A Spiritual View Of Procrastination

A Spiritual View Of  Procrastination

Procrastination is an inability to be in one state totally. It's not a problem of a lack of activity, but a lack of consciousness.

There is the thing you want to do, and there is the state of not doing it, which bothers you. You are not totally "doing" - for whatever reason - but you refuse to totally "not do". You are not allowing anything to be real - the doing or the not doing. And you can only move forward from a real place - not from an unreal place.

So if you are not doing, but you don't accept it inside, you become unreal. And then you cannot move out of it. So the first step is to be something, one thing, totally: Either doing or not doing. If you cannot be completely doing, then completely not do. Don't say, "I am not doing but I refuse to accept it, I should be doing." Nothing will come from that, no life can flow from it because it is a barren state. There is no life in it, no consciousness, no presence. It is only a refusal.

So first be real, be something - whatever it is. Then you have something, instead of having nothing. "To him who has, more shall be given," is a phrase in the Bible, which is really metaphysical instruction. The other half of the verse is, "From him who has not, even what he has shall be taken." It means if you refuse to accept - either doing or not doing, totally - you have nothing and this nothing will grow and eat up the rest of your life with disconnection.

So be someone who has. If you are procrastinating, unable to do, let go of the unreal and let the not doing be real. Be, live in, and experience the not doing completely. Then you are alive, in the real sense. There is nothing you are fighting; you are integrated, one with life. You are whole, not fragmented. This life can then move, it has its own activity, which is the nature of life: Activity, expression. Real life always moves, expands, expresses. It does not need forcing.

Then out of this life a burst of movement will come; you will do what you wanted to do, but it will be greater, more vital, than what you could have planned. It will be genius instead of intellect. Maybe it takes three days instead of three hours to get going - but the result will more than make up for the apparent loss of time. Genius will give you a book in two weeks that you could not have written in two months using only intellect.