Doing or Being?

Doing can only be fruitful when you get past "neediness" and "lacking".  Until then it will be self-serving not Self and One serving.
-Eckhart Tolle (paraphrased)

Doing

Hmmm!  I have been doing and doing yesterday trying to get the final things done for my yoga studio.  I was pumped.    I have been waiting for this for months...and finally all that was left was the final touches. I was going to offer  a great service in a great space. It was all going to be worth it...all I spent that I didn't have was going to pay off.  All the frustrated waiting was not going to be for nought. There was just some tidying up to do to de-create a scene from the Trailer Park Boys in the outward appearance of my home. So I did and I did and I did.  I had a long list for D. to do too. I was so grateful for the doing...it gave me a wonderful distraction from what I was dealing with earlier this week and I was convinced it was going to take me to that "outcome" I have been anticipating for months.  My doing was going to be fruitful.

Accomplishment?

In the midst of my doing,  there was a cancellation, an innocent comment made about some minor décor detail and an inability to get certain things done because of circumstance. I felt myself suddenly becoming dissatisfied with my situation.  The up I was feeling earlier slipped away so quickly.  I looked about my "almost" ready studio and thought, "I need to do more, get more, have more!"  My mind cried out.  "I do not have enough, this will never be done; how will I make enough to pay for what I lost here." And finally,  "This thing is not doing it for me. It is not enough." I had slipped into the "neediness" and "lacking" that spurred me on this journey in the first place. I realized that the creation of my yoga studio, though a wonderful accomplishment, was not going to "fulfill me" as I thought it would.

Who am I Serving?

As much as I want to serve, as much as I wanted to be a yoga teacher for that reason, there was sadly also an ulterior motive for my doing.  Ego wanted to find satisfaction and it attempted to fill in the holes with doing and striving for an outcome. I looked outward , instead of inward for my fulfillment.  I focused on doing more so than being. In that process, I  realized I was attempting to serve self ( my hungry little ego) and not Self, not the world. 


Is this Yoga?

Isn't it ironic that in my attempt to create a space for yoga I neglected the motivation that yoga is?  I need to turn my sites inward.  It is not the space or the doing that will allow me to live and teach yoga...but the simple being of it.

Hmmm!  Sigh!  so much learning in one week.  :)

All is well!

Eckhart Tolle ( September 2019). Aligning Being and Doing:  Joyful Creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70F7huPoNeA