Changing Places

DNA, Robert Finkbeiner

Three subtle energy currents:
Twin helixes around a jade pillar.
This glowing presence
Is the force of life itself.

Deep in meditation, it is possible to become aware of the life-force itself. You can see it if you learn how to look within. To describe it as electricity, or power, or light, or consciousness is all somewhat correct. But such descriptions are inadequate. You have to see it for yourself. You have to feel it for yourself. You have to know it for yourself.

To be in its presence is like being in front of something primeval, basic, mysterious, shamanistic, and profound. To be in its presence makes all references mute and all senses slack, leaving only deep awe. One is drawn to it in utter fascination. It is the mighty flame to our moth-like consciousness.

This column of energy that coils around itself holds all the stages of our growth. It is our soul; it is the force that animates us and gives us awareness. If you want to engage your life completely, it is essential for you to come to terms with this inner power. Once you harmonize with it you can blend with the dynamics of being human.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

A helix, sometimes also called a coil, is a curve for which the tangent makes a constant angle with a fixed line. The shortest path between two points on a cylinder (one not directly above the other) is a fractional turn of a helix, as can be seen by cutting the cylinder along one of its sides, flattening it out, and noting that a straight line connecting the points becomes helical upon re-wrapping (Steinhaus 1999, p. 229). It is for this reason that squirrels chasing one another up and around tree trunks follow helical paths. — Eric Weisstein, Mathworld

I think the extraordinary success of the double helix sprang largely from the fact that it’s such a simple geometric shape. The helix struck a responsive chord in so many people because it suggested that the secret of life is something you can look at. Looking at it, you see properties which otherwise would have been totally incoherent if you didn’t have a geometric shape to hang it on. –Benoit Mandlebrot

“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life, — and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

People often talk about their spiritual growth as a spiral. Karen Armstrong’s recent autobiography is called “The Spiral Staircase“. Very few people find their spirituality is a straightforward process, if they are determined to really find something more than what western society gives us as religion, or what Eastern mysticism gives us as chants and mantras.

For me, the spiritual growth has come in strange ways and from strange places, and I think that is how authentic spiritual growth progresses, from within, as we turn through the limits of our own being and try to become more. We find ourselves turning again and again within the limited space of ourselves, and finally realize that there is an enormous amount of space outside of ourselves. We then create mobius strips and Klein bottles, trying to bring this outside space within ourselves, an impossible task at first. We see the beautiful poetry of Rumi as he struggles with spirituality, the magnificent stories and tales of mythology, religion, and literature, all trying to move in these same paths.

And then one day, a small hummingbird sits in front of your nose, flapping its wings, and looks at you curiously, or you gaze into a flower and finally really see it, or someone says something that catches your ear and your mind at just the right moment, or a quiet meditation brings you to the place within yourself that just knows, simply knows, and you smile. You get it. You get that Mona Lisa smile on your face and just — become yourself.

And it happens over and over. We find ourselves, we lose ourselves, we find ourselves again, at another place on the spiral. The helixes divide, and come back together. And life goes on.

The Parisian attitude towards life really is a lot like this — riding on the Metro you could simply see the long-standing suffering in the looks on the Parisian faces, the men standing with their pointy-toed elf shoes that must have been killing their feet, and the women with their beautiful scarves and jackets who didn’t give the least hint how overly warm they actually were on the Metro, just suffering patiently even as I would bail out of my jacket or take off my scarf and stuff it in my bag or whatever. The exception to the ever-tolerant suffering attitude was the young lovers, who were really cute, but even then you could often see young couples arguing very dramatically with scorn on their faces.

Viedemerde.fr (VDM) is a French site devoted to the truth that life is suffering. Vie de merde means — well, use the Babel translator. In the French way, VDM is devoted to offering the truth of suffering as short, tight exemplary narratives that are classified by subject — Amour, Argent, Enfants, Sexe, Travail and my favorite, Unclassable.

Viedemerde often has a rueful or droll touch:

Today I brought my lingerie home from my boyfriend’s place and found some that did not belong to me.

Today I had a big argument with my girlfriend who accused me of being narcissistic. Leaving home, I decided to write a text message to get her to forgive me. Lapse or inattention? I signed off with “I love myself.”

When you post on VDM it is rated with a little benediction: “It’s true it’s a VDM, it’s confirmed.”

