The Art of Doing Nothing: Finding Spiritual Renewal in Stillness
Embrace the profound benefits of intentionally doing nothing to reconnect with your spiritual nature, find stillness, and experience renewal in a fast-paced world.
In a world driven by constant activity, intentionally doing nothing offers an unexpected path to stillness and spiritual renewal, grounding us in the truth of our being.
In this series—It's About Time: Reclaiming Sanity, Serenity, and Spirit in a Fast-Moving World—we are examining the value of slowing down—for our health and overall well-being, our capacity for spiritual connection to ourselves and to others, as well as gaining greater access to our intuition and creativity.
Slowing Down in a Fast-Paced World
We live in a time of enhanced productivity and constant high-speed connectivity. The boundary (if there is one) between work and personal life has become nebulous.
For me, high-speed connectivity in the digital age is new, but the emphasis on productivity above presence is not. Working and being productive were the highest values in my family. Not only did it mean survival, but it was also the ticket to a more materially prosperous life and the opportunities that came with that.
"There's a lot we can do in the fast lane — we can grow and we can expand. But we cannot deepen, and we cannot integrate our experiences, unless we slow down."
—Angeles Arrien
Lessons from Family: Work Ethic and the Search for Balance
My parents and grandparents labored long hours at demanding jobs. My father worked nights in an iron foundry, and my mother worked days as a keypunch operator. My grandmother and her brothers worked in the canneries in Oakland. The family motto was truly: "Don't just sit there, do something." So, obviously, I grew up to be extremely interested in sitting and doing nothing! But it took a while.
I started working when I was 14, and at 75, I haven't stopped. Like others in my family, I am grateful for my opportunities, the work I have been privileged to do, and everything I have learned. Along the way, I discovered that there is a loss of soul connection when life is out of balance—when we become consumed with having and doing more and more.
I learned that beyond achievement and productivity, the connection to soul presence makes life worthwhile. It is neither doing nor not doing that is essential. It is spiritual awareness that brings a life-enhancing presence to our times of work and times of rest.
Understanding Soul Awareness: An Amphibious Creature
Soul awareness can bring light to the body and mind but also abide in its essence, which is Spirit. When we make space for that by letting the mind grow calm and freeing it from the ten thousand things, soul awareness expands into Spirit, our essential God-nature.
The philosopher Aldous Huxley explains it this way in his book on the Perennial Philosophy:
The body is always in time, the spirit is always timeless and the psyche (soul) is an amphibious creature compelled by the laws of man's being to associate itself to some extent with its body, but capable, if it so desires, of experiencing and being identified with its spirit and, through its spirit, with the divine Ground.
I deeply appreciated his metaphor that the soul is like an amphibious creature. Perfect! Imagine the soul as a creature that can live on land and in water and needs both. We can live in the land of the material world—with its work, goals, and metrics—and we can turn our soul awareness to the Source, the great ocean of Spirit. We need both, and it is a great error for us to mistake the priority and purpose of one for the other or imagine we can get along without both.
The Surprising Benefits of Doing Nothing
Explore the importance of slowing down and nourishing the soul in today's fast-paced world with inspirational stories and practical advice.
Intentionally Doing Nothing: A Simple Practice
We know about doing and what it can bring. Today, I want to promote and defend the fine art of doing nothing as one of the ways we can free the body and the mind.
First, a clarification. Sitting on the couch watching TV is not doing nothing, even though others may accuse us of that. Sitting on the couch watching TV is sitting on the couch watching TV. It may be relaxing or satisfying, but it is still doing something.
Setting Boundaries for True Stillness
What does intentionally doing nothing look like? The intention to have unstructured time is supported by setting boundaries and limits around our activity. This boundary setting requires noticing how we tend to keep busy, including awareness of both active and passive forms of engagement. Note the myriad avenues of input—whether it is talking on the phone, watching TV, or scrolling through your phone. Be willing to turn all of that off for a designated period.
Nature as a Gateway to Rest and Renewal
Ideally, if possible, go outside. Nature is one of the best ways to rest and renew. If you go for a walk, walk consciously but aimlessly. Free yourself from the pressure of schedule or destination. Avoid making your walk into exercise, counting your steps, or combining it with a chore. Let yourself ramble and let your thoughts flow by.
Going for a walk or sitting outdoors watching the clouds or the birds is ideal. If that is not possible, sit inside in a chair and relax. Sometimes, I close my office door and lie down on the floor in a modified version of savasana, the corpse pose. I am not napping or practicing hatha yoga per se, but I am stretching out for a while. Not listening to music, not trying to solve any problems in my mind, I notice my breath, let my body be supported by the floor, and allow thoughts to arise and pass away.
The Spiritual Art of Letting Go
Once you begin to have regular periods of intentionally "doing nothing," you will discover renewed energy and increased mental clarity. Your meditation will have a new vitality and sweetness. Concentration will be easier, and your attention and awareness will readily flow into higher states of consciousness.
This seemingly simple practice of intentionally doing nothing can also support a radical shift into spiritual surrender. Intentionally doing nothing requires us to let go of the ego's drive to constantly engage in activity and fantasize about controlling outcomes. Sometimes, we operate with the wrong premise, thinking that we know how life works, but we are wrong.
The Sufis tell a story about Mullah Nasruddin that illustrates this error.
One day, Mullah notices that his favorite clock has stopped working. When he takes the clock in for repair, the clockmaker opens the back of the clock, turns it over, and a dead fly falls out. Mullah exclaims: Oh, so that's what happened! The little guy who operated it has died.
When we let go of the misunderstanding that we alone are in charge of life and must continually plan, anticipate, act, scheme, and do, we open a space for divine grace to guide and support us.
Divine Grace in Moments of Stillness
Rumi wrote: Remember, when you are thirsty, the water is also seeking you. Each one of us is divinely connected. Life itself comes to meet us if we make space for that meeting to occur.
More from Rumi:
"If I run around in search of my daily portion, the effort exhausts and distresses me. If I am patient and stay quietly in my own place, it will come to me without pain and anguish. For my daily portion is also seeking and pulling me." [1]
Sometimes, if we can just slow down and stop for a while, we remember who we are as spiritual beings living in a divinely supportive universe. And, as my teacher said, we can learn how to cooperate with it.
Here is the key: It is all God—in motion and in stillness.
There is a world of time and change where we act, engage, and use our wisdom-guided will to participate fully, and within it all—there is perfect, infinite stillness where time and change are not found.
The Bridge Between Time and Eternity
From the Chandogya Upanishad: 8.4 (121)
There is a bridge between time and Eternity: and this bridge is Atman, the Spirit of all. There is a Spirit which is pure and which is beyond old age and death; And beyond hunger and thirst and sorrow—[beyond doing and not doing]. This is Atman, the Spirit in humanity. It is this spirit that we must find and know: every person must find their own soul. One who has found and knows their soul has found all the worlds, has achieved all their desires.
In a world of change, a satisfied heart does not change.
[1] Kabir and Camille Helminski, The Rumi Daybook: 365 Poems and Teachings from the Beloved Sufi Master, Shambhala Publications, 2012. P. 156.
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