Action

Action based on ambitions and ideals disconnect the self from its innate dynamism. The activity is bound to be somewhat unauthentic, for regardless of how near the ideals and ambitions are to the actual condition of the self, they cannot be identical to its condition in the moment because they are based on structures most likely laid down in early childhood. In fact, activity based on ambitions and ideals is a kind of substitute activity, reflecting our inability to contact the real dynamism at the center of the self. (The Point of Existence, pg 88)

Just as identity is the center of initiative and the source of motivation for action, individual entity is the executor of action. More accurately, it is the total self which acts, but action requires two necessary elements; the first is the motivating center out of which arises the direction for action, and the second is the structure of functional capacities needed for carrying out the action. (The Point of Existence, pg 121).

That's the first thing I want to establish: everyone does what he believes at that moment to be the good. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 132)

To really understand what action is, the best place to begin is with your inner experience. You neither accept nor reject it; you don't push it away, you don't hold onto it. It is what is happening, and that's it. You take no position, nor do you hold any attitude about it. Since you are not making it happen and it is not your choice, the best approach to your inner life is not to try to change it. The ego is always trying to change things, and if you observe your inner experience, you will see that you are in constant turmoil trying to change one thing or another. You try to relax, you try to quiet your mind, you try to make yourself feel better or make yourself feel worse. You are always interfering, trying to make something happen other than what is actually happening. You can only do this if you believe you have your own separate world and you can make things happen the way you want, while really, it is not your choice at all. You are alive today not because you want to be, but because the universe wants you to be. If you experience anger today, it's because the universe chooses to. If you experience love today, it's because the universe decides to. (Facets of Unity, pg 121)

Action and identity

Usually the action of the personality separates our mind from our Being, and then we want to figure out what to do and what not to do. So we are not allowing Being to actually act. Yet it is acting all the time. The majority of our actions are done by Being. If you allow your identity to be Being, you'll see that Being is not separate from the body or even from the mind, instead it is a very nature of the body, the very nature of the body, even the very nature of the personality. In Being there is no boundary, no separation. That means the action is coming from the ground, the source, Being, so it is real doing and involves all levels at once, from the bottom up. It's as if Being radiates from the bottom of a lake and creates a wave that radiates throughout the whole thing. Everything is involved -- mind, body, spirit, emotion -- and is happening in one direction. And that direction, when Being is focused in one place, is what we call essential identity, the essential self. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 189)

Personality, being and action

Being knows how to do things with grace, with beauty, with power, with effectiveness, with precision. However, Being does not know about how to fix a window. You’re true self has nothing to do with windows; it does not know about windows. It does not know how to water plants. That is where your consciousness, your personality, comes in. But when you are watering plants, Being certainly knows how to do it in the best way, in terms of the sense, of how to hold yourself, how much effort to exert, how to do things in such a way that you feel integrated within yourself. Being shows you how to manifest the beauty outside. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 84-85)

Everyone is in action in Being all the time. That is why it is said that if you are willing to be aligned to the supreme will, there is no end to the plenitude that you can achieve in your life. This is because your action is the most correct action, the action that goes with the rest of existence, and it can only benefit everything and everybody involved including you at all levels. It is the most unifying action. It is hard to know the action of Being, if a person doesn't know Being, is not Being. We have only the personality action, which is reactivity, as a model. But when we know Being, it is possible to know doing. So, the doing presupposes Being, and doing is like the action of a tiger. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 190)

Unity of action

When we see the unity of action, as in the dimension of dynamic presence we recognize that it is not a doing, but simply the manifesting or creation of all Reality as one unified fabric. This unified fabric is always unfolding, and unfolding in a pattern. We discern some of the dynamic elements of this pattern and call them action, behavior, and so on. In reality, there is no such thing as one person moving her arm, nor even God moving the person’s arm. The expression "movement of the arm" is simply a convention that abstracts out a particular subpattern from the universal dynamic pattern and reifies it as such movement. (Inner Journey Home, pg 361)

Action and presence

When you are in the moment, being the presence that is unfolding, that unfoldment determines your actions, and your actions will feel just right, right to the point, because you are not separate from your Being and your action is completely unified with the presence itself. Your actions then are nothing but the unfoldment of Being. Since presence is everything and all of you, it is not as though you are moving your hand from here to there: presence is unfolding in this moment and in this moment and in this moment. The presence has unfolded like successive frames in a film. When this is your state, you feel like you are right on the mark, knowing what you are doing and where you are going. What happens within you and through your actions occurs spontaneously, naturally, effortlessly, because you are not separate from who you are. The moment you say "I don't want to go that way," or "It would be better this way," you are separating yourself from the presence that is unfolding. When you do that, your action does not have a sense of exactness or of appropriateness; it does not feel "on." (Facets of Unity, pg 179)