Since Americans wanted to celebrate the Buddha’s dark diagnosis of the human condition in their own language, FMyLife.com arose. FMyLifes are postcards from Delusionville, narratives of failed hope, more emo and histrionic than Viedemerde.

Sometimes FMyLife is a miscellany of simple complaints, but the ideal post depends on a mapping problem, an irretrievable misreading of a situation:

Today, I was waiting in the car while my mom went into a store to get beer. A few minutes later, some random guy was knocking on my window telling me to open the door. I started cursing him out, thinking I was getting attacked. Turns out he worked there and was putting the beer in the car.

Today, my brother came out to our family as being gay. My mother starting crying because “She wanted grandchildren.” I told her that I was planning on having children. She started crying harder.

Today, I was on the bus home and on the phone with my best friend discussing my sex life with this new guy I’m seeing. I was telling her all sorts of raunchy sex things we’ve done until someone taps my shoulder and says “I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate you saying this in public.” It was his mom.

The site is intended to prove and even relish the idea that the cards are against you and your life really is a soap opera.

FMLs are rated by clicking on the message, “I agree, your life is f***ed,” which is perhaps taken as empathy, or clicking on “You deserved that one.” FML provides a dose of despairing chaos in case that is what you need to tune your day, your job, your mind. You could say FML’s purpose is consolation by diagnosis — Things are out of whack, dude, which is the first noble truth of Buddhism.

via Shambhala SunSpace » John Tarrant’s “Escape Arts in Delusionville”: My Average Life.

Huangguoshu Waterfall, Guizhou Province.–the 3rd largest waterfall in the world.

“It has to be felt deeper, below the surface, at the very point where all senses merge. Merge with them right there like a fleck of foam falling into a stream. Just by listening with your eyes you can fold back on yourself and merge into that primal stream of awareness like a river is swallowed by the immensity of the ocean. Only then will you know what point to live from. Only then will you be sure.”

- G. Bluestone
Journeys on Mind Mountain

Red and yellow and
Pink and Green
Purple and orange and blue

I can sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow for you

Listen with your eyes
Listen with your eyes
And sing everything you see

You can sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow
Sing along with me…

(Although it always did rather bother me as a kid that the colors of the rainbow in the song were not in the right ROYGBIV order…)

“How much of the day are you aware – just basically aware of what life is presenting – rather than being lost in waking sleep, in being identified with whatever you’re doing, almost as if you didn’t exist?

To what extent do you blindly drift from one form of comfort to another, from one daydream or fantasy to another, from one secure place to another, in order to avoid the anxious quiver of discomfort or insecurity? How much of your energy is used to fortify a particular self-image, or to simply please others in order to gain approval, instead of devoting your energy to living a genuine life?”
- Ezra Bayda
At Home in the Muddy Water: A Guide to Finding Peace within Everyday Chaos

Via WhiskeyRiver

A person does not have to join a group or be a wise leader to work things out. Life’s process unfolds naturally. Conflicts resolve themselves sooner or later, whether or not a person knows how things happen.

It is true that being aware of how things happen makes one’s words more potent and one’s behavior more effective. But even without the light of conciousness, people grow and improve. Being unconscious is not a crime; it is merely a lack of a very helpful ability.

Knowing how things work gives the leader more real power and ability than all the degrees or titles the world can offer. That is why people in every era and in every culture have honored those who know how things happen.

Tao of Leadership

“Being unconscious is not a crime; it is merely a lack of a very helpful ability” … those are words I have taken to heart. Too often in the past  I’ve been annoyed with other people for not being aware of how things happen or the consequences of their actions. I excused it a lot in my kids, knowing they were kids and learning. I had difficulty excusing it in adults, however. I wondered how people could be so stupid, quite a lot of the time, actually.

One of my former good friends, Mike, used to say I didn’t suffer fools gladly. Very true. But I think I am a bit more forgiving now than I used to be. But the everyday, ordinary lack of awareness of how life progresses around you, the out of touch way so many seem to live their lives still bothers me.

I am pretty much aware of where every living thing around me is, without even thinking about it. It amazes me when my husband asks where one of the kids are. I know where almost everything in my house is and can find it in minutes, even if the house is a mess. I know dates, places, times I have to be somewhere, what the weather is like, how people are without asking, just from their expression. My husband is never aware of these things.

Ah, well, it’s just a helpful ability. Heh. To me, awareness of life and how things work is a central part of my life. I would hate to be without that helpful ability….

