Natural doing, as Lao Tzu said, is doing which arises from our being.
So unnatural doing is that which arises from our damage, generally expressed in the desire for acquisition – whether of power, certainty, land, revenge, status, possessions or approval.
Natural doing is less an action and more of a flow. This makes it less exhausting.
For when we go with the flow of our being, there is no doing. All that we do and think and feel is part of the natural unfolding of existence. There is no weight of expectation on our shoulders or the stress of desired outcomes.
Goodness is its own reason.
And lest we imagine this is ‘pie in the sky’ talk, we note that it is natural doing which engages most profoundly with reality. And here’s how.
We are familiar with the pendulum swing of events. Some things are better today than before; and some things are worse. This is how it goes and always has.
The pendulum swings back and forth; it’s how reality proceeds: rise and fall, dark and light, truth and lie, departure and return, life and death.
Reality is created by this process of change, the yin and yang, perpetually changing into each other – opposites but complimentary.
Unnatural doing fights the pendulum while natural doing lives it, in truth and in love.
We may be a voice in the wilderness. We may be a global superstar.
But daily, we draw from the wellsprings of our being; and give our doing to the unfolding.
It’s how to do well.
