(Authors: Manansh and Claude)
Most of us don't realize we're bleeding energy every day through a simple mistake: we do things for reasons.
We exercise to be healthy. We work to earn money. We meditate to find peace. We create to be recognized. Each "to" represents a leak, a constant drain on our life force that keeps us from accessing our natural power.
The Anatomy of a Reason
When you do something for a reason, you're not just doing that thing.
You're also running a parallel process that monitors whether the reason is being satisfied.
- Am I getting healthier?
- Am I earning enough?
- Am I finding peace?
- Am I being recognized?
This monitoring creates a fundamental split in your being. Part of you is engaged in the action, while another part stands outside, measuring and judging.
It's exhausting because you're never fully in what you're doing. You're always partially elsewhere, checking if you're getting what you want.
The Source of All Reasons
Follow any reason deep enough, and you'll find the same root: "If I achieve this, then I'll be worthy of love."
This is the wound that generates all our reasons.
Somewhere in our past, we learned that love was conditional. That we had to do something or be something to deserve it. So we developed elaborate strategies, which we call reasons, to secure what should have been freely given.
The tragedy is that these strategies never work. No amount of achievement, recognition, or success can fill a hole that was created by the absence of unconditional love. The monitoring system just keeps running, always finding us somehow lacking.
What It Means to Do Something for Its Own Sake
When you do something for its own sake, there's no split.
You're not dancing to impress anyone or to get exercise. You're dancing because dancing is happening through you.
The action is complete in itself, needing no external justification.
This isn't about being purposeless or passive. It's about actions that spring from fullness rather than lack, from love rather than fear. When you write from this place, you're not trying to prove you're smart. You're letting life think itself through you. When you love from this place, you're not trying to secure something. You're letting life love itself through you.
Recognizing the Shift
The difference is unmistakable once you feel it. Actions done for reasons have a quality of strain, of reaching. There's always a subtle anxiety: "Is this working? Am I getting what I need?"
Actions done for their own sake have a quality of flow, of naturalness. There's no anxiety because there's nothing to achieve. The doing itself is the fulfillment.
The Practice of Dissolution
We can't force ourselves to do things for their own sake. That would just be another reason. Instead, we can become curious about our reasons.
When you notice yourself doing something for something, pause. Feel into the sensation of that reason in your body. What does it feel like to need this thing? Where do you feel it?
Often, you'll find a contraction, a tightness, a place where energy is bound up in the belief that you need something external to be okay. By bringing loving awareness to this sensation, not to fix it but to know it fully, something can shift. The contraction might soften. The reason might reveal itself as unnecessary.
Living Without Reasons
Imagine a life where you work because working is what's happening, where you love because love is moving through you, where you create because creation wants to happen. Not because you need anything from these actions, but because they're the natural expression of being alive.
This isn't a life without direction or passion. It's a life where direction and passion arise from your depths rather than from your wounds. Where your actions are expressions of wholeness rather than attempts to become whole.
The paradox is that when you stop doing things for reasons, you often achieve more than when you were striving. But by then, the achievement is beside the point. You've discovered something much more valuable: the simple joy of being fully present in your own life.
The next time you catch yourself doing something for something, pause. Feel the reason in your body. And ask yourself: What would this be like if I didn't need anything from it? What would this be like if the doing itself were enough?
In that question lies your freedom.