Be Nobody

Recently, I woke up in the middle of the night with a thought on my mind . I wrote it down:

"We start life as nothing, a nobody , yet we spend a lifetime chasing something to become somebody"

I often wonder why we have this drive to be a somebody. We are born a perfect nobody, with very little sense of being an independent self, we are free to be our true happy self. We are very comfortable in our nobodyness. We live in the present with no concept of past or future....free as a bird.  Its interesting that most genuine spiritual teachings for thousands of years, encourage us to be as the little child, in order to enter a higher state of being. But, we are led to believe by our culture that we are not good enough, as is. We need to be educated, in order to become somebody. So, we enter somebody school and get trained to be a separate individual with a strong self identity. We are even admired by society and family for our independence, and separate sombodyness. The collective ego encourages us in our drive to become a somebody. But, unfortunately our capacity to love deeply with a unity or oneness with all, diminishes as we grow in this somebodyness. We may be successful from a world perspective, with all our achievements and attachments, but we have become separate from life as a whole. It leaves us with an underlying and often undetected  emotion of  fear with anxiety. There seems to be a never ending sense of lack with somebodyness.

So, to the extent you identify with your somebodyness, there is fear.- Ram Dass

Gratitude and happiness comes easy for a nobody, who is content with what is, having  less grandiose ideals to live up to, then that of a somebody.  A nobody cares less about other peoples opinion of them and lives under less pressure to conform to what society considers normal.

We spend most of our lives striving for one thing after another, to become that special somebody. In this state we  never get a complete satisfaction with life. We will never be good enough or have all the expectations met. It is a life of mental suffering. There will always be something missing in the fulfillment of our desires. We will need more and more,  and we will be in a constant search for something to give us happiness and contentment.

As we mature we begin to realize that this formula for living is very shallow, and we get weary of the constant struggle and the suffering it causes in our lives. This way of life has evolved from an ancient multigenerational type of groupthink, a cultural collaborative insanity, that has been with us for thousands of years. It is like a house built on sand without a solid foundation or like a mini personal empire which is destined to eventual failure, caused by an internal structural dysfunction.  When we finally wake up from this illusion, this dream, of the separate self, we begin to realize that to grow in spirit we actually need to become less of a somebody, and more like a contented nobody. When we realize this delusion and begin the long difficult process of  diminishing the ego identity, disguised as an independent somebody,  we can now have an increased capacity for joy, love, humility, gratitude and peace.  We can now lose ourselves in the flow of life, much like the athlete who loses themselves in the action of the sport. When we lose our identity with the false finite self, we realize the way of truth, and we become one with 'Life', as it happens, in the moment, now. The realization of a universal infinite Self, with its Joy, love, peace and bliss are possible when we become the contented selfless nobody with nothing to prove and less need for gain. You are now ready to find the entry point to the gateless  gate that leads to the fullness of life. You begin to realize that the greatest deception ever cast on humankind, the false belief of separation, with its guilt and fear was just illusory, and you can just enter in, to what appears in your perception as a whole new world of beauty, love and aliveness. This is the portal, the metaphorical wormhole to an opening, a glimpse of heaven while still in a body, here on earth. Heavens gate has no barrier, the only blockage is the thin veil of fake somebodyness , that was created by the personal ego self. Drop it and you are free.. enter in, through the portal, to liberation from suffering and the only salvation you will ever need.

Ram Dass, American spiritual teacher, former academic and clinical psychologist, and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now. sums up what I am trying to express here, very well in this excerpt below :

The Predicament of “Somebodyness”

