You Are Not the Doer

Notes from Inside a Life

After more than fifty years of trying to steer this life, I’ve come to a quiet and unshakable conclusion: I’m not the one driving.

This isn’t a belief. It’s an observation.

After a long enough time inside this particular personality, this body, this life—watching how things arise, how they dissolve, how little control I’ve ever really had over either—I’ve gathered enough empirical evidence to say with some confidence: I don’t know what’s best. And I never did.

And yet—something does.

Something moves this whole thing with a kind of precision I couldn’t begin to replicate. My breath is taken and given again without my permission. People show up at the exact moment I need them, even when I didn’t know I was in need. The body continues its sacred routines without requiring my input. The timing of events—delays, disruptions, reversals—all seem to unfold not against me, but for me. Like some invisible intelligence is custom-scripting my growth through a sequence of lived teachings.

I’m not talking about fate in the simplistic sense.

I’m talking about an ecological view of consciousness.

A living, interdependent system that seems to know what it’s doing far better than I do.

This is not a new idea. The Bhagavad Gita said it plainly:

“You have the right to action, but not to the fruits of action.”

“He who sees action in inaction, and inaction in action, is truly wise.”

“All actions are performed by nature. The self, deluded by ego, thinks, ‘I am the doer.’”

When I read these verses now, they don’t sound abstract or ancient. They sound like a field note from my own inner experience.

There’s a humility that comes with this.

But also a tremendous relief.

Because I see now that what we call free will might not be about changing our path, but choosing how we relate to it. Whether we resist or relax. Whether we identify with the passing form, or stay aware as the witness within it.

What unfolds in a single life—this one included—cannot be traced back to any single cause. Each moment is shaped by an untraceable weave of influences, conditions, and timing that stretch beyond the horizon of personal choice. Like an apple that can only ripen in season, each life is bound by the seed’s original imprint and the ecology surrounding it.

And so I no longer feel the need to push the wheel.

I sit with it. I watch it turn.

And I allow myself to be moved, knowing the motion is not mine but part of something so vast and intelligent that all I can do is inhale my witness and exhale a bow.