12 What Do I Do with Myself?
Denny was at loose ends. He’d never been so unoccupied before. Denny’s whole life had been a blizzard of activity. From school to family life and the workplace, Denny had hardly been able to catch his breath. The sheer momentum of his life had carried Denny along without him having to ask himself any question as to what he should be doing with himself. The next task or activity was simply always in front of him. But then, Denny strangely reached a point where life demanded nothing from him. And even more curiously, Denny had no clue what to do with himself. While he had looked forward someday to such a presumably pleasurable season in his life, when it finally arrived of its own accord, Denny found himself more anxious than relaxed.
Living
Life carries us along from stage to stage, with the expectations built in at each stage for us. We do what comes along. First, it’s school and then more school, followed by the workplace and then more of the workplace. Along the way, it’s marriage, children, and the home. Everything has a script for it. You don’t have to follow all the conventions and meet all the expectations, but they’re certainly there for you, among which to choose. One can live much of life without much thought to living, the customs and roles are so clear. The card store has something for every occasion, the steps, stages, and achievements are all so clear. Maybe that’s the blessing of life, to live without thought, following the well-worn course. Yet in many lives, a point comes when the path forward isn’t so clear or at least not so cluttered with activity. A point comes in many lives when one has the opportunity and even the necessity to choose whether to do anything and, if so, just what to do. Activity can make or break a life.
Doing
We are natural doers, always busy with actions and busier still at making plans. Rest itself is an industry, one in which we spend substantial time and effort arranging the deck chairs. Getaways become like expeditions, as we fill them with activity after activity. A cruise is a favorite reprieve, but one where we’re still in constant motion toward the next destination even as we sleep. We even fill so-called retirement with bucket lists off which to check even more-extravagant activities. We gladly sow the wind and even more gladly reap the whirlwind, believing that the greater is our motion, the better is our life. Our watches no longer just count time but also count our steps, urging us ever forward, admonishing us when we slow down and giving us points and badges when we speed up. Health experts tell us the minimum number of steps we should take daily. We are compulsive in our doing, seldom if ever at rest. Our doing defines us far more than our being. Our family heritage or social group was once our status and standing. Our status and standing are now in the air and ground miles we travel and in the miles we walk and run.
Being
Thus, one thing to do with yourself is to ensure that you balance doing with being. Take an honest look at yourself: are you able to just be without doing, while maintaining a sense of value, standing, dignity, and worth? Or is your value, standing, dignity, and worth instead tied up in your activity? Your state of being has a lot to do with the condition of your spirit and psyche. A psyche conscious of its cosmic locus and significance lends one a full state of being. What we think of ourselves is how we locate our state of being. Your activity should not deny or disrupt your state of being. Ideally, your doing should issue out of your spirit and psyche, consistent with their alignment with their locus of being. Indeed, we do as our heart desires. We act from the standpoint of our sense of being. The most resonant, impressive, and profound acts come from a psyche and spirit aligned with the transcendent creator who structured the cosmos, placed us within it, and gave us our being. What do you do with yourself? You act consistent with your authentic, aligned, and aware state of being. Like our creator, we are universe makers, our actions emanating from our sense of being as patterns according to our purposes. Make worlds that have their proper place in the larger cosmic structure.
Connecting
In the course of living and doing, while sensing and exploring our being, we need also to connect. The psyche, spirit, and soul are not made for themselves, nor solely for the physiological being that they inhabit. So much of who we are within ourselves has to do with how we connect ourselves with others and with the transcendent one who gives us life and consciousness. Our vast communicative capacity has as much to do with others comprehending us as our comprehending ourselves. Our rationality serves us, but our communication expresses our being to others who receive it in part as their own. We draw our being from one another. The injunction to care for others as you care for yourself isn’t solely a moral code. It is also the pattern for proper existence, for sanity, consciousness, and awareness. It is plainly a turning outward of the inward self. We recognize that living narcissistically, purely for ourselves, is a rather severe psychological disorder, disabling the self and missing connections essential to a proper life. The word community has a Latin origin connoting a shared public awareness, duty, or spirit. We must connect appropriately with others to help ourselves.
Aligning
We also do well for ourselves when we connect and align with the transcendent one from whom we receive our consciousness and with whom we share our spirit image. To love and care is to align, submit, sacrifice, and obey. When we align ourselves with the patterns of transcendence, we open our heart to the transcendent one. To walk the narrow path is to be conscious of the transcendent one’s presence, aware of the transcendent one’s desires, and to have the heart to embrace that presence and pursue those desires. We do well for ourselves when our mental acts point our attention upward to the transcendent one’s words, our actions outward to the love and care of others, and our awareness inward to the movements of the transcendent one’s Spirit. A full psyche and spirit involves this process of continual alignment and realignment of the mind, soul, and spirit toward consciousness itself, into the transcendent one’s way, truth, and life, outwardly pursuing and fulfilling the transcendent one’s desires.
Resonating
We attain some of the best things in life other than by their direct pursuit. Perhaps that’s true about all the best things in life, that they’re not there for the grasping. We must instead approach them by circuitous routes. Peace, purpose, and fullness arrive only after bold and courageous adventures, pursued at the same time with openness, awareness, humility, and sensitivity. We cannot simply do happiness, peace, or fullness. We must instead seek and become aware of many other things, hoping that the resonance on which peace and fullness depend will arise. Choosing what to do, then, isn’t to seek the single lever to pull to finally complete the self, to finally attain what you’ve spent your whole life pursuing. Choosing what to do is instead more a process of becoming, picking up what is at hand, to continue to stimulate the insight that rounds out and fills up the soul. Doing isn’t the end in itself. Stepping into your soul isn’t a matter of counting, of adding up. It is instead learning to be conscious of one’s soul and its resonance with the transcendent one in each act one does. The acts are less significant than the consciousness with which we do them and the resonance they produce when aligned with the desires of the transcendent one.