There’s a great line from a wonderful teacher who died some years ago named Kalu Rinpoche, a lovely Tibetan monk. He said, “We live in illusion, the appearance of things, but there is a reality and we are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That’s all there is.”
What happens to most of us, and I say most of us, is that when you and I were born, we were born into a social-psychological world, a world with feelings and thoughts, that was inhabited by people who were very identified with their separateness. They were somebody. They were mummy or daddy. They were also this and this and this and this, and they were all the different identities they had, and they trained you about those realities, because those are the realities that were real to them.
Let’s say you started out with completely undifferentiated awareness, and then in the process of socialization, you cultivated your cognitive capacities of this versus that and all your conceptual models that are called your ego and ego structure, and then you got caught in them. You got lost in them, so you thought they were real. You got caught in your own creation, because everything around you supported you becoming somebody. You went into somebody training when you took birth, and you ended up somebody. I bet you think you’re real. I really think you think you’ve got a personal history; you think you’re going somewhere; you think you’ve got problems and neuroses and hopes and relationships; it all sounds real doesn’t it? …Boy were you taken for a ride.
Now, it’s not unreal; it’s just relatively real. The predicament is, you bought into the planes of reality that are all in time. That’s a problem because there’s at least another plane where you’re One with it all, and no one is going anywhere. There’s no time – it’s behind time. So there’s a part of you that is not in time, even though the rest of you is in time, and you bought into the part of you that’s in time, so you think time is passing.
When you get caught in your somebodyness, you as a separate entity, relative to the game of form, are pretty tiny. There are galaxies, and you are pretty tiny, you know, and it’s kind of frightening to have your awareness in something so small when everything around you is big and so unpredictable, and you can’t control it. So to the extent you identify with your somebodyness, there is fear. There is fear of what changes, it turns out, because you can’t control it when it changes. There’s fascination with it, but there’s fear in it. There’s fear of death. That colors almost everything everybody does in a subtle way, all the time. Wanting to leave something behind, wanting to get as much out of the moment as you can because you are fleeting; feeling you’re running out of time because there is too much to do.

– Ram Dass

For further reading on this subject here is a good one :

 https://www.spiritualawakeningprocess.com/2013/08/be-nobody.html

Interstellar Love

"Love is the one thing were capable

of perceiving that transcends dimensions

of time and space maybe we should trust

that even if we can't understand it yet"

"...it means something more, something we can't yet

understand, maybe it's some evidence, some

artifact of a higher dimension that we

can't consciously perceive"

 

 

Interstellar A Spiritual Analysis based on the Philosophies of Vedanta

Samadhi - Film Trailer [9 minute excerpt from film]

Raimon Panikkar: The Window

Richard Rohr: "Go Deep in One Place"

"Christ is not Jesus' last name" - Richard Rohr

Nature, Infinite Intelligence, Space and the Creation

 

This is the milky way our galaxy with our star, the sun, just a small unseen dot, it is just one of trillions of stars and galaxies out there.

Yesterday, a baby blue jay fledgling had left its nest and it could not fly yet . It was sitting under a tall maple tree on my front lawn. I was cutting the grass and it moved under one of our cars to get away from the danger. It sat there for hours under the front wheel as its mother was trying to coax it to fly. The next few hrs would determine wither it will survive or not . A huge hawk was flying over head and we have stray cats that always come out at dark. If I didn't see it and moved the car it would have been crushed.  Anyway, I have learned over the years to not interfere with nature. It will either fly or die. Sounds cruel, but, its natures way.  A large percentage of these young small birds and animals do not survive more then a few hrs or days. But, somehow their  species do survive and they often thrive. Blue jays and Orioles are here in larger numbers, for some reason this year. This morning the baby and mother was gone. I will never know if the little thing learned to fly or if it became a food source for another bird or animal.

Nature has an intelligence which we do not understand . It does not think like humans, but, it has an infinite intelligence that is in control of  massive ecosystems all over the earth. It knows how to keep everything in perfect harmony and balance. I am sure it can handle mankind too. We are part of the global ecosystem, and yes, we do a lot of damage to nature, but, I will venture to say that long after mankind has disappeared from this planet life will still be flourishing here. The earth as a whole is like a single organism, it is a living planet and it is self organizing and self adapting.  We are on this little blue ball, floating in space in the middle of a small solar system with planets spinning around an insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy that is in a remote region of our universe. Our galaxy is just one among billions. Life on our little spec of a planet is amazing and nature just like our universe is being managed with an amazing, infinite intelligence, and it  is beyond our finite, intellectual understanding. We can only appreciate its mystery and stand in awe at its glory.

