When in Doubt, Do Nothing

Perhaps you can tell by now that one of my struggles in general is getting myself to do things.  One of my main strategies in life has been to just wait things out—whatever the feeling, desire, inclination, if I just wait long enough it will go away.  So last week, I was in a little bit of a state of inner turmoil about a certain situation.  Everyone knows this place—getting tossed back and forth with all the questions that don’t really have simple kinds of answers but mostly serve just to get a person upset and confused.  Pretty soon I’m feeling bad and thinking that I need to FIGURE THIS OUT so I can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  Now, while I’m sort of paralyzed by urgency, I get hit with the “you never do anything about anything, you just wait around” finger pointing.  Why is that voice in my head so mean?

This is what we call in yoga “chitta vrtti,” the movements or fluctuations of the mindstuff.  According to Patanjali, yoga is the restraining, directing or stilling of these chitta vrttis.  When this happens, we can see things clearly, including our own true nature.  (This is all in the first couple verses of the Yoga Sutra).  It’s often compared to a lake and since the image works so well, I’ll use it here.  When the surface of the lake is full of waves, it is hard to see the bottom—the waves stir up sand and sediment and make things muddy.  But when the lake is still, the water is clear and we can see the bottom easily.

So in the midst of my storm of chitta vrttis, I heard someone say, “When in doubt, do nothing.”  I am sure I have heard this before and it just went right past me with an “of course” (because it fits so nicely with my habitual behavior patterns).  But this time, I heard it differently.  It doesn’t mean that doing nothing is preferable, it means that WHEN YOU ARE IN DOUBT, it’s not a good time to do something.  I really could feel the truth of how when I am all confused or panicked, I’m just guessing at what to do and trying to use the very mind that is creating the confusion to figure out the answer to the confusion.  This is going to add another whole mess of chitta vrttis to ripple out across the lake and stir up more trouble.  This is the time to sit still.  By sitting still, I can allow all the muck to settle and eventually begin to see more clearly. 

The real kicker is that while my mind is getting me all riled up about doing something about a situation, the main thing I really need to do something about is my mind.  The confusion and doubt is an entirely separate thing from the actual situation—it’s just what my mind is doing.  Oh mind, just stick to the things you are useful for, like adding numbers, reading words, remembering how to drive a car and so many other harmless and beneficial things—you don’t need another job.  You’re fired.