Simply Being - The difference between non-action and inaction

This is an extremely old bit of wisdom, but even today it's rare that someone really understands it. People are so caught up in doing things, all day long they just jump from one thing to the next without a moment in between. Even when they're finished with everything they believe they "have to do" for the day, they immediately jump to some form of entertainment, like a book or the television. Every night when they lay down for bed, when they have this blessed opportunity to relax and simply Be, they instead think about the past and the future, and all their worries. More doing, doing, doing, and when the alarm wakes them up in the morning they jump out of bed and resume the same patterns.

This above example is someone who is so caught up in what they're doing that they never have a moment to simply Be. There's billions of them on this planet, beings who are cut off from their own Being. Can you drop everything you're doing right now? Can you let it all go? Please, stop reading right now, take a moment to just Be without any expectation for the future or attachment to the past.

There's a few things that can happen when you do this, if you really let go of the need to constantly be doing something you will feel a refreshing sense of Peace, a feeling of being Centered within your Being. For most people though, taking a pause from doing brings up a whole lot of anxiety and anxiousness. It's a very foreign state to their mind, and their mind becomes very anxious because it wants to get back to all the doing. The doing is a distraction from all the feelings and emotions within, and the sudden rush of all these emotions can cause intense anxiety when a person takes a pause from all their doing. These things need to be felt though before they really can be healed. This pause is real meditation, and I call it real meditation because there's plenty of fake meditations that actually help feed into the mind's desire for distractions and constant doing.

The True Being doesn't find satisfaction or fulfillment through doing something, and this is why our busy lives can feel so empty when we really look at them. The Being is already complete, everything you need for a happy and fulfilling life is already contained within you. It's when you look outside of yourself that you deny this truth and bring suffering upon yourself.

Your mind searches for little "truths", and in this the mind denies the Higher Truth that's already Present. You don't have to figure anything out, you don't have to get anyplace, if you can just take a pause from all that and simply Be, you will learn so much more. The whole Universe will reveal itself to you.

People are living completely backwards, they believe that why they do will bring happiness and satisfaction in their lives. As if happiness is something outside that you have to go obtain! This illusion just pushes it further away. No, happiness is found within, it's there when you're content with simply Being. People believe they need to do something to become who they want to Be, yet all the doing is just a distraction from that Peaceful Being that's already within. This is why we encourage you to take a pause from all the doing, for your own sake.

At first this may seem like a contradiction, but we're not encouraging you to do nothing, that would be inaction. Inaction comes from the mind, it comes from resistance and laziness. What we encourage is rediscovery of your own Being, and then having all that you do flow from that place. This is what the Tao te Ching calls non-action. It's intuitive and effortless, it's a Heart-based doing that is a natural expression of Being. This is why I said people are living backwards, they believe doing will lead them to Being, when it works much better the other way around.

The Galactic Free Press
No copyright, share/edit freely

Tao te Ching #2

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

#48

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can't be gained by interfering.