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ToV 21 – Grumble Grumble …Ah!

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, 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. Read More »ToV 21 – Grumble Grumble …Ah!

ToV 18 &19 – Throw Away Holiness and Wisdom

Chapters 18 and 19 are practically a matched set – a before and after, problem and solution, bookending the same issue. It’s that dratted ego-centric monkey mind versus true Self stuff again.

The opening line from chapter 18:

When the great Tao is forgotten,
goodness and piety appear.

Contrasted with first line of 19:

Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.

Now, goodness, wisdom, and the like are good things right? Why would you be concerned to see them arise, why would you try and toss them out? Because they are mental constructs. If you’ve ever seen the movie Footloose, or caught a good Christian Right rant on the TV you know that ideas of piety and holiness can do more harm than good. Ideas that have the power to suppress a soul rather than enliven it.

What Lao Tzu is trying to say here, is when you are no longer thinking and acting from that innate knowledge of true Self, you suddenly need rules and constructs to mimic what would otherwise arise naturally.Read More »ToV 18 &19 – Throw Away Holiness and Wisdom

ToV 17 – What Liars Lose

Chapter 17 actually says some great things about leadership and humility and empowerment, you should definitely read it. However, a strange thing can happen when you read insightful texts, sometimes something oblique speaks to you. A single line did that to me today, so join me on a tangent!

If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

I’m sure in the context of leadership and governance this speaks to empowering the populace (and how to avoid revolutions for that matter). But what tickles my brain is the idea YOUR lack of trust can make other people untrustworthy.

No one exists in isolation, who we are is inherently reflected in how we relate to the people around us, and what I find heartbreaking about lying isn’t the falsehood, it’s the failure of trust. Read More »ToV 17 – What Liars Lose