Today’s video blog will surprise you. Its inspiration and beauty comes in an unexpected form. It succeeds in connecting us to the present moment by dropping any expectations we might have. There is nothing for our ego in this experience. This is quietly, profoundly spiritual in nature.
When people have spiritual insights they often find that their realizations at first feel counter-intuitive. The same idea seemed backwards until they saw it from their new perspective. So in a culture obsessed with speed and productivity it might seem unusual that I would be suggesting that, to get more done, we should consider actually slowing down.
How can we get more done by doing less? The trick is to change our priorities. We need to reduce our ‘doing’ so that we can shift that value onto simply ‘being.’
We can’t be harvesting full time. Not only do the furrows of our mind need need time to lay fallow, so that they can replenish their energy, but we cannot expect to plant our seeds and harvest our gains at the same time. No tea can be poured into a full cup.
If we want to truly expand, rather than adding to infinite ourselves, we are better to break the bonds of our own a false beliefs. Otherwise the notion that speed, or efficiency or external success can inadvertently lead us away from an enjoyable life.
We all need to pay less attention to what’s going out outside of us and more attention to what’s going on inside of us. We need to stop being so busy inside and out, and we need to start ‘being still.’
We are already crushed by more data, less time, heavier loads. What we need now is more understanding, more rewarding experiences, and more flexibility. We need space, openness, and light.
The answers we’re looking for in life do not need us to achieve more. We don’t need to climb anything. We don’t need to earn, strive or gain beyond a very basic level. We benefit by ceasing our worrying thoughts about what we do know and instead we can allow ourselves to relax into a different kind of ‘knowing.’
The Zen poet Dogan said, “If you cannot find truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
This video is only two minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. Strangely, even the sound is valuable. Like the photo of the pig a blanket, this video intended no purpose, no aim and no point. It simply is. And that simple status is what makes it so profoundly beautiful.
Slow down. Let your breathing go. Relax your diaphragm. Enjoy:
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Think about bookmarking this video. It might be nice to take a moment to spend time with this little guy every now and then. This is a creature without guile. This is a video of being. And precisely because it aims to accomplish nothing, it manages to accomplish a lot.
Have a wonderful day. Big hug.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.