Turning
This emerging or becoming of the self that we hope our heart-driven activity engenders involves a continual turning. Our activity, our doing, is both a means and distraction, which is its challenge. Our activity naturally consumes our attention. We are sensual beings. Our activity produces a stream of sensations for us to monitor. That stream, though, cannot be our full focus. We drown in our sensations when giving ourselves over fully to them. Instead, we must retain an awareness of ourselves as we act. We must continually turn an inward aspect of our attention to a consciousness of ourselves in relation to the transcendent ideal. Traditional faith calls this continual inward turning repentance. Repentance isn’t simply eschewing corrupt acts driven by greed, lust, pride, and other deadly sins. Repentance also involves continual awareness and subtle correction guiding one back into alignment with the transcendent path. Sin isn’t simply moral transgression. Sin also involves errant departures from the transcendent path. Sin, in the original Greek and Hebrew, suggests an archer missing the mark. We must continually adjust our inner sight back toward the mark.
Indwelling
As we choose and pursue activities, we want our continual adjustment of our inward sight to gradually represent and embody the transcendent one. Our turning back toward the mark lends itself to our becoming the transcendent one’s image, embodying the consciousness he transmits. We want our activity, both the paths we choose and the inward awareness we preserve as we pursue them, to produce in us a resonance that reveals who we are in his image. This continual process of turning and becoming, that which we desire our activity to embody, has its traditional expression in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s indwelling includes first being aware that the transcendent one shares his own Spirit and second becoming conscious that the Spirit resides in one’s soul. We deliberately desire to attune ourselves to the Spirit’s presence and to think and act as the Spirit informs us, reveals to us, and desires of us and for us. We share the transcendent one’s consciousness through his own Spirit residing in our soul. Our doing is thus conscious of his consciousness, embracing of his gift of life, and the transcendent act through which we enter the divine realm.
Rest
Our doing, our creative and conscious activity, need not be depleting of our vitality and wearying of our soul. Mindless activity depletes. Activity conscious and respectful of the indwelling Spirit invigorates. We need not move through a repeated cycle of depletion through mindless activity followed by insufficient attempts at rest. That cycle risks a downward spiral where we not only fail to recover but also gradually lead ourselves to a point of breakdown and desperation. When instead we act while conscious and respectful of the indwelling Spirit, we do not deplete the soul. We rest in the Spirit. Rest in the Spirit is not the same as physical immobility and physiological rest. Rest in the Spirit is instead psychological and spiritual rest. Rest in the Spirit involves our integrating consciousness of the Spirit into our activity, whatever that activity may be. In this way, our doing becomes restful. We live in a psychologically and spiritually full state. We stop going through cycles of mindless activity followed by exhaustion and incomplete rest. Our physical bodies may go through cycles of exertion and rest, but our souls remain full in the Spirit’s conscious embrace.
Crisis
That our cycles of mindless activity, followed by incomplete rest, can produce a psychological and spiritual crisis is not necessarily a bad thing. A spiritual crisis is itself a regenerative state. For patterns to change, we must generally break them. A psychological or spiritual crisis, or desperation state, is the breaking of a depleting pattern, a controlled demolition of a distorted psyche. A psychological breakdown brings just enough inner turmoil and pain to force reconstruction of the broken psyche. You must experience breakdown as a confused shattering and scattering of your inner mechanisms of control, of your ego. A mental breakdown doesn’t feel good. But behind the breakdown is a subconscious project that knows exactly what to do. That subconscious project has calibrated your breakdown to just the extent it needs for you to adopt the new, emergent pattern that will revive and transform your psyche, spirit, and soul. Don’t lose heart when you are at wit’s end. The end of your distorted pattern is a good thing, once you discern and embrace the new and true whole.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how conscious are you of your being, as you go through your daily activities? Are you living mostly according to an outward script or from an inner awareness of your own being? Do your activities govern you, or do you govern your activities? What percentage of your own self-worth do you draw from your activities, and what remaining percentage of your own self-worth do you draw from your being? To what extent do you live aware of others? Are you more or less self-centered than those with whom you frequently interact? Who is your most other-centered acquaintance, what is the source or cause of their focus on others, and how do they express it? Have you received the Holy Spirit? If so, how conscious are you, as you go about your daily activities, of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence? Do you allow the Spirit to generate and guide your activities? How restful or restorative is your activity? Or is your activity exhausting you in a downward spiral? Have you reached, or are you reaching, a breaking point where you will have the opportunity to embrace a revived and transformed self?
Key Points
We largely live scripted lives, incompletely aware of our being.
Our activities rule our lives, suppressing our awareness of being.
We must balance our activity with our sense of worth as beings.
We must also connect our activity with others in outward reach.
We must also align our activity with the transcendent one’s desires.
We hope to produce a resonance in our soul of continual becoming.
We continually turn our inward sight back toward transcendence.
Invited by our turning, the transcendent one’s Spirit indwells our soul.
Our activity thus becomes a sort of rest and relaxation in the Spirit.
A crisis wrought by depletion is an opportunity to reorder the psyche.