One thing that’s happened to me due to falling into a habit of resting whenever I need to – this is harder to do than speak of – is that tasks take longer to complete. The follow up is a little slow. Instead of doing it yesterday – as I was won’t to do – I do it the day, day after tomorrow. Yes, procrastination is, I have come to realize, not the enemy I had always thought it was, but a friend. Okay, I know, I know, everything is relative, relevant only from the perspective and the angle that you are coming from. For those whose bane is procrastination, this idea won’t do (See blow).  It would be too large a shoe for the foot that needs to get off its ass and begin its journey with vigor and vim. But for me procrastination is a boon. I was too much in control, too on top of things. And whenever I lapsed, I felt out of control and chastised myself for it. Deviations were rare and I had become a machine that thought it was in control. Or rather, wanted to be entirely in control, at least as far as time was concerned. Thank the universe that things we want are not always given to us, for in that lacuna between wanting and not getting lies our salvation.

For me procrastinating has become the space/ time in which God works. Jallaludin Rumi, whose stories I have recreated in my new book, PILGRIMAGE TO PARADISE, SUFI TALES FROM RUMI (actually this is the Penguin India title; The Mandala, USA, one is RUMI’S TALES FROM THE SILK ROAD, A PILGRIMAGE TO PARADSIE) says:

Believers are the laziest folk

in the two worlds,

because they get their harvest

without plowing

since god is working for them.

• • • MATHNAWI, VI, 4886

I have often found that by procrastinating, things I thought I needed to do didn’t need to get done, anyway. This has happened often enough for me to take is as evidence that I am on the right track. If your soul is rebelling against doing something, trust it. But if you feel that procrastinating is something your soul is rebelling against – you always know when you are feeling all clogged up and self-flagellatory (there’s no such word) at the thought of something not done, then I have a wonderful technique to help you out.

Judy Bernstein wrote in response to my previous blog: “I’m a big failure at rest, and I’m eager for your one on procrastination, wondering if you’ll find me a cure or validate it. I’m wondering how I can fail at rest and succeed with procrastination at the same time, they seem in opposition to each other!”

First it is important to know why YOU procrastinate. I know why I do it: I have exaggerated ideas of how much I should get done ALL AT ONCE, how PERFECT it should be when I begin, HOW LONG I should

work on it, etc, that I intimidate myself into inaction. But I have found that when I am procrastinating (beyond fulfilling a need to rest), a simple thought gets me going. I tell myself, I will only work on it for five or ten minutes, max. I won’t expect myself to get it done all at once, or expect that it will be brilliant, I will simply do it, doodle and scribble and get started with some incoherent statements. This resolution to underachieve always puts me in a spirit of relaxation and play. Instead of thinking of it as work, I think of it as play. And over and over again, this technique has worked for me.

I think, also, that several other factors are at play with procrastination, the primary one being lack of trust in oneself and in the universe. Perhaps my next entry shall be on that.

When we trust, things happen magically. This does not at all mean that we don’t work for them in whatever way we can, but that our work becomes something we do not for our self-aggrandizement, but worship. One has to do one’s due diligence, of course. It’s not what one does but HOW one does it that becomes the key here. Guru Nanak , the first Guru of the Sikhs, is big on ‘Sehaj.’ Easy. I like easy. Things are hard only when

• we are supposed to quit doing it (like me and my teaching job)
• we are doing it with the wrong attitude
• we are striving too hard
• the ego is at the helm, steering the course into ways we WANT to go, instead of the way we need to go.

To get at the truth of yourself, you have to know yourself. And you can know yourself (if that is ever entirely possible – it has been the endeavor of yogis and philosophers of all ages) if you look at yourself honestly. Ask yourself: how important is it for me to do this thing that I am not doing? Am I meant to do this? Can I live with myself without doing it? Can I live without doing it? Can I live happily without doing it? Am I really and truly meant to be doing something else? Do I think I should be doing it because that is what others do? Because that is what others want me to do? Why should I be doing it? How miserable do I want to be? How happy do I want to be? Where does my bliss lie?

HAVE YOU OBSERVED TODAY?

Posted by kamla Sep 2nd 2009

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