God Doesn’t Want You to Be Productive—God Wants You to Be Available
Sacred usefulness begins where the hustle finally stops.
Let’s be honest. Hustle culture has slipped into the spiritual life like a fox who learned to quote scripture. People talk about “bearing fruit” like it requires grinding their soul into mulch. They talk about “showing up for God” like the Divine is standing there with a stopwatch. No wonder everyone feels exhausted and vaguely ashamed. They are running a race God never started. The deeper wisdom traditions point in the opposite direction. God doesn’t need your hustle. God needs a space to move through you. Presence is that space. Availability is the doorway. Everything else is spiritual calories burned with no nourishment.
The Ego Loves Productivity Because Productivity Feels Like Control
Productivity is the ego’s favorite sacrament. It is measurable. It is impressive. It is externally validated. Productivity lets the ego say, “See, I matter. Look how much I’ve done.” But presence has no scoreboard. Availability has no metrics. The soul does not give out gold stars. Consciousness is not building a resume.
This is why the ego resists surrender. Surrender makes it unemployed.
God is not the CEO of your spiritual accomplishments. God is the ground of being that becomes accessible the moment you stop trying to become worthy. Kabir Helminski calls this the “quality of attention that allows presence to appear.” Cynthia frames it as learning to live from the deeper mind of Christ, the indwelling awareness that does not need to hustle to justify itself.
The ego says, “Do more.”
Presence says, “Be here.”
God says, “Finally, someone I can actually work with.”
Being Is Not Laziness. Being Is Contact with Reality.
The modern world treats stillness as neglect. Rest is suspicious. Silence is suspicious. Not striving is suspicious. People have been conditioned to believe that a quiet soul is an irresponsible soul. But the inner traditions say something radical. Being is not passive. Being is participatory. Being is contact with reality before the mind diverts it through its usual filters.
When Cynthia speaks about presence as conscious energy, she is not talking about spacing out. She is talking about inhabiting the moment with your whole being. That state of awareness is what allows divine intelligence to express itself through you. You become useful to God in the exact proportion that you stop trying to be impressive.
Most people are too busy trying to matter to notice the One who is already moving through them.
Availability Means You Are No Longer Blocking the Doorway
God does not need your productivity because God does not work through effort. God works through alignment. And alignment happens when you stop interrupting the circulation of presence with your personal agenda. The divine does not require you to be exceptional. The divine requires you to be permeable.
Availability is not weakness.
Availability is permission.
Presence is the condition of that permission.
The Sufi tradition uses the image of polishing the mirror of the heart. Nothing new is added. What obscures the reflection is removed. In the Christian contemplative lineage, this becomes kenosis, the emptying of the false self so the deeper life can become visible. Both traditions agree. You cannot serve God while defending your own performance report.
A cluttered mind cannot hear guidance.
A frantic heart cannot respond to the moment.
A performative spirituality cannot make room for grace.
Availability is what remains when compulsive productivity finally exhausts itself.
God Does Not Need You to Push the River
You have never pushed a river in your life, but that has not stopped you from trying. Most of us treat spiritual life like a flow we need to generate. We strain. We fix. We strategize. We try to “make things happen” for God. But the deeper truth is almost embarrassing in its simplicity. The river is already flowing. The question is whether you are in it or splash-fighting at the shore.
Presence is not a technique. Presence is the state of consciousness in which you can feel the current. Once you are attuned, you stop trying to engineer outcomes. You begin to participate in a movement that was happening before you arrived. Hustle cannot perceive this movement. Availability can.
You do not push the river.
You allow the river to carry you.
That is sacred usefulness.
Your Being Is More Transformative Than Your To-Do List
Every wisdom lineage says this in its own language. The greatest gift you can offer the world is your being, not your doing. Your clarity matters more than your output. Your presence matters more than your strategies. People think transformation happens through effort, but most real transformation happens through transmission. It is the silent, stabilizing influence of a person who is not running on automatic energy.
The world does not need more productive people.
The world needs more present people.
God needs more available hearts, not busier ones.
When you are available, you become a tuning fork for higher consciousness. You hold a vibration that others can recognize and resonate with. This is how spiritual influence actually works. Not through hustle. Through coherence.
Availability Is What Makes You Useful to God
When you stop doing things for God and start being available to God, life starts working through you instead of around you. You notice synchronicities. You sense guidance. You feel the quiet interior nudge that says, “Speak now” or “Be silent” or “Go there.” This is not magical thinking. This is what happens when presence becomes stable. Consciousness begins to organize your actions from a deeper intelligence.
Hustle says, “I must make this happen.”
Availability says, “I will listen.”
Presence says, “Something larger is moving. I will not interrupt it.”
You become useful not because you are striving but because you are attuned. You become helpful not because of your effort but because of your sensitivity to the moment.
Availability is the doorway to sacred usefulness.
Presence is the room.
God Shows Up Most Easily Where You Stop Performing
If you want to know where God moves most freely in your life, look for the places where you are not trying to earn anything. Anywhere performance ends, presence begins. Anywhere you surrender the need to be important, the deeper life becomes visible.
Spiritual maturity is not measured in productivity.
Spiritual maturity is measured in permeability.
You know you are growing when God can get through without having to negotiate with your ego first.
The saints, mystics, and lovers of God across every tradition have always known this. Divine usefulness is born from surrender, not striving. Presence is the natural condition of that surrender. You become a vessel, not a project manager. An instrument, not an entrepreneur of holiness.
Stop Trying to Impress God. God Is Trying to Reach You.
You do not need to be productive to be loved. You need to be available. You need to be awake. You need to be in contact with the presence that is always in contact with you. The deeper life does not arrive through effort. It arrives through openness.
The irony is beautiful.
The moment you stop trying to be spiritually significant is the moment you finally become available for something real to happen.
This is why the mystics laugh.
This is why the Sufis dance.
This is why the contemplatives fall silent.
They finally realized the truth.
God does not want your productivity.
God wants your availability.
Everything else follows from that.
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♥️ This morning this feels like a song of affirmation . . . no matter what the world or “religion” says it’s okay to just BE🙏
I often quote from a long ago sermon preached by someone whose name I can’t remember (and I know he doesn’t need credit😌) - he said something that I desperately needed to hear: “if we understood even the tiniest thing about Love we could stop trying to get into a room we are already in!!” The home I grew up in and the religion I joined (and eventually left) insisted that I had to do, do, do to earn love that has ALWAYS been unconditional. That thought, suggestion, truth eventually set me free from the torment of feeling I could and would NEVER measure up. Not that I don’t catch myself going there again once in a while but now I can hear Spirit gently remind me that “I am enough”. It is in the “room” of love and acceptance and the knowledge that I was born beloved where I am growing able to just “be” more and more. Knowing just being is ok, is where the magic, the joy that is life as it is meant to be is where my spiritual journey
“You become useful to God in the exact proportion that you stop trying to be impressive.”…Whew! Thank you for that much needed reminder.