I joke with my wife when we are in the mall. They play a Christmas song quite often. “Have your self a merry little Christmas now…” So I tell her to do it, that she has to do it now.

I will try it with you. Beat your heart! It’s your moral responsibility to beat your heart! Do it now! Are you doing it?

Or it’s doing you. It is doing you, as is your stomach and the bacteria that inhabit your stomach. Those that live in your throat esophagus and skin as well. They are all doing you.

My heart does me quite often though I can proudly say I am controlling my bowels. Would you know how to make your bowels eliminate?

Well, to be honest, that does seem to be a process I need to focus on at the time it is happening. Can they eliminate on command?

If they are full, yes, though it can be difficult to control.

No. Spend a month in a hospital and discover you don’t.

The Taoist concept of non doing, doing non doing, is based on a very simple observation, a frightening simple observation. I will explain why it is frightening soon. Anything that gets done through you was a process already occurring in the world and was also occurring around you at the same time.

When we try to involve ourselves in the process of doing something, what happens? Do things occur any differently? Does personal concern improve walking?

The brain gets in the way. You can trip.

Do you have to personally invest in your thinking?

I think we can focus our attention so that we can guide what is happening. Like moving objects to guide a stream, you can’t stop the stream but we can divert its flow. Do we benefit from that? Does trying make things turn out better than our just doing would?

Sometimes, yes. Olympic swimmers focus on perfect technique to go that much faster then their opponents, but they can’t decide to swim by jet propulsion.  Perfecting technique only occurs with change. They become better at the skill not by keeping to the same performance, but by changing their performance until their execution is better adapted to the task. Can they get there just by deciding that some other method is better?

Yes, through practice. Practice is by definition the repetition of a fixed form. It has to be better. You can’t will it to be. It becomes better ultimately despite the practice. With ongoing engagement in swimming, the swimmer becomes a stronger and faster swimmer. If anything, it’s the water that dictated the outcome. Nothing the swimmer controlled actually made them a better swimmer.

In the case of the swimmer, it’s more like allowing your body to discover the more efficient path rather than creating it yourself.

I made that mistake when I was younger. I would learn the drum cadence but wouldn’t practice it, so I would “know” it but I would keep making mistakes because my hands didn’t know it yet. The drum sets the sound, requires the behaviour. Is anything arrived at in any other way than naturally?

Probably not. Any successful thing, I mean. Is our thinking arrived at naturally?

I think whenever we learn anything new we are discovering a tiny mystery of the universe. I agree.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~