You could labor ten years under a master
Trying to discern whether the teachings are true.
But all you must learn is this;
One must live one’s own life.

When one starts out learning a spiritual system, there are many absolute assertions that the masters make. They must be accepted with a provisional faith; each must be tested and proved to yourself before you can believe in them. You will be exposed to all types of esoteric knowledge, but you need only be concerned with whether or not you can make them work for yourself.

There will come an intermediate, joyous point where you find that certain techniques work even better than the scriptures claim. In the wake of these discoveries, you will also find that life continues to be just as thorny and problematic as ever. Does this mean that the study of Tao is useless? No. It only means that you have been laboring to equip yourself with skill. You must still go out and live your life to the end.

When you look back and realize that you have been absorbed the teachings so thoroughly that they have become routine, it is not the time to reject the system you have learned. It is time to utilize what you have learned. You must express yourself, take action in the world, create new circumstances for yourself and others. Only then does the long acquisition of skill become worthwhile.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

“Any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question…Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.”
– Carlos Castaneda

I grew up in the Presbyterian church, and that was a church and faith that had a lot of heart. I’ve attended the Community Church near my home, which is a Unitarian church.
But I’ve studied a lot of other faiths as well – Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam – and eventually came to realize the message is always basically very much the same, what differs are which gods and which prophets the religion tells you to accept. And I got to the point where I realized that each of these various faiths posits itself as The One True Religion, and began to ask why they couldn’t *all* be equally “true”. Then I read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Karen Armstrong’s A History of God (all highly recommended), and realized that all the hero’s journeys of the various religions (Buddha, Christ, Mohammed) were very much the same.

Then I remembered what Jesus said about there being many paths. And thought about how many cultures have never heard of Jesus, or how many people lived well before that period in time. Christianity is so tied to western thought, so dismissive of eastern thought, even though the Jesus mythology is based on Egyptian mythology and other mythos. And I guess it kind of crystallized for me that this must simply be a way of filling the basic spiritual needs people have, and all the ways religion has been used as a tool for power and control.

What originally attracted me to Taoism is that Jesus referred to himself as “The Way, the truth, and the light”. Tao is translated as the way. I think of it as the process, the way things work, rather than an actual pathway. There is a process to finding one’s spirituality. The problem with religion is that it shortcuts the process, gives you an easy answer rather than making you think about things for yourself.

Taoism doesn’t do that. Taoism says, here’s an idea, think about it, go look for yourself in the world and see how this works. And that is how I think spirituality should operate. There are reasons all the religions come back to the same points over and over. They are operating manuals for life. And taken in this way, they work. But trying to force others to operate in the world exactly the way you do is ridiculous. We are all different, and what works for one won’t work for all. If you use religion as a tool to run society, you can apply one rule to everyone — but you will still have rebellion, you will still have individuality and the special case, and eventually the society becomes corrupt. If you offer a spirituality that allows everyone to be spiritual in their own way, you give people a choice.

Of course, there are many who just want to be told what to do, and for them, religion is the answer. But for those who seek and need a choice to learn how the world really works, Taoism is a belief system that can work.

The most articulated value in Greek culture is areté. Translated as “virtue,” the word actually means something closer to “being the best you can be,” or “reaching your highest human potential.” The term from Homeric times onwards is not gender specific. Homer applies the term of both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of the Greek hero, Odysseus. In the Homeric poems, areté is frequently associated with bravery, but more often, with effectiveness. The man or woman of areté is a person of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties: strength, bravery, wit, and deceptiveness, to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, then, areté involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans.

[ since arete also means a sharp mountain ridge or peak, this also implies this is the origin of the idea of peak performance]

Nurture the darkness of your soul
until you become whole.
Can you do this and not fail?
Can you focus your life-breath until you become
supple as a newborn child?
While you cleanse your inner vision
will you be found without fault?
Can you love people and lead them
without forcing your will on them?
When Heaven gives and takes away
can you be content with the outcome?
When you understand all things
can you step back from your own understanding?

Giving birth and nourishing,
making without possessing,
expecting nothing in return.
To grow, yet not to control:
This is the mysterious virtue.

– Tao Te Ching: Chapter 10
translated by J. H. McDonald

“Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
– Mark Twain

Embracing the Way, you become embraced;
Breathing gently, you become newborn;
Clearing your mind, you become clear;
Nurturing your children, you become impartial;
Opening your heart, you become accepted;
Accepting the world, you embrace the Way.

