We are human beings, and yet we often put doing so high up on our list of imperatives that we become human doings. The goal of course is to be a human being, doing. But in that order! And this again is the value of a feeling first orientation. For whenever we find ourselves caught up at the doing level in our experience – with the comings and goings of all things fleeting and temporal – the idea of human being doing can come to mind, and give us pause to ask ourselves: Have I become a human doing? Have I forgotten the most basic and important aspect of my existence, namely that I am a human being? If so, then let me stop, right now, and remember: I am a human being. Let me stop and breathe and feel my way back into being; simply being with my breathing from one moment to the next.

Let me stop and remember that I am a human being, and that anything I do can and should issue from this fact. Furthermore, let me remember that all the doing in the world will not deliver me into my being. Rather, it is only an act of will that can bring me back to being. So let me take that act right now, or whenever it is that I find myself lost in the world: the world of busy-ness and doing.

For more on this idea click here.

For a case study that illustrates this point click MELANY.