You're a human being not a human doing

You know those times when your yoga teacher tells you to "be still", "slow down", "quiet your mind" and you immediately start thinking about refinishing your floors or making a date with your new eyebrow stylist? I do. It's taken years of consistent practice-- both yoga and meditation-- to be able to even remotely get to stillness. In times of great life chaos or strife, my brain is even more vulnerable to slipping into distraction.

I recently went to see an intuitive. She called herself a Celestial Oracle, which I think sounds so much better. Anyway, she read my angel cards, and the first things she said to me was, "You are a teacher and a healer are you not?" Slack-jawed, I nodded. The next thing she said was, "and you are emerging from a time of great turmoil." Again, correcto!

Later on in our time together, this woman offered more guidance to help me through this post-tumolt phase that I am now in. "Laura," she said, "you are a human being. Not a human doing." Could I bring this woman home with me to sit on my bedside table beside my light therapy alarm clock? 

But alas, I am a grown up and I need to steer my own ship, even if I consistently get lots of help navigating. Those words, "You are human being, not a human doing" offer me a direction when I slip into old, dysfunctional patterns. We all need time and place to slow down, to settle, to be in the present moment. It is why I have to do yoga every day. If I didn't, I would live in an almost constant state of fighting the "doing" voices. I need the guidance of my teachers, my postures, my focused breath to coax me into stillness, to remind me that being is the state I was born into, my natural homeostasis.

Doing is the state I have grown into. I am still working out this stuff. For example, would I find my yoga practice, my meditation, as satisfying if I wasn't such a doer? I'm not sure. I do know that I am programmed high on the doer spectrum and I am glad to have found a path that nurtures my origins as a human being. This time the magic reminding words came from a Celestial Oracle named Donna, but I am grateful to hear similar messages every day from the teachers in my life who remind me to "slow down", "be still", and "quiet my mind."