Fall                                                                               Samhain Moon

Additional on post just below.  There is a tendency in quasi-religious, new agey thought to condemn doing and promote being, especially being here now.  Nothing wrong with being here now, of course.  Especially since we really have no other choice.  This seems like a false dichotomy to me however.

Even in our doing we are being and in our being we are doing.  This is only to say that doing entails presence to the world and to ourselves, albeit in a different way from the semi-mystical state of being here now.  If you’re a fan of Zeno and his paradox, then you might craft an argument about never changing out of the now, but in other ways of explaining reality, even being here now is impossible.  Why?  Oh, the earth moves around its poles, through the sky and your body digests food, engages in symbiotic exchanges, responds to changes in temperature and light, shifts nourishment into cells and waste out. Change, that old black magic, has its hooks so deep into the universe we often never notice it, even when it moves with the speed of light.

However, if you go back to the observations I’ve been making about circular time, the repetitive nature of change, how it loops back on itself in predictable patterns, perhaps, yes, in more of a spiral than a bicycle wheel, but still Fall then again Fall, and Winter then again Winter, and Birth then again Birth, and Death then again Death, well, if you consider them, then the cycle from one now to the next is Now then again Now.  We’re never ever out of the now, yet we experience movement.

These paradoxes point to being and doing as a false dialectic, not poles resonating with each other like, say liberal and conservative or life and death or true and false, but as alternating ways to explain the same thing, our hereness.  As Heidegger points out, we are thrown into the world at a particular place, to particular parents and in a particular time. I would push that one step further and say we are thrown into each moment in a particular place, in a particular time, with the unique, particular body/mind that is you.

In each moment our particular response to the now has doing characteristics and being characteristics.  Perhaps another way to say this is that part of us is at rest while other parts are engaged with the now, acting on it or being acted upon by it. We do both at the same time, being and doing.

So what’s all the fuss?  It’s about attention.  When all of our very valuable attention focuses on the action or work or active play of  a moment, then we draw ourselves from the beingness of that moment.  When we focus on the beingness, we draw ourselves away from the doing.  But both states co-exist, no matter on which we focus.

The key move here is about attention.  We can and do shift our attention from different aspects of our life to others, from ourselves to the world or moment into which we are thrown.  If we spend all of our attention on doing, then we neglect the deeper, more reflective aspect of our selves.  Conversely, if we spend all of our attention on being, then we neglect matters necessary for our survival.

In the rhythm of your day, your year, your life, you can choose to attend to the activity, the work, the “what you do.”  This might entail lists or calendar marking or goals and objectives or satisfying layers of cloth or manuscript pages.  Likewise you can choose to attend to the beingness, the what you are.  This might entail meditation, silence, counting breaths, noticing plant and animal life at a close, intimate level.

The point?  What do you do, is a valid question.  So is who are you?  They might have the same answer.