What are you doing about it?

I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, usually after hearing devastating or simply disappointing news. 

You’ve also heard these ones come up unbidden from your own mind. 

• What can I do about it?  
• What can I do now?  
• What else can I do?  
• What can be done to fix this?

Right now, pause for a moment and ask yourself this doozy of a focusing question. 

What’s the single specific area of my life that no matter what I do nothing seems to work?

You know the area I’m talking about. If you’re a reader you have dozens of books on this subject searching for the answer that you’re sure you’re missing. But the books haven’t worked, have they? Or they haven’t worked as well as you hoped, right?

Likely in this one area (some of us are lucky enough to have more than one) no matter what you’ve tried little has appreciably improved.  So, you’ve faced decades of doubt and despair in this area with intermittent periods of relief.

Okay now that you have your life area in mind consider this insight.

What if there’s nothing you can do? That’s right no matter what you try nothing works so now what can you do? Nothing! Do nothing!

Seriously, if nothing you’ve done has worked isn’t now the time for a new approach where you actually do nothing?

These two non-doing options both work well. 

1. The first is to stop or not do something that you’ve been doing. 
2. The second is to resolve your challenge by being.  Be something that you’ve seldom been. 

One secret of how life really works is realizing that in some cases there is nothing to do.

I’m literally betting my life on it.  Refusing conventional treatment, for two years after my prostate cancer diagnosis I did all that I could by radically adjusting my diet, taking all manner of herbs and supplements as well as increasing my workout regimen. 

Doing resides in the physical realm and that’s often our initial default position when fear first strikes. 

Next, we work in the mental realm by using clear supportive language.  I now know that cancer is not a death sentence or anything permanent. Nor is it my identity.  It’s simply a temporary condition visiting my body and visiting conditions can leave when effectively invited to do so.

Yet on my journey there was still something causal missing. To invite the faith of spiritual vibration (Life Force Energy) to come into my being I needed to be grounded in the emotional realm. 

I’ve come to understand that doing often falls short of success because doing like conventional medicine primarily treats symptoms.  

For permanent resolution doing is ineffectual because it is driven by fear and attempts to work on the effects of a condition not the root cause.  

To go deeper we must go beyond the physical realm, through the mental and finally work on the cause that was created emotionally. To be real we must feel.

I get it. It’s almost funny. The very thing we’ve been trying to cover-up and avoid at all costs is the only choice we have when it really counts. 

Yet what we resist persists and sedation, avoidance, rationalization, desperation, judgement and even working hard with little results are all forms of resistance.

Let’s get back to you. Not everyone experiences an urgent, life-focusing condition like cancer.  But it doesn’t matter if you’ve hit bottom, are nearly there or are dying a slow death of quiet desperation. 

If you really want to change your lifelong unfulfilling condition you have only two little used choices.

You can quit doing what you’ve been doing. In other words, use not doing as an option.

Cease blaming, judging, numbing out, running away, arguing, defending, justifying and/or fighting your situation in any way. 

Instead use not doing as a bridge to being. 

I prefer being over doing because in many cases there is nothing that can be done.  

Often the best thing you can do is to not do.  Human doings are often too busy to allow the joy of discovery, renewal and self-nurturing that comes with being.

You earn the right to see the way across troubled waters by stopping all doing so your awareness can enlighten the way through being.

Enlightenment occurs once you set aside the fear that causes you to rush into doing. 

Being works by becoming present with your condition through feeling and just allowing it to be. 

That’s why I don’t say I’m beating cancer. Beating implies a battle and battles always have victors and victims. Both victors and victims are deep in resistance and so the battles and wars are never ending.  

I’ve come to see that cancer is not happening to me but through me and for me. As such it’s a blessing and the most powerful of wake-up calls.  I wonder if your life long condition (the one you don’t want to look at) might also be a blessing?

If you think that’s a possibility, then end the fruitless fight.  Instead of asking what can be done ask these powerful questions.

• What might I be to turn this around? 
• What state of being might allow me to see this differently? 
• What might happen if I were to be at peace? 
• What would bring greater presence to my being? 
• What loving nature could I be that I’ve seldom been? 
• What if I just let it be as the blessing it obviously is? 

Be at peace and love yourself for the powerful being that you are.  

Tom