The power of Thought

I was talking to a friend recently as we fed squirrels in a local park about the fact that there are no chipmunks in our home town. In 27 years I had never ever seen a chipmunk in our town. Others may have seen them but I had not. Chipmunks are mostly located further north in pine woods and are not common in my hometown in southwestern Ontario. Well guess what a day or two later after that conversation, I saw a chipmunk in my own backyard right beside the house where I sit in my favorite chair. Today I saw it again and it lingered around me for a couple of minutes . Now what is that about? It proved to me the power of thought.  When I  thought about this animal it appeared in front of me. If that can happen with a delightful thought in seeing a beautiful animal like that, what do negative thought do to us. Do we manifest what we think about?. Maybe ! I am sure its not as simple as that but it does show the power of thought. We should be very careful about negative thought. Maybe that is why we have been told in scriptures and all spiritual paths to think only positive thoughts , thought of love , peace, harmony, joy, balance, oneness  and  forgiveness. These thought have the power to heal, and produce happiness in our lives. Negative thought like fear, hate, greed, guilt and feelings of separation can all cause dis-ease if dwelt on long enough.  So this is the thought of the day. Be careful and mindful of your thought , it can affect and have an effect your way of  life. 

All You Need Is Love: Peter Russell

Peter Russell reflects on fifty years of increasingly global exploration
of consciousness since the Summer of Love in 1967. He charts the phases of this
awakening, beginning with the focus on a change of consciousness, and
deepening into the understanding that we don't need to go anywhere to
find inner peace and joy. He points to our interpretation of the
Sanskrit word anand, usually translated as bliss, but literally the much
more accessible "great contentment."


Much of my own spiritual  journey is really happening to millions of people in my generation . Its the search for truth of what is really important in life . After watching this video I realized what I am going through is really a global shift in our perception of spirituality. Its 19 min long but well worth listening to . Russell speaks for my generation on this matter.

Did Jesus come to start a fear-based religion?

Jesus’ message of love

 By Kim Michaels

 

(This is a small excerpt of a much larger large article I found today that ties in with my last post)

It can be somewhat difficult for a person who has grown up in a modern Christian religion to see Jesus’ message as a love-based message. The reason is, of course, that after Jesus’ time, the Christian religion was indeed turned into a fear-based religion. It is an undeniable historical fact that the Catholic Church of the middle ages was indeed an institution that sought to control people’s minds through fear. Thus, it may take a mental retooling, a new perspective, to see how truly love-based Jesus teachings are.

One of the pillars of a fear-based religion is that it presents God as a remote being who is beyond the reach of most people. The people of Jesus’ time clearly believed that their God could not be reached by them individually, which is why they needed the external religion and its priests to mediate between themselves and God. So how did these people look at the following statement from Jesus:

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke, Chapter 17)"

In these short statements Jesus is attacking two of the pillars of a fear-based religion. The people of his time obviously believed that the key to entering the kingdom was to faithfully observe the tenets, the rituals and the rules of the external religion. If you did so, you were pretty much guaranteed to enter the kingdom, which they obviously saw as a location far away from themselves. Yet Jesus is clearly saying that observing an external religion is not enough to get you to the kingdom. And in the second part Jesus is basically saying that we will never find the kingdom of God as long as we are looking for it outside ourselves. This was revolutionary stuff to the people of Jesus’ time.

As modern Christians we now have two basic options. We can either reason that Jesus was wrong and didn’t know the first thing about how to enter the kingdom of God. Or we can use our intuitive faculties to seek a deeper understanding of what is hidden behind these outer words. What was Jesus really trying to tell us here?

Remember, that the basic claim of a fear-based religion is that you cannot enter the kingdom of God by your own, inherent powers. You are somehow fundamentally deficient, and thus you can enter the kingdom only through the external religion. It is only through this belief in your own powerlessness that fear of an external authority comes into the picture. If you believe that you have the powers within yourself to secure your entry into the kingdom, why would you fear other people or an earthly institution? You might still fear that you would not qualify to enter the kingdom, but you would not fear that external forces could keep you out of it.

Now let us look at another basic pillar of a fear-based belief system, namely the idea that God is a judgmental God. Imagine how people who firmly believed in the Old Testament God would have reacted to the following statement by Jesus:

 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son. (John 5:22)

It seems Jesus is directly challenging the Old Testament image of the angry and judgmental God in the sky, the God who visited plagues upon Pharaoh, who told the Israelites to massacre the men, women and children of their conquered enemies and who threatened to smite people with this or that if they did not obey him. In fact, the angry God of the Old Testament could very well be seen as a being who is seeking to control people through fear. Or perhaps this God is the invention of an institution who is seeking to control people through fear. Yet can one love such a God?

