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In the cultivation of

meditative awareness or mindful awareness,

we take the unusual position

for westerners to actually not try to get anywhere else

this is what we call non-striving or even

non-doing, to actually allow things to be held in awareness without having

to operate on them, without having to make anything happen

or try to experience some special state

of either relaxation or well-being

or anything but to simply be with

the unfolding of life from moment to moment without

any agenda whatsoever. It turns out this is

tremendously healing, tremendously restorative

for us, too, because we have so many agendas and we're always on the way

to some better moment in the future or trying to escape from something in the

past but to actually be

in a place where we're practicing

non-striving and non-doing where we just let things be

as they are is, as I said, tremendously

nurturing and and healing. Not easy to do

because we have so many different, you know,

so many different items on our to-do list so the longer your to-do list,

the longer we should give ourselves some time to practice

non-doing all together and non-striving

realizing that whatever is already here

is good enough, even if it's not pleasant in this moment

it's enough and we don't need to try to escape from it

or fix it or make anything happen. It's a tremendous discipline,

a tremendous attitude to bring to life. It doesn't mean you won't get things

done

on the contrary, it means that whatever doing you do do, will

wind up coming out of being

and therefore much greater wisdom, and much greater

appropriateness to the situation.

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