What is static? Static is not order, and it’s not unchanging. It’s just unplugged, unadaptive. We are not meant to be neutral. Even if you see emotion as something to be managed and subordinated to reason, your thinking is still not functional if a zero sum is your goal. Zero sum thinking leads one to any of a variety of lunatic states of mind.
In order to be true and balanced, sometimes you have to change? Move or be moved is the bottom line. If you will not move in the inner world, you will feel the victim of reality even though reality isn’t victimizing you and never has. Though you will have positive experiences when you stay in a fixed attitude in your head, ultimately it will seem like a decaying spiral. This is just inevitable.
The reason you will still have positive experiences is that you will be moved. Strong joy will move you, but then it will burn out, always does. This isn’t negativism on my part. It is just the fact of human biology and psychology.
What does negativism do? Ah, negativism makes you resist movement at all costs. You become very invested in invalidating all experiences.
I have a friend described as such. It is very hard for me to help her. Ok. There is another way, dynamism. The person who is always on the go, always doing something, and always has one or more projects in progress. They fare better than the negativist, but is their state sustainable? Do they have no regrets?
Where do they find time to reflect and even determine if they have regrets? They find it when they become disabled, as those who burn the candle at both ends inevitably do unless they learn another way. Nervous disorders, digestive issues, mood disorders. They wind up with not much ability to do anything else, but reflect. They call them “has beens” and in fact they have the most palpable regrets.
I have encountered something like what you are describing. It happened when I was very busy and moving between things frequently. My mind was not having the time to complete its process with each concept and it left me with several incomplete processes. This fatigued me greatly after a time and I had to stop and let my mind move as it will to finish sorting everything. Yes, exactly and if that becomes habit then what? It becomes very inefficient and then you will regret that. You will be stuck in the functional paradox.
The third way in Taoism is called “wu wei”, non-doing. This isn’t negativism, pacifism, activism or indolence. What wu wei is, is a style of engagement in life.
Wu wei is no regrets? Wu wei will mean no regrets. What non-doing is, is letting the function be a process, and let your presence be in the process. You don’t try to “think and do” it.
Is wu wei to not act unless one feels they must? Not at all. In wu wei your day could be full of activity, because events happen all day.
The doing does you? But you don’t try to “do” it, nor do you try to edit the doing. When it’s done, you can reflect on it without the psychological anxieties that arise when your “thinking” fails, because your thinking will fail. Intelligence quotient means nothing to the end of any process. It just gives you a breadth to your initiating. It’s a good start but a bad end, and no road to success. This is why so many very smart people are what society judges “failures.” The most successful people never developed the obsession with “trying.”
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~