Some modern psychologists say that there are only two basic emotions, namely love and fear and that we cannot truly love something if we also fear it. It is clear that the established religion of Jesus’ time wanted people to fear God, as that fear would naturally be transferred to the institution that had placed itself as the only mediator between the people and their angry God. Yet it is equally clear that Jesus did not want people to fear God. If he did why would he have made the following statement:

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment. (Matthew, Chapter 22)"

Can you really love the Old Testament God with all your heart, soul and mind? Yet Jesus clearly do want his followers to love God this way, thus Jesus’s God cannot be the remote, angry being in the sky. Also, if Jesus had preached a fear-based message, why wouldn’t he have said, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind?”
Jesus also seems to have wanted people to understand that God’s love for us is not a conditional love but an unconditional one. Otherwise, why would Jesus make the following statement:

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12: 32)

Imagine how revolutionary this statement must have seemed to a person brought up with the Old Testament image of the angry and judgmental God in the sky. What is Jesus actually saying here? Is he not saying that receiving God’s kingdom is not a matter of observing the external, fear-based religion, a religion whose main means for reconciliation with God was animal sacrifices? Instead, of all these external observances, Jesus seems to be saying that God truly wants to give us his kingdom, which means that the only condition we need to fulfill is that we must be able and willing to receive it. Yet this is not an external but an internal condition.
Again, imagine how this must have seemed to the leaders of the established religion of Jesus’ time. If the people had started believing what Jesus was saying, their fear of the external religion would have evaporated as the morning dew under a rising sun. Is it any wonder they started seeing Jesus as a direct threat to their power over the people, a power clearly based on fear?


Source:  http://www.askrealjesus.com/how-we-can-help-jesus/75-help-jesus/897-did-jesus-come-to-start-a-fear-based-religion

Jim carrey's secret to life. Love Not Fear

 


So many very knowledgeable and enlightened people all over the world,  over many thousands of years , have come to the conclusion that the universe is run by some sort of universal intelligence.Its called by many different names depending on our cultural background.  It is a system that would appear to be love based in the sense that it is cooperative rather then competitive,  and it is by its very essence a unity of oneness rather then dualistic.  My conclusion after many years of looking at this, is that in spirituality all fear based teaching may be an illusion and false. Whatever we call the love based intelligence that runs the universe, it doesn't matter . What really matters is, are we as a human race ready to move past the fear based belief systems which seem to dominate our thinking and begin realizing the Love based reality of life. This view of life, lets call it the most common name  "God", is love based not fear based.  I can't see why we would have to fear this Life source or why we would need to feel separate from it. Would this love based intelligence want us living under judgement, guilt,  or fear? I don't believe so. Would it be for us or against us?  Jesus said "a house divided against itself will not stand". Can any system be against itself? ; we are made in its image, a fractal of itself. When something is against itself it is in a diseased or dysfunctional state. Would a system run by "God" be dysfunctional? No! Man is dysfunctional because we are run by the lower nature of fear(false ego self ) not love (Spirit or True Self). We need to diminish the fear based ego and allow the Spirit to run our lives.

The original teachings of Jesus were love based and non-dual, it was the mind of man that turned his teaching into something totally different over the centuries until it became contaminated with fear based teaching. Many people are trying to discern what was the true teachings of the Christ in Jesus and what is man made religion. Its very interesting that this generation are slowly waking up to Truth. Love is real , fear is illusory.

