Human Being or Human Doing?

Recently I was doing a crossword puzzle and one of the clues was "to ___ is human". Immediately, I thought "err" and of course, this was the correct answer. Reflecting on this, I thought...."Really? That's kind of a sad commentary on the human race." I began to wonder what else could go in that blank space. What is it that makes human beings... human?

Most of us spend our lives doing many things, making us "human doings" rather than human beings. We flit from one thing to the next, rarely taking the time to just be. We have a unique ability to be aware of our own "beingness"; however most of us don't tap into it very often. We have this capacity of awareness yet most of us aren't even quite aware of it. It is the dimension of our lives that we find when we take a walk in the woods, or enjoy peaceful time with friends. We crave this feeling, thinking that it comes from the external world, when in actuality it comes from inside, and we have the ability to access it any time.

In our Yoga classes, we begin and end each class with a guided awareness of the body, which helps students tune into this. According to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, when you pull your senses inward, your mind can't be gripped by external things. The guided awareness that we do in class is a way of doing exactly this - grabbing the senses from the external world and drawing them inward. The result of this is a profound feeling of inner peace. It is perhaps the main reason why people say that Yoga is so relaxing. Relaxation is just the outer manifestation of an inner process that happens when you allow yourself to just be.

Imagine if you could live your life in this state all the time...