Being and Doing
I just came back from a stint at a Sivananda Ashram, where I have been going for the past 15 years. I kept a very basic lifestyle for 9 days: tent living, no stimulants (alcohol, caffeine), vegetarian diet, daily regimen of 8 hours of meditation, chanting, yoga, and workshops from various of the world’s wisdom traditions. It was a beautiful ritual of cleansing and reconnecting with my depth - a grounding back into the essence of just being - embodying a state of accentuated awareness with a clear mind and open heart.
In 2023, where would you like to be on the spectrum of being versus doing? 100% being may be a monk who primarily focuses on connecting with the inner Wisdom and Heart, and whose daily ritual maximizes for this experience - like my time at the Ashram. 100% doing - well, we all know very well what that looks like in our modern life. We charge forward to accomplish, we live predominantly in the mind through a conceptual interaction with the world, our heart is often hard to access, and our intuition is clouded as we are constantly checking things off to-do lists and feeling like we are behind. Eckhart Tolle, one of the most impactful teachers in my life, describes this seduction to do as futile if not grounded in being - almost like climbing very quickly but up the wrong ladder. See the quote below.
We are each inclined differently on this dimension. Type A entrepreneurs, for example, may be 80/20, doing/being. Energy healers on the other hand may be 80/20, being/doing. Where are you naturally on this spectrum? Where would you like to shift to this year? What will you build into the way you do life in order to facilitate this transition? Can you build this in, starting this week?
Perhaps this means scheduling your quarterly retreats right now. Perhaps it is committing to a morning ritual before checking the messages on your phone. This may include meditation, breath-work/Pranayama, yoga, listening to a talk by a favorite teacher, or a morning workout. Perhaps it is finding and signing up for a workshop that helps you address your inner growth. Or it could be finally taking the time to find the right therapist to help you address a specific psycho/emotional challenge that you’ve become aware of.
Here at Manifestations, we are mindful of the way we run the fund on this spectrum, deciding when to partner with and help companies (Doing) while staying present and connected to our intuition and truth (Being). We acknowledge that the human ego is tricky in how it makes its way into everything, sometimes making us too competitive or too greedy. Given that we are investing for both returns (targeting 25% year-over-year returns) and impact, it is very important for us to stay grounded in our healing mission by staying connected in our beingness. We make sure to stay away from tempting wellness companies that may not be in service of true healing - for example, I love the example of botox clinics - not for us!
At the same time, we want to invest in companies that can turn our investors’ dollars into significant impact in the world and so we need to be prudent about not investing in great healing missions that we don’t feel would succeed at a significant scale. To learn more about this careful balance, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
May all our doing emerge from our being.
“Doing is never enough if you neglect Being. The ego knows nothing of Being but believes you will eventually be saved by doing. If you are in the grip of the ego, you believe that by doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough 'doings' to make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. You won't. You will only lose yourself in doing. The entire civilization is losing itself in doing that is not rooted in Being and thus becomes futile.”
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
We recently increased our investment in Choose Your Horizons dba Choose Ketamine, a platform focused on increasing access to and optimizing patient outcomes for healing-oriented psychedelic journeys. The company is scaling quickly and we are grateful to be partners with the great entrepreneurial team that is running it.
I’ll be offering a 6-session meditation series on Zoom, Building a Daily Meditation Practice. Sessions will be Monday and Tuesday mornings from 7:30 am – 8:00 am EST, for 3 weeks beginning Monday, January 16th, 2023. If you’re interested in joining, email me and we can discuss if it is a fit.
We are currently working on our first fund closing - please contact us to be part of this founding group of partners. Charbel@manifestationscapital.com