Marianne Williamson - A Return To Love

 For perhaps a decade, I have been branching out, on my own, on a spirit led inquiry into the unknown, away from the comfortable pew and the conventional means of accepted religion. I have been seeking a truthful vision of what  ...God,  and truth... really are . I became obsessed with this search and read over 200 books and listened to hundreds of video's.  I had  gotten disillusioned, after 35 years, with  my conceptual view of a human like God out there somewhere in the heavens, who we were separate from, who judges us as unworthy sinners, and evil doers which  results in our response of fear and guilt. There was some vague idea of love toward us in the Jesus figure as compared to the vindictive and angry Yahweh,  but it was all an uneasy sugar coated love that depended on his grace or judgement concerning our actions and sinfulness. I was led to believe we were viewed by this god as filthy rags, a pile of dung in comparison to him and that we could never ever be good enough. We had to just believe in Jesus, as the only way to the father,  and his righteousness, along with his human blood sacrifice and we would be saved from his wrath.  Even the idea of Jesus as the sacrificial lamb who covers over our human sins, as a blood sacrifice, and atonement, did not sit right with me. I have felt at times like an heretic, a backslider, and certainly a non-conformist, who strayed from the known sanctuary of belief and home,  out into the unknown desert as a seeker after this inner truth. I have been slowly moving away from the fear-based belief system to a more love-based understanding of reality. There are two main emotions and forces that we experience as humans, fear and love. Fear is driven by the false egoic mind construct and love is driven by the true self  that resides in the heart and spirit. The choice is ours we are either moving in the direction of love or fear. Fear is the opposite of Love. What I am realizing more and more is that multitudes of people over many  generations  have been on  a similar search out in the spiritual wastelands, they are waking up from the dream created by the false ego self and coming into a realization of love in the spirit which is coming from what we have always called God. I had never heard of Marianne Williamson until recently when I came across some of her quotes to fit along with my expressions in this blog. So, I thought I would like to get a copy of her book "A return to Love" at some point and read it. I found a copy yesterday at Value Village (coincidence) . I started reading it and I can't put it down. Almost all my positive conclusions, about truth concerning spirit and God, much of what I have already expressed in this blog and certainly in my personal journal, over the years, are all being expressed in Williamson's book. Without realizing it, I had tapped into the same truth source that she did and she has revealed it so well in "A return to Love".  What I had  discovered through my personal inquiry over many years, was confirmed  for me by this author, who I was not even aware off  until a few days ago. Below is a six minute summary of quotes from her book.

Is God A Mathematician? - Fractal Geometry of Nature

Could our universe be fractal?

Ageless Spirit

 


The eternal being that lives in the womb is the same inner being after 5, 25 , 55, 95 and 105 years in the body. The outer shell grows old and brittle but the spirit stays the same, it does not age.This spirit, "you", is the observer, you perceive all that happens in this temporary body from birth to death. But, the spirit in the baby is the same at 99. Only the body gets old. When the body is dropped, the spirit moves on to its next adventure. The spirit was never born and it does not die, it lives in the multiplicity of life as fractals of itself . A fractal of the same universal spirit lives in each of us. It is "God" experiencing itself/herself/himself as a human being within time and space. What we experience as being our personal self, is a temporary individuated fractal of the one spirit . We have forgotten who we are. 

A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.



 

Universal Intelligence

Within nature on our planet there is evidence of  a natural intelligence everywhere we look, it is self-organizing and self-correcting. The whole earth is like one living organism, where all life is interdependent. All forms of life has this same inner intelligence. The embryo knows how to turn into a baby, the acorn knows how to turn into an oak tree. We can't see this power of life but its there in every seed, in every cell and in every ecosystem. 






The following are excerpts from an article written
by Tom Atlee called:

Universal Intelligence.

"The whole universe has an elegant order in the way everything fits and unfolds, it has an inexplicable beauty in its living patterns, and the mysterious depth and expressiveness of it all . It reminds us of the brilliance and beauty we see in  great works of art.

We live in a sea of information, a web of interconnection, a field of what some Buddhists call inter-being — a dynamic state of interactive, resonant existential communion. There are universal patterns, powers and wisdom at the core of our being, and the universe vibrates with our every act and thought. What happens in one place and time is linked to everything else far more intimately than we could ever imagine. Synchronicities and analogs abound. Certain patterns keep cropping up: We see BRANCHES in trees, rivers, roads, fields of study, computer circuitry. We see CYCLES in planets, electrons, food chains, wheels, the flows of water and carbon through the biosphere, and the recycling bin. It is no accident that we use the word VISION to describe perception, imagination, insight and prediction. Patterns like these (branches, cycles, vision, etc.) are alive with useful meaning. At every level, the universe is rich with lessons and resonances as it in-forms itself, intimately co-being and co-evolving, learning and remembering. Intelligence is everywhere. There is information and wisdom here we can tap into. There are flows and textures and energies, resistences and assistances, that we can join and follow, or grow stronger and wiser wrestling with."

