A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough

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Book: Read A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough for Free Online
Authors: Wayne Muller
Tags: Body; Mind & Spirit, Inspiration & Personal Growth
Impermanence. The fact that all creation is subject to endless change seems inevitablytrue. From the tiniest subatomic particle to the cells in our bodies, from civilizations to the sun, moon, stars, and galaxies, nothing remains as it is, everything is subject to the immutable law of impermanence. So whenever we make a plan and stick to it, at some point we must choose: Either we refuse to acknowledge or accept that radical change has been happening all along, requiring that we adapt to the next right thing, and make changes to our plan, or we keep trying to live in a world that no longer exists.
    Enough is never a static measurement, it is not a guaranteed state or quantity of anything. Our experience of enough is both current and relational. It is about being engaged in a passionate conversation between who we are and what the world has today suddenly become.
    If we do not remain in a current relationship with the world around us, we risk maintaining a course that refuses to be altered or informed in any way by new information or changing conditions. Like a bulldozer paving a straight path through the lush convolutions of the rain forest, we miss endless opportunities for learning, for surprise, for awe, for wonder, and for the exhilaration of discovery.
    Simply put, we play out the curse of a decided life.
    We will live with choices made in a different time, when we were a different person. How many of us at forty are still pursuing the dream we built when we were twenty-five? How many of us at sixty are striving to complete the goals of our forty-year-old predecessor? If we do not allow what we know about ourselves and the world to change, our world will feel more fragile and empty, we will get smaller and more protectiveof our life as we know it, we will become increasingly isolated, more wary of any sense of growth or change, reaping only the scarcity of a shrinking life.
    Enough is born in relationship. Vital relationships are, by nature, erotic. They are sensual, in that they are informed by all our senses, our openness to see, taste, touch, smell everything with a willingness to be taken, to be surprised, swept off our feet. We participate in an erotic relationship whenever we engage the world with full sensual awareness—for ex ample, whenever we bite into an apple. By itself, an apple has no taste, no piquant flavor of late summer. Our mouth, lips, and tongue, our taste buds by themselves have no taste of apple. The magnificent flavor of a crisp apple freshly picked by hand comes alive the instant the apple enters our mouth. One small bite, and a sudden eruption of juices, tongue, saliva, taste buds, and apple flesh create the necessary erotic intercourse that sets free the awesome taste, the flavorful wonder of apple.
    Just as we meet our choice points as uneaten fruit, it is only in our tasting fully the texture, fragrance, sense of how we are, who we are, in this moment, everything we could not possibly ever know until now—not yesterday, not tomorrow, not next year, but only in this moment—that we can fully know what is true, beautiful, necessary, right.
    This is an erotic life. It is a dangerous life, because it refuses to be predicted, planned, controlled, evaluated. It is radical, in stark opposition to the way the culture presumes we absolutely must live in this world. It is dangerous, because we must finally abandon the comforting illusion that we can in any way control the outcome.
    How we choose this moment will change the way we live. This smallest of things, this mustard seed, this single pearl of great price, will change our life, our relationships, our happiness, our sense of whether we feel filled or emptied. It will, in the end, change everything. When we can discern what is most true, inspired by our deepest love for all involved, our decisions are likely to land us in moment after moment of easy sufficiency.
    How do we know if we are choosing well or poorly? Our problem begins when we believe

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