Bearing and nurturing,
Creating but not owning,
Giving without demanding,
This is harmony.

– Ta Te Ching 10,
translated by Peter Merel

Maude: “Vice, Virtue. It’s best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you’re bound to live life fully.”
– “Harold and Maude”, Collin Higgins

Carrying body and soul and embracing the one,
Can you avoid separation?
Attending fully and becoming supple,
Can you be as a newborn baby?
Washing and cleansing the primal vision,
Can you be without stain?
Loving all men and ruling the country,
Can you be without cleverness?
Opening and closing the gates of heaven,
Can you play the role of woman?
Understanding and being open to all things,
Are you able to do nothing?
Giving birth and nourishing,
Bearing yet not possessing,
Working yet not taking credit,
Leading yet not dominating,
This is the Primal Virtue.

– Tao Te Ching 10,
translated by Gia-Fu Feng

“The Tao has no place for pettiness, and nor has Virtue. Pettiness is dangerous to Virtue; pettiness is dangerous to the Tao. It is said, rectify yourself and be done.”
– Chuang Tzu

“The Greeks invented the idea of nemesis to show how any single virtue, stubbornly maintained, gradually changes into a destructive vice. Our success, our industry, our habit of work have produced our economic nemesis. Work made modern men great, but now threatens to usurp our souls, to inundate the earth in things and trash, to destroy our capacity to love and wonder.”
– Sam Keen

“As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
– Albert Einstein

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
– Winston Churchill

“There is…an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents…. The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” — Thomas Jefferson

“I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.”
– Carl Jung

“Moral education… is not about inculcating obedience to law or cultivating self-virtue, it is rather about finding within us an ever-increasing sense of the worth of creation. It is about how we can develop and deepen our intuitive sense of beauty and creativity.
– Andrew Linzey

“Genuine honesty, assuming that this is our virtue and we cannot get rid of it, we free spirits – well then, we will want to work on it with all the love and malice at our disposal and not get tired of ‘perfecting’ ourselves in our virtue, the only one we have left: may its glory come to rest like a gilded, blue evening glow of mockery over this aging culture and its dull and dismal seriousness!” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Golden Ox Fortune — Ling Teck Mong

January 26th starts the Chinese New Year — A year of the ox beginning auspiciously with an ox inaugurated as our President. Hopefully it will be a good year for my ox son, too! What will the year hold, according to Chinese astrologers?

Chinese New Year 4706 or 2009 in the Western calendar is the Year of the Female Brown Earth Ox — sometimes called the cow or water buffalo….The year of the Ox is associated with domestic trouble that seems to have no solution. The grounded, rational, earth influence of the Ox may bring good fortune to troubled economic times but only with a sustained, well planned effort. The Ox influence brings an aversion to risky credit and quick answers that are not well conceived. The Ox year brings success only through discipline and through hard work. The steady ox is quick to anger when confronted by what seems to be irrational opposition, but the use of reason works well and avoids a charge by the angry bull. There is much danger of war and unrest if diplomacy does not prevail.

The last time the earth Ox was seen as the ruling influence was January 29, 1949 – February 15, 1950. The world suffered a recession in late 1948 and early 1949. The world economy recovered during the year of the ox due to rational decisions and careful planning. By 1951, the recession was over. Many will be searching for a quick solution to the current economic crisis, but the ox favors a well planned, consistent path that will take more time but lay a foundation for long lasting results. The strong earth influence of this year favors a strengthening of the housing market, but risk takers will not find this year favorable. Those who look for long term benefits, have a well thought out plan and are willing to work to see results will find great success.

Baby boomers who were born the last time the brown earth Ox ruled the zodiac celebrate their 60th birthday this year. Those who are influenced by the Ox will have experienced many years of good fortune if the planning, hard work and discipline of the sign were heeded. Those who failed to plan are given a new opportunity this year. If the lessons of the past are integrated, the future brings harmony and good fortune at home and in business.

Projects will generally be successful if done in harmony with the spirit of the Earth Ox. This applies both to the nature and quantity of new projects, as well as to the approach to accomplishing them. That means focusing on just a few, select long-term projects. It also suggests proceeding in a cautious yet determined manner. Avoid taking unnecessary risks and yielding to the temptation to seek short-term gains. Philosophical and intellectual truths are pursued, improvements to mankind are encouraged, and great scientific advances are made. Laws regulating contracts and agreements are likely to be implemented and a desire to compromise will underscore international politics.