All the great masters have taped into this intelligence. It does not come from the intellect, it is accessed through a deeper intuition.

Stillness

Stillness 88-2005




Stillness has been a recurring theme in my paintings for many years. There is something about it that has always drawn my spirit into it. Be still and know, has been the recurring message in spirituality for as long as man has been here. Before man was here on planet earth there was the stillness. When we become still inwardly we find who we are. People who have gone through the most profound spiritual awakening have talked about it as being stillness.Stillness in this spiritual meaning is not lack of noise. It is possible to sense the stillness in the busyness and noise. I have experienced stillness in the noise of a crowded supermarket. It was one of my most amazing moments of my life. Recently, I experienced the stillness at a local pizza fest with a rock band playing and the park was full of people young and old. Its a sense that beyond the noise and movement there is stillness both within, and all around . What is that? When we are connected with Spirit and the mind has been stilled, it happens naturally. You don't have to do anything, the stillness was always there but the busy mind clouds it over. When the sky is overcast we can't see the blue sky beyond because of the clouds. Its the same thing with stillness. Its there beyond the clouds of veiled perception. There is a thin veil of separation between our busy thoughts and the stillness of the spirit. Be still and know................ 

Water

    
Living Water  (an acrylic  painting I did in 2003) Elora Mill ,On, Ca

LIVING WATER
(I wrote this on the  back of the painting above in 2003 before I read Tao te Ching)

Coming down from above
Welling up from within
Flowing down to the sea
Growing and restoring life
The earth is moved, with great force
Shaken, wearing down
Living water
Going up to the clouds
Coming down from above...

Tao Te Ching   excerpts from ch 8 and 78

8

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

78

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.


Water is used as a favorite metaphor in all Taoist text. I was thinking in the Taoist way way back in 2003 . This painting above has water has its main theme. The old mill which had a water wheel at one time, fit well in the overall composition.  I wrote a poetic style writing on the back of it at that time. I did not read any Taoist writing until years later. I was always impressed with the cycles of nature and the water cycle is what I was describing in that Living Water poem. Water always seeks the lowest place and eventually, what does not vaporize, or get taken up in life for a time, makes its way to the sea where it will vaporize again and repeat its cycle again as rain. Water comes down as rain gets absorbed in all of life, vaporizes back up into the sky as clouds and repeats its cycle. The seeking the lowest place speaks of the need for humility in our lives. It is soft yet it can slowly dissolve the hardest matter in its travel. It has great power, it can move and shake the earth and roar in the waterfalls. It wears the rocks in its path, smooth. Water is one of the most important elements for life on earth, it is soft yet it has great power. Love is soft yet it has great power. Spirit has no substance yet it is the power behind all of  creation. 

Desire and Fear

I read this today and I though how true it is. All our life we are driven by desire and fear. We see it in our daily decisions, in our relationships and especially in our culture of consumerism.  The world stock markets are driven by greed and fear . Greed is a desire for more and more beyond need . Knowing when enough is enough is important. Ch 9 of the Tao Te Ching says it better then I could express . I need not add anything else to it.

Tao Te Ching  Ch 9

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Tao Te Ching -Chapter 10

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.



Tao Te Ching  was written 2500 years ago  and there are many versions of it, just like the bible. This copy is from Stephen Mitchell's new English version and my favorite. Like all poetic style writing it can speak to different people in different ways. That is the beauty of all art forms. I am not sure  why this ch 10 has been part of my study over the past couple of days but as I write I will learn. This blog is part of my personal learning process. If you happen to find this blog, and read it, you are the observer of a personal learning process that I am undergoing. Read it with an open mind . I am not intending it as a teaching for someone else. If you get something from it, great. We are all on our own spirit journey wither we recognize that or not. Through writing I learn. I will write and tweak and study and ponder these words for awhile. 

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?

This opening statement is non-duality at its best.

