of sorts. I felt as though pains of a thousand lifetimes had opened up all at once. The next 12 years it was as though a flame had been lit within, holding me, sometimes even gently caressing me as my physical being went through unprecedented ‘issues’. I knew I could have never come out of it sane if I didn’t have that guiding force by my side at all times.

I wandered in search of healing, both within and without. Help came whenever I reached out. I found three companions that became my strongest anchors and guides on this journey – yoga, art and food. Through them I reconnected, reconfigured and re-learnt to live my life in the physical world. They have healed me in so many ways and have been instrumental in shaping a ‘holistic heart’ – balanced and still, in tune with the body and mind and yet exuberantly alive.

Bring along your ‘Gypsy soul’ and come ‘wander’ with me as we explore the makings of a ‘Holistic heart’.