The Year of the Earth Ox evokes stability and dependability. The Ox is a practical work animal, while the Earth element is steady and firm. Together, they create a kind of plodding energy that can be exasperating. Still, progress will be made in 2009; it will occur in slow, barely perceptible increments. If you stay patient and keep your nose to the grindstone, you will make the most of this ponderous energy. Oxen place great emphasis on authority and tradition. Therefore, 2009 will lay an especially heavy burden on world leaders. Government officials, CEOs and community organizers will be expected to correct society’s ills. If they slack off, they’ll be thrown by the wayside. Substance is always favored over style in the Year of the Ox.

2009 promises to be a time of financial restraint, too. The Earth element places great emphasis on the material plane. Saving will be more important than spending. Everyone will be tightening their belts — even those who are flush with cash. Businesses that work to keep their clients, present materials in a timely manner and provide excellent customer service will survive, while companies that take an indifferent approach to their clientele will fall to ruin. There’s no room for slackers in an Ox year, especially as far as commerce is concerned.

Practical tradesmen like plumbers, electricians, carpenters and mechanics may do especially well this year, because the Earth Ox prizes foundations. Anyone involved in strengthening and improving foundations is sure to profit in 2009. Teachers, engineers, farmers, nurses, dentists, doctors, politicians and technicians are also in for a good year, as the Earth Ox favors long-term investments in people and structures. Creative professionals may have a lean year in 2009. Actors, journalists, writers, models and dancers will have to work extra hard to find jobs, as such work seems superfluous to the ultra-practical Earth Ox.

Heron stands in the blue estuary,
Solitary, white, unmoving for hours.
A fish! Quick avian darting;
The prey is captured.

People always ask how to follow Tao. It is as easy and natural as the heron standing in the water. The bird moves when it must; it does not move when stillness is appropriate.

The secret of its serenity is a type of vigilance, a contemplative state. The heron is not in mere dumbness or sleep. It knows a lucid stillness. It stands unmoving in the flow of the water. It gazes unperturbed and is aware. When Tao brings it something that it needs, it seizes the opportunity without hesitation or deliberation. Then it goes back to its quiescence without disturbing itself or its surroundings. Unless it found the right position in the water’s flow and remained patient, it would not have succeeded.

Actions in life can be reduced to two factors: positioning and timing. If we are not in the right place at the right time, we cannot possibly take advantage of what life has to offer us. Almost anything is appropriate if an action is in accord with the time and the place. But we must be vigilant and prepared. Even if the time and the place are right, we can still miss our chance if we do not notice the moment, if we act inadequately, or if we hamper ourselves with doubts and second thoughts. When life presents an opportunity, we must be ready to seize it without hesitation or inhibition. Position is useless without awareness. If we have both, we make no mistakes.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

I’ve been thinking a lot about this one. One of the comments my yoga teacher often makes is that yoga is about creating “steadyness of mind”. I think this is what this passage means. We have to steady and quiet our minds, creating awareness. Then, when opportunities are presented to us, we can easily know what needs to be done and take action.When your mind is confused or distracted with conflicting ideas or feelings, it can be impossible to know what to do. But Tao trains us in quieting and steadying the mind, just as yoga does. The two are very effective together.

I think I would like to learn other techniques for this as well. I know the medications I take have a great effect on steadying and quieting my mind and my thoughts, which is very helpful. My gardening becomes like this for me as well, as I get into an almost zen-like state of seeing what needs to be done and doing it, without doing so much that the overall effect is ruined. Not that I have a zen garden, it’s far more of a cottage garden. I don’t care for the over-manicured look of most meditative gardens, really. I prefer a natural look.

People often remark these days on how calm I am; how so little seems to upset me. Oh, sure, I can get upset when it matters. But little things don’t bother me. I am learning to trust Tao to work things out, and start to look for what comes to me when my plans are upset. Often I’ll find just what I’m looking for when things seem to have gone awry. So I’ve learned that sometimes Tao is telling me that what I need may be different from what I have planned, and learn to be less upset.

I suppose a lot of people would say their belief in their God is like this, but it’s different for me. I don’t look to a god, unless you could consider everything in life some part of god. For me, it is all a connected whole. I don’t see myself as separate from god, or other people as any better or worse for what they believe in. Perhaps I’m more Hindu in that, just accepting all gods as part of the pantheon. But I go further in accepting all spirituality as basically the same. What I don’t accept in religion is the imposing of one’s beliefs on others.