 "Non-duality is the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of non-separation and fundamental intrinsic oneness."         https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/about/nonduality/

I like Mitchell's choice of the word coax here. To coax means to gently persuade. You do not want to set up your mind as an enemy, that creates duality, it just needs to be put into its right relationship to you. The mind makes a great servant but a terrible master. You need to respect the mind, send it a message of loving kindness. It is a tool like a massive computer it can be your greatest friend and helper when brought under control. Its like an out of control dog yapping and yapping until it is put through a process of training. If you  observe your mind, you will notice it has one random thought after another and it wanders everywhere. Its thinking about all possible problems, thinking about the past, and the future, analyzing, judging.....   Is it possible to coax your mind from wandering?  When the verse says the mind, what its really talking about is thoughts. Can thoughts be brought under control? Try it! Sit quietly somewhere with no interference from outside yourself. Just you and your thoughts. I know , that is scary for some. You have never examined your thoughts. When in a comfortable position ,close your eyes and ask what will be my next thought? For a brief few second there will be no thought. The mind is not used to being observed. Then when you are not concentrating the stream of thought will start. Quickly go back to watching for the next thought. Again,  there is a pause in thought when you observe it. As you continue this process you will quickly observe that the minds thoughts are out of control. This may be both very revealing or just plain boring observation for some. But through this process, if continued,  you will slowly quiet the mind down. Don't try to stop thought, just observe it. The simple observation of thought brings it under control. When you watch thought without being identified with it, it seems to come under control. The key is to not be identified  with thought as being who you are at your deepest level. Thought is not the real you, it is a product of the mind, you are the being, the spirit, beyond the mind. It may take some practice to do this, but it is possible to coax your mind from wandering and keep to the original oneness. This original oneness may be referring to the connection with Spirit you were born with. This Spirit, the one universal presence, has no substance, no form , yet,  it is the essence of all existence and therefore we are all part of it. 
 

Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?

It is no coincidence the next verse talks about a new born baby. The baby's body is very flexible . It has no tension, no stored stress in its body. It is capable of bending or of being bent easily. If we could develop a process, a technique, to release all tension in our bodies, mind, heart and soul , then we would be like the baby. Can we unclench the heart  and be born new?. This suppleness is not just talking about the baby's body. It could be metaphor for being flexible in the attitude of our heart more then just our bodies. If we are bendable when the storms and winds of life come we will not break but we will flex and adjust, bending with the flow of force not fighting against it. 

Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?

What is inner vision?. This can be thought of as insight, being able to perceive the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively. Intuition is not intellect. Its more like what has traditionally been called the heart. Modern science is beginning to prove that the heart is a “little brain” and has an intuitive intelligence of it's own, independent of the mind. This intelligence may be linked  to what is called cosmic intelligence which is pure in nature. So, can you cleanse your intuitive heart so that it is linked to the greater universal intelligence? It is possible, but the heart will have to be unclenched from tension caused from negative emotions and lifestyle. This is where the term hardened heart comes from. Only the Spirit can cleanse the heart so it will see the inner light.. The gentle Spirit all around us, can flow and penetrate into our hardened hearts if we can open up a little space for new perceptions. The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world, the closed human heart. That which has no form/no substance, can enter where there was previously no space and it can transform our whole life.

Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?

 Leading other's is not so much what you say its how you live. If you love people,  others will know that. Love does not control it allows others to be who they are without judgement.

Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?

 Allowing nature to take it course is hard to do  if your ego is running the show. It means you have to trust in unseen forces to determine outcome. Do you believe the universal intelligence is for you or against you?  Would you taking control produce a better outcome then this intelligence . Are you smarter then this unseen force. Most events work its way out in time. Waiting is better then acting in a hurry. Let intuition lead you, not the thinking mind.

Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

 Stepping back from your mind means allowing the observer or witnessing self to watch the thoughts as  they come up. If you are able to do that, this deeper part of you, the heart, which is more intelligent and intuitive then the intellect will understand things much better.  The mind and intellect  has only knowledge , the heart which may be connected to the observer/witness self has greater  wisdom, and can understand things without knowledge. The heart and gut feeling as it is sometimes called knows more then the reasoning intellect. 


Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,

 Having the mothering nature, loving and providing all that is needed to bring to fruition without concern for outcome and expecting nothing in return. This is natures way.
  "After all this time the sun has never said to the earth you owe me......"- Rumi
. Yet, it has provided life's energy for millions of generations.

leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

This leading without the need to control is a behavior showing the highest moral , universal standards and principles. This is the way of the Spirit that powers and leads gently all of life without forcing its will onto creation.