Being and Doing
Every act of creativity needs a period of rest first. A space where separate, scattered elements can slowly come together beneath conscious awareness.
I know this state well, it can often feel like stagnancy or being ‘un-productive’. I often find myself falling into the spaciousness of non-doing, however I am still receptive to an idea ripening somewhere beneath the surface.
Non-doing is the necessary counterpart to a nervous system that is continuously receiving stimulus from the external world around, continuously processing this information.
It's here, in the stillness, that I find myself simply in the experience of awareness.
“Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now.”
- Rick Ruben
But the pressures of modern life rarely allow for this. We are conditioned to equate our worth with constant doing, and so we don't often give ourselves permission to rest fully.
I'll admit, being is a place I feel very at home in. But to try and hold onto it would deny the natural cycle of change we are part of. I am always in a continuous dance between these two polarities ~ doing and being. When I feel stuck, I look inward first, to notice what phase of my own cycle I'm moving through, and then outward, to be guided by the season I'm living in.
Right now, that season welcomes spring, with the energy of potential and endless possibility. Touched by metamorphosis, I let myself be inspired by the mysterious energies coming to life all around me.
“This rhythm of rest and renewal lives everywhere within us; in the life of our cells, in the flow of our breath, in our daily cycles of waking and sleeping. It connects us back to the earth, and to every living thing that moves through cycles too.”
- Linda Hartley
This is the work ~ a deeper inquiry within the body, coming to know and strengthen our own internal rhythms, and their thread back to the wider patterns we are all held by.
