For a good part of last year, I was just so focused on the doing.
I was convinced that being productive was the key to success, and most importantly my own happiness.
This last week, I got pretty sick. My body literally forced me to take a step back, and I realized that being superwoman was not the key to anything really.
One of my profound new years commitments is to put myself at the top of the priority list no matter what it means.
Today that meant me taking an hour to chat with a long lost kindred spirit, and clean the kitchen.
In talking to this friend, and hearing her revel in the excitement of recently getting running water in the house, I heard something.
Simplicity. All the things I take for granted.
I thought how amazing it would be be to take off and live at the simplest level, and how truly grateful and humble that might make me.
Although I am consistently making a great effort to be humble, I definitely think I could use some growth there.
As we were closing our conversation, I heard my own voice in my mind chanting,
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
I took a second to laugh at myself for a second as I reflected on how complicated I have made this practice in my obsessive need for more doing.
For 6 months I was struggling to find time to chant in just the right way, to find people and time to learn everything that is behind this chant so that I am not uneducated and chanting something I do not know the meaning of or the religion it is rooted from.
I laugh looking back at my elaborate set up for this practice, my feelings of inadequacy in not knowing every last detail of Buddhism..... and I just got an aha right from thin air.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is me. It is simple, I am over complicating my own process.
I was brought back to the true root of who I am at the core today by letting what is just be, and by taking the time to be in the space with my friend.
No need to be busy in the doing, I can just be.
I started my good things jar for the year directly after this realization. Today I was grateful for the realization that I do not have to fill every second to be productive or happy. #goingwiththeflow
I could not be in a more perfect space, writing this, so I remember in tough days.
Soundtrack 1/3/14
This reminds me of the Taoist principle of wu wei, which is "not doing." It is so easy to get caught up in the doing of things, and the mind traps we create around the doing of things, but there is a simple joy in just being while things get done. <3 Thanks for the reminder!
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