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Published by Sentient Publications
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
Doing Nothing, the spiritual classic by Steven Harrison translated into twelve languages, offers relief to the weary seeker. In a world that's always encouraging us to do more, Harrison invites us to make the simple yet radical choice to do nothing.
Discard your ideologies and dogmas, your gurus and ritual, argues Harrison in this caustic exploration of our psycho spiritual obsessions. The solution lies in not seeking a solution. Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search is for those who have found themselves religiously following practices that have not fundamentally changed their lives: new therapies, ancient meditations, exotic religions, or old-time religion. It encourages them to find the truths of life through the simple act of stopping the search.
What do you do after you've tried everything to find enlightenment or happiness? "Do nothing," writes Steven Harrison. "As it turns out, nothing is a surprisingly active place, but it is here that we discover who and what we are."
Discard your ideologies and dogmas, your gurus and ritual, argues Harrison in this caustic exploration of our psycho spiritual obsessions. The solution lies in not seeking a solution. Doing Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search is for those who have found themselves religiously following practices that have not fundamentally changed their lives: new therapies, ancient meditations, exotic religions, or old-time religion. It encourages them to find the truths of life through the simple act of stopping the search.
What do you do after you've tried everything to find enlightenment or happiness? "Do nothing," writes Steven Harrison. "As it turns out, nothing is a surprisingly active place, but it is here that we discover who and what we are."
Excerpt
Love, Emptiness and Energy
We often feel that we are not loved enough. This is a reflection of the fact that we do not love, that we cannot find our capacity to love.
Love is not something that we do to one another. There is no object in love and no subject.
Love is what is present when there is no object-subject, when there are not two.
This feeling of not being loved is in fact the need for love, the need for a cessation of the divided world in which our egos exist.
This cessation does not come about through someone loving us.
It does not come about by us loving another.
Love is not causal. It cannot be created, it cannot be practiced, it cannot be taught.
We can deeply inspect what we are, and in that we can see the structure of division which is inherent to thought, memory and ego. We can cease. We can be still.
Love, which is the very energy and expression of life, is whole. Thought cannot approach this energy. Words cannot capture it.
This energy of wholeness cannot be used, or divided, or squandered.
It is us all, and all of us.
This is not the answer to our question, it is the question fallen silent.
Having seen the nature of our thought and ego, we may pass through this gateway into silence.
We have left a world of fragments, and entered into something which is whole, but is empty. If there is no namer, then there are no names. If there is no subject, there is no object. This is emptiness.
There is tremendous energy here because there is nothing to dissipate it. There is great creativity, because there is nothing to restrict it.
Though the psychological self, the ego-center has gone silent, there is nothing lost. Out of this vast expansion of quiet, the energy of life expresses.
The nature of this energy, because it is beyond cause and effect, is unknown. It cannot be contained by concept, or manipulated by thought or used in any way.
We are not the experiencers or explorers of this energy. We are this energy: expressing, exploring, manifesting and disintegrating.
We often feel that we are not loved enough. This is a reflection of the fact that we do not love, that we cannot find our capacity to love.
Love is not something that we do to one another. There is no object in love and no subject.
Love is what is present when there is no object-subject, when there are not two.
This feeling of not being loved is in fact the need for love, the need for a cessation of the divided world in which our egos exist.
This cessation does not come about through someone loving us.
It does not come about by us loving another.
Love is not causal. It cannot be created, it cannot be practiced, it cannot be taught.
We can deeply inspect what we are, and in that we can see the structure of division which is inherent to thought, memory and ego. We can cease. We can be still.
Love, which is the very energy and expression of life, is whole. Thought cannot approach this energy. Words cannot capture it.
This energy of wholeness cannot be used, or divided, or squandered.
It is us all, and all of us.
This is not the answer to our question, it is the question fallen silent.
Having seen the nature of our thought and ego, we may pass through this gateway into silence.
We have left a world of fragments, and entered into something which is whole, but is empty. If there is no namer, then there are no names. If there is no subject, there is no object. This is emptiness.
There is tremendous energy here because there is nothing to dissipate it. There is great creativity, because there is nothing to restrict it.
Though the psychological self, the ego-center has gone silent, there is nothing lost. Out of this vast expansion of quiet, the energy of life expresses.
The nature of this energy, because it is beyond cause and effect, is unknown. It cannot be contained by concept, or manipulated by thought or used in any way.
We are not the experiencers or explorers of this energy. We are this energy: expressing, exploring, manifesting and disintegrating.
Product Details
- Publisher: Sentient Publications (November 15, 2023)
- Length: 132 pages
- ISBN13: 9781591813088
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Raves and Reviews
Harrison's uncompromising voice is a welcome companion on our journey toward being fully human.
– Yoga Journal
In his lively introduction, Harrison tells us how he 'left the security of an Ivy League university...and sought out every mystic, seer, and magician I could find.' He spent 'long periods in India and the Himalayas searching, contemplating, being,' and finally finding—after years of frustration—that 'it was all useless.' Then, in a calm moment of self-enquiry, he discovered that it was him as a seeker that was causing his discord. He saw that the 'very grasping for an answer' was taking him away from any marginal peace that he may have been occasionally experiencing. Shortly thereafter, Harrison's apparent 'me' passed into 'the vastness, the magic' that was his own, ever-present awareness. In this handsome and penetrating collection of 20-plus essays, Harrison speaks passionately about various aspects of that vastness. The chapters include The Collapse of Self, Language and Reality, The Crisis of Change, Teachers: Authority, Fascism, and Love, The Nature of Thought, and Health, Disease, and Aging. The chapter entitled The Myth of Enlightenment deserves an extended quote. The slashes are meant to indicate a new paragraph in the original text: 'We will spend a great deal of time looking for this enlightenment. But looking is useless, because it is not there./We can sit on cushions facing walls, dance in ecstasy, pray, chant. We can travel the world looking for this enlightenment. We can find the greatest of gurus and the most secret doctrines. It is useless.../Enlightenment is a myth because the self is a myth.' The author has also penned the very fine What's Next After Now?: Post-Spirituality and the Creative Life (Sentient Publications, 2005). For Harrison, the expression 'post-spirituality' points (and justly so) to presence itself. And once that presence is recognized, you see how clear and creative you life can truly be.
– Rodney Stevens
Written in disarmingly unpretentious style, this book is a profound inquiry into the nature of humanity.
– Dr. Thomas Szasz, author of The Myth of Mental Illness
Discard your ideologies and dogmas, your gurus and ritual, argues Harrison in this caustic exploration of our psycho spiritual obsessions. The solution lies in not seeking a solution.
A persuasive argument for stopping the perennial search for enlightenment.
– New Age Journal
“There is no way to praise this powerful, extraordinary book sufficiently. The honesty and integrity it calls for are a challenge.”
– JOSEPH CHILTON Pearce, Author of The Biology of Transcendence
“A tour de force by the author and a treat for the reader.”
– THOMAS SZASZ, MD, author of "The Myth of Mental Illness"
“A compelling, thought-provoking adventure into a state of bliss, peace, and love.”
– Jon Mundy, author of Living a Course in Miracles, Author of Awaken to Your Own Call
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Trade Paperback 9781591813088
Published by Sentient Publications
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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