Here at COR, we’ve been looking at taking action for the whole month of May. We used the Buddhist term “Right Action” as a way to describe what kind of action helps us to integrate internal changes, insights and awakenings into our day to day life.
To wrap up for the month, I’d like to take this theme a little bit further and suggest that Right Action at its best is a call to a higher motivation for our behavior.
Recently, I have been reading Marianne Williamson’s latest book “From Tears to Triumph.” I highly recommend it for anyone would like a new, deep and transformative viewpoint on suffering. In this book she describes her take on the Eightfold Path—one of the fundamental principles of Buddhist philosophy. And one aspect of the Eightfold Path is Right Action.
She says that in today’s self-absorbed, individualistic and secular culture, we can easily come to the conclusion to think of what to do only in terms of: “What shall I do that will get me what I want?”
Unfortunately, this can also be the case in a lot of self-help and transformational work, such as in ours. If we are not careful, everything evolves around our own belly button. My hurts,
If that is our only motivation to be on the path of transformation, we will soon end up more miserable than when we started this journey. In my many years of being on that path myself and witnessing thousands of others, I have come to see that the more anyone of us is just about “me,” the more unhappy we become.
The kind of Right Action the Buddhists, Marianne Williamson and all of us at COR would like to invite you to is the action where we go from the little me to the BIG WE. The question then becomes: “How can my action be for the benefit of all beings? How can everyone win through my action?”
That kind of Right Action truly is a call to a higher motivation! It means that there will be things we do for no other reason than they are the right things to do. Not because we’ll get something out of it, and not because other people will know about it and applaud it. We do it because it is in alignment with integrity, honesty, goodness, love and truth.
And sometimes this will hurt. It will be uncomfortable, embarrassing, inconvenient, time-consuming and even terrifying. It sometimes means apologizing to someone who we’ve harmed, even if they are the last person we want to apologize to. Or going somewhere which is the last place we want to go to.
Right Action doesn’t always feel good! Sometimes what we are called to do actually feels bad, at least to our ego structure. And yet in our deepest heart of hearts, we know it’s the right thing to do and that it will ultimately deliver us to true freedom.
It’s not the kind of freedom to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it, which is the popular viewpoint these days, but the kind of freedom to do what is truly loving, good, honest and beautiful.
I know I might have pushed the envelope here a bit, but at COR we are on a mission to help you become a loving, engaged, generous, active agent for positive change in the world, where you live an embodied life of love and service to the world. We want to support people to use their open, healed and healthy hearts to bring their gifts into the world, creating a cycle of positive change. And we do believe that those kinds of people make the happiest, most fulfilled and alive human beings!
So, dear ones, is there some action step in your life that you’ve been postponing that you know is the right thing to do? Is there someone in your life you need to apologize to? Someone who is waiting to hear that you forgive him or her? Some relationship that needs mending? Some project you promised someone you’d do but have been slacking on? Some way you know you could show up more at work or with your family and friends?
If the answer is yes, I invite you to JUST DO IT! It might not feel great right away but it will eventually. And please take a moment to share it here with us. Your share might just be what someone else needs to hear.
Happy “Right Actioning!”
All my love,
Britta