Being in the “Doing” and Loving It

“When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the cir­cle of cre­ation is com­pleted inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal every­thing in sight.” –Michael Bridge

I love this quote. I love the sim­plic­ity of it. I love how it boils down the nuances, sub­tle or not. Live your heart’s desire it says, and all will be well.

Only, you and I both know; there’s a lot more to it than that.

I co-founded a busi­ness with a friend 2 years ago. It’s an inspi­ra­tional, con­cep­tual card and gift com­pany. It was birthed from a vision my part­ner saw in her mind; a sad per­son stand­ing alone in the mid­dle of nowhere and some­one on the back of a cart hand­ing them a small piece of paper with a note on it. The note is read, the strangers con­nect with their eyes and they smile and some­thing shifts ever so slightly in the universe.

My busi­ness part­ner and I are both moth­ers. Both con­cerned about the future of our world for our children’s sake. We wanted to cre­ate some­thing that would make a dif­fer­ence. We decided that the vision was about con­nect­ing peo­ple. It was about ban­ish­ing lone­li­ness and cre­at­ing a deeper space for kind­ness among friends and strangers.

Our hands began to do the work of our hearts. We trans­lated that vision into a prod­uct line and at first we felt the “cir­cle of cre­ation” was com­plete. We’d had the vision, we’d used our pow­ers of imag­i­na­tion and all kinds of skill sets we never knew we had and cre­ated an actual phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the vision.

We felt at that point that some­thing mag­i­cal would take place. That the doors of our souls would open and love would heal all, mean­ing we’d be val­i­dated, we’d be happy, we’d be fulfilled…but then we had to con­cretize our prod­uct in the mar­ket­place. We had to have a Face­book account, we had to learn to use Twit­ter and Hoot­suite and find a web designer. We needed to find legions of peo­ple to sell it for us all over the coun­try. We needed to go to gift shows and write busi­ness plans and learn to cre­ate arti­cles for our­selves for PR purposes.

Some­one told us that if we cre­ated a cou­ple of new prod­ucts they’d sell even bet­ter then the first one. So we cre­ated them. We put our hearts and souls into that and found print­ers and eco-friendly pack­ag­ing and design­ers and thought, OK when we get these to mar­ket, the cir­cle will be com­plete and our souls will fly open and love will step forth and heal every­thing in sight. WooHooo!

But then there was the blog and the sales reps and the need­ing to get a national mag­a­zine and the new idea that would change the world…

And we real­ized, along the way, in fits and starts…that there wasn’t any­thing out­side our­selves that was going to sud­denly show us that we’d made it or that we’d reached some great plateau of ser­vice where there was a band play­ing and a rib­bon to be run through. It would never be that way. We would never be “at the end.” It’s a jour­ney, (thank good­ness) not a destination.

Just about that time, I went back and looked at that quote again…and I saw some­thing I hadn’t before;

“When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the cir­cle of cre­ation is com­pleted inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal every­thing in sight.”

And it hit me, like a ton of bricks; it’s in the doing that the cir­cle is complete-not in the com­ple­tion. Just in the doing. Think of that! It’s the heart­felt inten­tion and the doing that closes the cir­cle. There is no race, there is no final­ity, there is no “win­ning.” The doing is all that needs to be done for the reward of healing…just the doing.

And the heal­ing isn’t like a fire­work dis­play, it’s bits and pieces here and there that add up to a life well lived. It’s an e-mail that says, “Keep up the good work,” or a sales rep that tells us “I wish I had more clients who stood for some­thing like you all.” It’s the will­ing­ness of oth­ers to step up and help make our dreams come true. It’s the smile you see on some­one face when you hand then one of your very own prod­ucts and you know deep down inside, you made their day. The heal­ing comes from the inside out.

“Doing,” at first, requires only vision and hope. But “doing” con­tin­u­ally, regard­less of the level of encour­age­ment or grat­i­fi­ca­tion, requires faith and a solid­ity of pur­pose and mis­sion. It requires being present to the moment you are in and a know­ing that you are enough.

If some­one had told me only 2 short years ago the kinds of spir­i­tual lessons I’d be learn­ing as a busi­ness owner, I’d have laughed and said they were crazy. But I have found that if I can be present, truly present, in the “doing” that my heart is happy, that my soul sings, the cir­cle of cre­ation is already com­plete and my heal­ing is inevitable.

by Elisa Van Arnam

Elisa Van Arnam is a wife, mother, writer and co-founder of SoulKu; an inspi­ra­tional con­cep­tual card com­pany ded­i­cated to help­ing peo­ple BE THE CHANGE. Elisa is also the co-author of One Namaste a Day, a SoulKu blog­ging adven­ture about see­ing the light in others.

Elisa Van Arnam

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