Every morning I visit one of a handful of websites which offer me a spiritual practice or inspiration for that day. This morning, for me, has been hysterical. Every site I visited said “Do Nothing!” I know this had to be the humor of the Ultimate Conciousness. I had been telling my wife I felt tired and wanted to just lay down for an hour and rest or do nothing. Then the messages started arriving. So this morning I am going to go spend an hour doing nothing.
We live in a world where even when we say we are doing nothing, or nothing much, we are doing a lot. For example, yesterday I felt like I didn’t do much, but in reality I did. I read, graded papers, crocheted, spoke with Zoe, prepared three meals, talked with numerous team members, planned for this week, thought about all that I need to do this week, when and how I was going to get it done. Even when it looked like I wasn’t doing much, I was.
Yet, this morning, I realized I had not stilled myself enough all week to respond to a person’s text message. I was so busy even in my state of doing nothing much that I was not aimless and silent enough to hear the answer to my prayers.
This morning, I am going to go lie down for an hour and do nothing. I think I am going to meditate and focus on my breathing. I may even fall asleep and do nothing. These reminders help me remember why doing nothing is something I truly need to work on and maybe you do as well. See we live in a world that is all about doing something, and can make one feel guilty for taking time to do nothing. However, how can we be there for our selves or others, if we are not taking the time to just be and do nothing. What if just for today we took an hour that had no purpose and no goal, other then to do nothing.
What if we took some time off and just let it unfold naturally instead of scheduling everything in a time slot? What if we just trusted that Spirit would unfold the mysteries and joy of this time just as it was supposed to? What if we released all our goals and floated aimlessly through our do nothing time?
So while you are contemplating this, or not, I am going to spend an hour, or possibly more, doing nothing.