Non-Doing and the Trust in Life

« The judge then asked the youngest brother: „What if a man cannot be made to say anything? How do you learn his hidden nature?“

„I sit in front of him in silence,
and set up a ladder made of patience,
and if in his presence a language
from beyond joy and beyond grief
begins to pour from my chest,
I know that his soul is as deep and bright
as the star Canopus rising over Yemen.
And so when I start speaking
a powerful right arm of words
sweeping down,
I know him from what I say, and how I say it,
because there’s a window open
between us,
mixing the night air of our beings.“ »

Dschalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî
The Night Air

All too often we try to turn our fate by all means, we exhaust ourselves in constant doing, in a constant fight against a reality which is far from the one we would desire. This is what our Western culture teaches us. This is what others expect us to do.

Be a doer!

If you are unhappy you have to act, you have to do something. If you want to be successful, you have to work hard. We are brought up to be doers. And my depressive patients often feel guilt, as they are unable to act, unable to turn their fate.

So, what I have to teach them first:

It is okay to feel miserable. It is okay to do nothing.

Many years ago there was a TV show where a Dutch motivation coach tried to « motivate » (I would say « to force ») anxious and depressed people to overcome their fears, their acrasia, their misery. Some may remember his exclamation « Tschakka! » which should give people self confidence and the power to tackle their problem.

« Behavioral therapy at its best », one might think.

Far from it! I was shocked with his proceedings. Re-traumatization would be the best description of what he did to some of his clients.

This is not what modern psychotherapy is about. This is not how life should be. But it is the spirit of Western society: You must not be weak, you must not be lazy, you must not be depressed. You have to be strong! You have to be a doer!

« Rest in God! »
– Joyce Meyer

That is interesting because many of our society’s premisses are deeply rooted in Christianity and the Bible. But what the Bible teaches us is a lot different:

« Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? » Matthew 6:25-26

 « Mystics are experts in laziness… »
– Rumi

But not only the Bible teaches us not to do, to trust, to be patient. We can find quite similar teachings in nearly all traditions of wisdom: Non-doing in Buddhism, the principle of Wu Wei in Taoism and finally in Islamic mysticism too:

« Mystics are experts in laziness.
They rely on it, because they continuously see God working all around them.
The harvest keeps coming in, yet they
never even did the plowing! »

Yet the message is not to never do anything, which one might think reading these lines. It is not passivity.

Effortless Action

The principle which is meant is « effortless action ». To act when there is the right time to act.

All too often we try to act out of misery. We feel bad and we want to turn our fate. We try to gather all energy which is left, we start to fight, often desperately. In doing so, we seldom win. We rather destroy which makes us feeling even more miserable but does not stop us from fighting. We fight even more. This is pure action, but it is not effortless at all. And in the end we lose or leave destruction all around us.

Effortless action requires patience, to sense when the time is right to act. And to sense when the time is right requires inner peace.

« When your body is not aligned,
The inner power will not come.
When you are not tranquil within,
Your mind will not be well ordered.
Align your body, assist the inner power,
Then it will gradually come on its own. »

– Lao Tse

Out of this inner peace you are able to act effortlessly because it is only this way you are able to tune in to the interwoven fabric of the world. Religious people might call it God, the researcher Rupert Sheldrake calls it morphogenetic fields. Rumi writes poetically:

« I sit in front of him in silence,
and set up a ladder made of patience,
and if in his presence a language
from beyond joy and beyond grief
begins to pour from my chest,
I know that his soul is as deep and bright
as the star Canopus rising over Yemen.
And so when I start speaking
a powerful right arm of words
sweeping down,
I know him from what I say,
and how I say it,
because there’s a window open
between us,
mixing the night air of our beings. »

So, what is the message? The message is certainly not to passively sit and wait for God to solve all problems.

First the message is self-care. Only if we care enough for ourselves, we will find inner peace. Laziness is self-care.

Further the message is practice: To practice self-care, meditation, mindfulness and finally to be patient, not to try to force things to happen. Not to try to control all and everything. Learn to trust. Trust in God for religious people. Trust in the fabric of the world for spiritual ones.

Reading all that, one might think that I have mastered the trust in life, the trust in God. – No, I have not. I learn – how most of us learn. Violist Nadia Sirota named one of her pieces « In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves ». You can listen to it here; it’s beautiful…

And here is the full poem:

The Night Air
– Dschalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî

« A man on his deathbed left instructions
for dividing up his goods among his three sons.

He had devoted his entire spirit to those sons.

They stood like cypress trees around him,
quiet and strong.

He told the town judge:

„Whichever of my sons is laziest,
Give him all the inheritance.“

Then he died, and the judge turned to the three:

„Each of you must give some account of your laziness, so I can understand just how you are lazy.”

Mystics are experts in laziness.
They rely on it, because they continuously see God working all around them.
The harvest keeps coming in, yet they
never even did the plowing!

„Come on. Say something about the ways you are lazy.”

Every spoken word is a covering for the inner self.

A little curtain-flick no wider than a slice
of roast meat can reveal hundreds of exploding suns.

Even if what is being said is trivial and wrong, the listener hears the source.

One breeze comes from across a garden. Another from across the ash-heap.

Think how different the voices
of the fox and the lion are,
and what they tell you!

Hearing someone is lifting the lid off the cooking pot.

You learn what’s for supper. Though some people can know just by the smell, a sweet stew from a sour soup cooked with vinegar.

A man taps a clay pot before he buys it
to know by the sound if it has a crack.

The eldest of the three brothers told the judge: „I can know a man by his voice,
and if he won’t speak, I wait three days, and then I know him intuitively.”

The second brother:
„I know him when he speaks,
and if he won’t talk, I strike up a conversation.”

„But what if he knows that trick?”,
asked the judge.

Which reminds me of the mother
who tells her child:

„When you’re walking through the graveyard at night
and you see a boogeyman,
run at it, and it will go away.”

„But what,” replies the child, „if the boogeyman’s mother
has told it to do the same thing?
Boogeymen have mothers too.”

The second brother had no answer.

The judge then asked the youngest brother:
„What if a man cannot be made
to say anything?
How do you learn his hidden nature?“

„I sit in front of him in silence,
and set up a ladder made of patience,
and if in his presence a language
from beyond joy and beyond grief
begins to pour from my chest,
I know that his soul is as deep and bright
as the star Canopus rising over Yemen.
And so when I start speaking
a powerful right arm of words
sweeping down,
I know him from what I say,
and how I say it,
because there’s a window open
between us,
mixing the night air of our beings.“

The youngest was, obviously, the laziest.

He won. »