The Spiritual Practice Of Minding Our Own Business

   

When the world is spinning off-center, a very deep spiritual practice is minding our own business.

 

Yes, that sounds self-centered. But who is the Self, and what does it really mean to be "centered?"

 

During desperate times, we can externalize and project our anxiety by becoming busy-bodies, crusaders, trying to save the world and solve everyone else's problems but our own. Here's a humble suggestion: we might better respond to the chaos, not by minding other people's business, but minding our own, very lovingly, very carefully, very gently.

 

Minding our own business can profoundly affect others, like a flower that enhances the whole garden by releasing its peculiar essence, its unique beauty. When we learn to be wholly authentically ourselves, we radiate the quality of wholeness to others. Wholeness is a resonant field, as real as gravity or electromagnetism. The energy of a centered soul can center a community. This is not just the work of a Guru or a Master, it is your work and mine.

This work of centering can happen whether we are changing someone's tire, or washing our children's clothes, or keeping accounts for a mom and pop business. The outer form of our work is not as important as the inner radiance.

 

When time itself is spiraling out of control, our primary vocation is Being, not doing. This work happens deep beneath the busy-ness of the marketplace, the chaos of the streets, in a field of silence where Christ-consciousness repairs, re-weaves, the tattered threads of community.

 

This work is Alignment, which is another name for Yoga. Not alignment with religious and political ideals, imposed from above by some authority, but alignment with your own Self, your heartbeat, your breath, the very cells of your body. Your alignment generates the field where others can more gracefully come into alignment. Alignment is infectious.

 

Sometimes, you do all that you can for the world simply by returning to your aching heart.

Sometimes, it is enough just to be you. 200% you. Inwardly and outwardly. This means, being the same person to yourself that you would be to others. Which isn't as simple as it sounds. It's the work of a life time. Your business.

 

Photo: by dearest friend, Aile Shebar