At the still point of the turning world - Just do nothing...

JUST DO NOTHING

I have just been reviewing some of the posts I have been alerted about on various social media platforms – mainly Facebook and LinkedIn and I am conscious of the massive reaction there is/was, particularly in the early days of the current pandemic crisis. The thing I notice about it all is that the core message is EXTROVERT! GET OUT THERE! – So, repeated messages were in the nature of “get out there and get going!”, “get stuck into the corona-spirit-shadow”, “Writers, get to writing, painters get painting and share online”, and I must confess that my earlier post was of the same tone – even though I was suggesting a return to introversion, my messages still carried an expectation of work, of achievement, of “meeting the challenge”.

Yet, the experience of the patients who have continued to work with me online was different – I was repeatedly hearing concerns expressed that they “weren’t doing anything” – “I know there are all these things I could be doing in this time, but I’m not, I just don’t feel like it…” or “I know I’ve been complaining that I didn’t have time, but now I do have the time, but I’m still not doing the things I thought I should be doing…” And, indeed, that has been my own experience, if anything, I have read and written and drawn less than before the crisis hit. I am excruciatingly aware that I have spent the majority of my time doing nothing.

Indeed, when I did decide to activate a couple of weeks ago and went for a short hike, I fell flat on my face and then spent the next several days in pain and experiencing what I assume were the symptoms of a mild concussion – There’s nothing like the unconscious intervening in physicality to make this bunny stop and listen!

And so I began to share my own sense of what was happening and the way it was affecting my life with my patients, because I believe that when a situation is universal everyone has a right to know that it is exactly that – universal – affecting us all -  and that I am just as influenced by the universal events as they are. But there was still a nagging doubt in my mind – perhaps I was misreading what was happening, perhaps I ‘should’ be doing things differently, perhaps I ‘should’ be encouraging my patients to get on and DO things…

You see, the difficulty is that we live in an extraverted culture – one which focuses endlessly on ‘heroes’ and ‘heroic acts’ and forgets the ‘hidden acts of heroism’ 

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

― T.S. Eliot 

It is interesting that recently the BBC has been showing a short documentary season “Retreat: Meditations from a Monastery” which is simply footage of the quiet and simple lives of monks, with no voice over, little or no dialogue and short subtitles to introduce the people on screen and the activities they are undertaking, so obviously, somewhere in the collective psyche, there is a recognition of this. However in the consciousness of the culture at large, it is absent.

And then I came across an interview with Murray Stein from April 1^st that had somehow passed me by until today and at last, there was the voice of balance and sanity (just what I’ve come to expect form Murray Stein over the years!). This is just part of what Murray has to say:

“It is more than just a “pause” in the frenetic pace that preceded. It is a forced “full stop.” We must sit in the dark for a while until our eyes adjust to the new condition we are in. I would not want to say what will come out of this or what we will see in this darkness that makes a difference for the future. Mostly this is a time to practice “wu wei” wait and see what comes. This is how we meet the unconscious. What will emerge from the darkness of our minds in this time of Umbra Mundi? Dreams, images, thoughts—welcome them and work with them.

In the dark you do not know the way forward. You can only take the next and most necessary step, one at a time, as Jung wisely counsels. I think of Dante in the dark wood. Then Virgil appears, and they begin their journey. “Abandon hope all who enter here,” reads the sign over the gateway to the Inferno, and bravely they enter that unknown and forbidding region of the psyche.

This is the condition of the world. We are in the dark woods and uncertainty has infected all. Perhaps a Virgil will appear to accompany us through this night. We have a lot to learn in the Umbra Mundi.”

One definition of ‘wu wei’  is – an "attitude of genuine non-action, motivated by a lack of desire to participate in human affairs." In reading Murray’s words, I knew that my response was completely appropriate – and so I will continue to ‘do nothing’ and sit in my position and see what comes, recognizing that this is the true position of the Sage King and the Rain Maker; and I offer an apology to any of you reading this who may have taken form my previous posts any suggestion that you ‘should’ be doing anything other than exactly what you are doing…

The full interview with Murray Stein can be read here https://www.pacificapost.com/interview-with-murray-stein