ToV 23 – Storm Chasing for Soul Seekers

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Ironically I went to write about this chapter a week ago, but the first line: Express yourself, then keep quiet captivated me. Something inside of me just went mmm quiet… and I stuck with that for quite some time.

Good thing too, as I was stormy as hell inside. It had been a rough week. The rest of this chapter pulls from the metaphor of weather, and I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows there is only wind;
when it rains there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.

So I let my life blow, and boy did it blow. Funny thing weather, it’s always changing, it’s easy to forget that and always seek the sunshine. I like my sunshiny self – the one that’s calm, patient, loving, accepting. I think that is who I am, and the pissy, bitter, pessimistic, self pitying person I had to reside in last week is some foreign thing not of me I try and avoid.

This chapter reminds me it’s all weather, it’s all me. No judging. It’s me that decides which states of being are good, which ones are bad; in reality it’s all me, just in different states and circumstances. Being angry about the times my soul gets stormy makes about as much sense as telling the sky not to rain. It’s gonna rain when it’s gonna rain, and the dynamic changes in life are what makes it alive.

It took until I was back in a sunshiny time to see the value in the storm. It’s the dark times in my own life that build the compassion that helps me understand others. When a friend in a depressive episode disappears for a few weeks, when someone is all twisted up love sick and obsessive, a part of me can be in that space with them, understand them, because, hell, I’ve been there. Suffering builds empathy, there’s not really any way around that, and it’s an important skill to have.

IMG_8303.jpgCompassion is what makes us most beautifully human. Why I look with such scowling eyes upon the storm that brings it is beyond me. There’s beauty in storms, the power, the turmoil, the churning of light and dark. Some of my happiest moments are ones standing in awe of the electric life of a really dark storm. There are people like Tremaine Lea who’s life passion is going out there and chasing those storms, bringing back images of the dark beauty that most of us are unwilling to leave our comfortable lives to go and see.

I’m going to take that attitude into the weather of my ever changing soul. Stand in awe of the beauty and power of all that churning darkness, knowing that it is part of being alive; the contrast to the gleaming sunshine, all the more sparkly after the passing storm.

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ToV 22 – Paradoxical Dating

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This chapter opens with a series of lines under what I’d call the category of: f*ing let it go.

If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.

And a goodly handful of phrases like that, every one of them a mantra of: stop arguing with reality stop arguing with reality. I love the second part of these lines: let yourself…. If you want something, and here’s the paradoxical part, you have to let go and let yourself be the thing you fear first. It isn’t the pursuit of the thing that gets you what you need, it’s in the letting go of whatever you’re fighting against.

The very last line of this chapter hit me hard, and was what I took with me into my mediation this morning. Continue reading →

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ToV 20 – On Sass-Monkeys and Seagulls

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Taoists are sass-monkeys. There’s a misconception that spiritual people are always wise, aloof, subdued. There is something to be said for the wisdom of being able to see the humour in things; and being able to talk smack to those still talking themselves too seriously. This whole chapter is a comparison of “regular folk” and what it means to be immersed in the Tao.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharp:
I alone am dull.
Other people have purpose;
I alone don’t know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

Now, if you put that on a resume, you wouldn’t get a lot of call backs, and that’s kinda the point. Lao Tzu is making fun of what people value, what they think is important, in part perhaps to illustrate that a pursuit of the Tao is not an ego-driven thing, most people will not admire you for it. I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

But he’s trying to help you. The chapter opens with: Stop thinking, and end your problems (pausing while all my nerd readers get their gruntles on for that one!). Continue reading →

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Sohbet – Fruit Erotica

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So, I kinda snapped the other day and tweeted what turned out to be a rather erotic poem of longing for the bananas I was impatient to see ripen. This cracked me up enough, I figured there were probably lots of other erotic love poems to fruit could be written, so take this as a challenge and write yours!

Here’s the banana one for openers:

My darling banana
You green tipped tease
How I long for the time of your ripening
Fill me with your nourishing sweetness

 

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ToV 21 – Grumble Grumble …Ah!

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The inside of my head has been an annoying place to be as of late. The bulk of my self-talk centres around despondency and frustration and the GIANT gap between what I’m doing and what I want to be doing – including my ability to add to my Tao Te Ching commentaries here. Grumble…

I’m doing a few things right, like getting back to meditating every day (Oh, and I’m leading an intro to meditation class if you’d like to get in on that) but mostly I spend a lot of time thinking about my problems and how to fix them, how to get some spark back into my life instead of just dragging through what has to be done.

I had a couple of realizations today that may just be the shift I need. First is the realization these Tao of V posts aren’t just one more thing on my things to get done list, it’s part of my practice–that thing I do every day to recentre me and help me focus on what to actually put my life energy towards. I’d been avoiding this work as I thought I had more important stuff to do and I should back burner this, only to discover, when I stop doing these, I don’t have the energy or focus to do anything else anyway.

If I don’t have enough energy to do anything more than, in essence, those things that fall under the category of “be excellent to yourself” then so be it. Ain’t nothing wrong with a life focused on self nourishment for a while–I surely won’t get anything else done if I fall down on the self nourishment anyway.

The other really profound realization today was in how I read the chapter before I sit down to meditate (and I don’t mean reading it right to left or some weird esoteric thing). Thing is, because I’d set this as a writing project, one to help explain concepts of Taoism in more modern terms, I tend to read each day with an eye to how I shall present the ideas to others. Again, as per realization one: this is my practice; what if I read each page looking for what I needed for me and commented on that? 

Oh.

Whole different kettle of fish that is. First off, it probably lends to better writing, as I think my posts are way more interesting when I’m laying bare my own messed up crazy bits and sharing my process rather than when I talk on high trying to get YOU people all sorted. But more interesting, it pushes me to push at me. To find the places where I am stuck (and there are many!) and find the cracks to niggle through.

So today’s selection is all about me …but maybe it’s about you too:

The Master keeps her mind
always at one with the Tao;
that is what gives her her radiance.

Now, in a time when I am feeling everything on the far side of the moon from radiance this was a bit like a spiritual cuff to the back of the head. Continue reading →

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