Being vs Doing

Gregg’s Reflection

The first fifty years of my life were about doing. I was mister busy man, trying to prove myself worthy, make my name, build family wealth. I followed my father into the family business, and was discipled into workaholism and perfectionism. I was driven by my doing, and when I examined the motivation behind my doing, it came from a negative space of needing to prove myself worthy.

But, even in this busy time, I was drawn to faith and baptized. I stepped into leadership in church, and coached my kids in soccer. But that was more doing. One of the anchors of those years was a small Christian Businessmen’s Retreat. I gathered with a group of friends for a weekend each fall. There I encountered Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, and was introduced to meditation.

My friend Harvey Cheatham has been on an esoteric spiritual journey as long as I’ve known him. He introduced me to meditation sitting at dawn on the edge of a lake at the retreat center where we gathered. These where two very important disciplines, regular meditation, and a weekend away each year to consider what I would do with the rest of my life.

All this culminated in 1999, when we sold the business, and I walked away to find my calling, and to live into being. That decision, and the willingness of my dear wife to take the road less traveled have been the key to an abundant life.

See what these wise voices say about being versus doing.

Journaling Prompts:

Experiencing burnout from your hectic schedule? Burning the candle at both ends? How hard is it for you to pause doing so you can enjoy being for a bit? What is motivation for your drive to focus on doing?

Scripture

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1

Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Psalm 103:

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. Psalm 130:5

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13

The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord that sheds light on one’s inmost being. Proverbs 20:27

“Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the Lord. Isaiah 66:2

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! Luke 12:24

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Luke 12: 27-31

For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being. Ephesians 3:16

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. Hebrews 1:3

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. Revelation 4:11

Ancient Writings

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk. 

Meister Eckhart, Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation

Our blessedness does not lie in our active doing, rather in our passive reception of God.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 24

Modern Writings

Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fame or any other inordinate passion, cannot be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly. Let us not be blind to the distinction between sound, healthy work and unnatural toil. 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 19

Prayer is not a way of being busy with God instead of with people. In fact, it unmasks the illusion of busyness, usefulness, and indispensability. It is a way of being empty and useless in the presence of God and so of proclaiming our basic belief that all is grace and nothing is simply the result of hard work. 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion 5/13/20

If it is true that people age the way they live, our first task is to help people discover their lifestyles in which “being” is not identified with “having,” self-esteem does not depend on success, and goodness is not the same as popularity. When one has not discovered and experienced the light that is love, peace, forgiveness, gentleness, kindness, and deep joy in the early years, how can one expect to recognize it in old age? As the book of Sirach says: “If you have gathered nothing in your youth, how can you find anything in your old age?” (Sirach 25:3–4). That is true not only of money and material goods, but also of peace and purity of heart.

 Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion,6/29/20

Being is More Important than Doing. I suspect that we too often have lost contact with the source of our own existence and have become strangers in our own house. We tend to run around trying to solve the problems of our world while anxiously avoiding confrontation with that reality wherein our problems find their deepest roots: our own selves. In many ways we are like the busy executive who walks up to a precious flower and says: “What for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy somehow?” and then finds the flower’s response incomprehensible: “I am sorry, but I am just here to be beautiful.” How can we also come to this wisdom of the flower that being is more important than doing? How can we come to a creative contact with the grounding of our own life? 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 8/6/21

Being is always one. Being is always true. Being is always good. “When the one and the true and the good are operating in harmony, that is beauty.” John Dun Scotus. Beauty is the harmony between unity, truth, and goodness. Beauty is what we experience whenever the harmony of goodness, truth and integrity show themselves. Beauty is eternal. 

Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 377-378

For the ancient monks, Sabbath is rooted in the practice of humility. By letting go of our doing we acknowledge that we are not the source of creation. We remember that consumption is not the purpose of our lives. Theologian Monica Furlong describes the belief that life cannot go on unless we work ourselves beyond our means is a form of megalomania, ‘a pathological state which must be fought, in ourselves, our friends, and our nearest and dearest’. As our exhausted minds and bodies are allowed to rest we begin to discover more important and life-giving goals than productivity. 

Being a monk in the world means making time for silence and solitude. A holy pause to reflect on life’s meaning. The monk in the world stays committed to the contemplative way through regular practice, but part of that practice is creating spaciousness and joy. We can allow these desert practices to become another form of competition and productivity, measuring our self-worth by how often or how well we do them. Or we can remember that ultimately it is about something much bigger than ourselves. Sometimes we can only remember the grace available to us when we let go of all of our doing, and rest into our being.

Christine Valters Paintner, Abbey of the Arts

To call God “the Ground of Being” is to find Divinity in the depth of things, the foundation of things, the profundity of things.  And in the truth of things, our own “true selves” and our efforts to pursue truth and commit to truth over falsehood. We all have a depth, a ground, a presence and there, says Eckhart, lies Divinity, for God is the ground of being and “God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground.

Matthew Fox, Daily Meditations 3/22/23

As your being increases, your receptivity to higher meaning increases. 

Maurice Nicoll, Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p. 111

Contemplation——>Being——>Action

There is a step between contemplation and action, being: Being a force of gathered presence, mediating fruit of the Spirit into the world, dispensing the healing balm of Divine Love. Contemplative healers can move the world. 

Cynthia Bourgeault, Living School Faculty Call, 6/21

We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths-it’s as simple as that. The more our souls are infused with being, the better we feel and the better life seems to us, no matter what our outer circumstances are.

Sandra Maitri, Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram, p. 46

Learning how to be is usually the hardest lesson to learn. And yet, it’s the foundation for everything we do. Without an established being our doing is often frantic and frenetic, heavy and burdensome, and bears little fruit. 

Phileena Heuertz, Mindful Silence p. 36

Each man must therefore discover this center in himself, this ground of his being, this law of his life. It is hidden in the depths of every soul, waiting to be discovered. It is the one thing which is necessary, which can satisfy all our desires and answer all our needs. It is the original paradise from which we have all come. 

Bede Griffiths, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 257

When you live in pure consciousness, letting the naked being of all reality touch your own naked being, you experience foundational participation. Out of that plentitude—a sense of satisfaction and inner enoughness, a worldview of abundance—you find it much easier to live simply. You realize you don’t “need” as much. You’ve found your satisfaction at an inner place, at a deeper level inside you. You’re able to draw from this abundance and share it freely with others. And you stop trying to decide who is worthy of it, because you now know that you are not “worthy” either. It is a one hundred percent pure gift!

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 6/29/20

The body plays a crucial role in all forms of genuine spiritual work, because bringing awareness back to the body anchors the quality of Presence. The reason is fairly obvious: while our minds and feelings can wander to the past or the future, our body can only exist here and now, in the present moment. This is one of the fundamental reasons why virtually all meaningful spiritual work leads back to the body and becoming more grounded in it.

Being in the Body has to do with first of all the direct experience of our existence; in spiritual traditions and philosophical traditions this is often called “being.” The ability to be. It’s the sense of being alive, of being connected, of being at one with things. If you’re actually fully here in your body, the spiritual rumors that we’re all one cease being rumors.

It’s a little counter-intuitive. Your body is already connected with the whole sacred reality that God’s expressing right now. So this Body is teaching us what it means to actually live in the here and now, to feel our existence, and to operate from that, which gives us a sense of confidence, fullness, aliveness, being. In religious language, it’s like you feel held in the Presence of God. 

Russ Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, p. 51.

We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.

Thich Nhat Hanh