So, I guess I am learning to stand more quietly in the stream, hoping to catch more fish. Hey, last night I caught a pretty great salmon, all nice and cooked and brought to my table in a tasty sauce. The fishing doesn’t get much better than that.

(originally posted on Friday, January 14th, 2005 )

In spite of knowing,
Yet still believing.
Though no god above,
Yet god within.

There is no god in the sense of a cosmic father or mother who will provide all things to their children. Nor is there some heavenly bureaucracy to petition. These models are not descriptions of a divine order, but are projections from archetypal templates. If we believe in the divine as cosmic family, we relegate ourselves to perpetual adolescence. If we regard the divine as supreme government, we are forever victims of unfathomable officialdom.

Yet it does not work for us to totally abandon faith. It does not follow that we can forego all belief in higher beings. We need faith, not because there are beings who will punish us or reward us, but because gods are wonderful ways of describing things that happen to us. They embody the highest aspects of human aspiration. Gods on the altars are essential metaphors for the human spiritual experience.

Faith shouldn’t be shaken because bad things happen to us or because our loved ones are killed. Good and bad fortune are not in the hands of gods, so it is useless to blame them. Neither does faith need to be confirmed by some objective occurrence. Faith is self-affirming. If we maintain faith, then we have its reward. If we become better people, then our faith has results. It is we who create faith, and it is through our efforts that faith is validated.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

The point of faith is to become better people. Not to force your religion on others, but to better yourself. Not to strengthen your religion or return it to its traditions so you can glory in the past, but to allow yourself to face the world as it is now, and deal with life as it is now. Tao doesn’t encourage us to live in the past or long for some past glory days of Taoist rule, or go around converting everyone to Taoism, or to force our governments to meet some holy standards of justice. Tao tells us to live our own lives in harmony with natural forces. The “faith” of Tao is to know that if you follow its principles and move in harmony with the Tao, your life will naturally become better.

And it does. That’s the beauty of it. It works. Just as Christianity does if you truly follow its teachings, and don’t reinvent your own interpretations of it to suit your misogynistic tendencies. Just as Buddhism does, if you follow its logic. Just as Islam does, if you follow its true tenants and don’t use them as ways to control the women in your society, or enforce the power of the Mullahs over the people to their detriment. Just as any faith does, once you get past the “rules” you’re “supposed” to follow and understand the heart of what it is trying to tell you – to treat other people well, to better yourself before complaining about others, and to live your own life in accordance with what you believe, and not impose that on other people around you.

For the unified mind in accord with the tao all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of suchness there is neither seer nor other-than-self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubt arises, ‘Not two.’ In this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, Emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small, no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words! The tao is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

–Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on the Faith Mind)
Attributed to Chien Chih Sengtsan, ca. 600 C.E.
Translated by Robert B. Clarke

I am beginning to understand that there is much of the trickster in my personality. I’ve always identified with Loki, and often use humor to try and defuse situations (not always successfully, like any trickster…)

I’m currently reading Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift” right now, but I think his “Trickster Makes This World” will be in the reading stack soon. (It’s been on my wish list for a few weeks now).

Lewis Hyde

“An important part of any sacred activity is marking a boundary between the sacred and non-sacred. It’s important to build a container so the action is conducted inside sacred space,” he noted. “So, when you get to a character like the Trickster, you now have somebody who is the critic of the boundary, whose position is that all boundaries can be become too rigid and too impermeable, causing the life to dry up inside the container. So you need, both … some way to make the container and some function that is smart about how and where to break it. The Trickster is the sacred boundary crosser. And it’s not just that he crosses boundaries, he does it as a needed sacred function. If all you have is sacred forces who are maintaining their fiefdoms then you can end up with a fragmented heaven. Trickster gets a commerce going among the various sacred powers.”

Speaking of “heaven” – Hyde related in his book the story of C.G.Jung when he was a twelve-year-old schoolboy in Basel, Switzerland, admiring the glorious cathedral in the town square.

Said Jung, “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the sight, and thought: ‘The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful and God made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and … Here came a great hole in my thoughts, and a choking sensation. I felt numbed, and knew only: ‘Don’t go on thinking now! Something terrible is coming …’”

For several days Jung struggled with the thought of whether or not God, who controls all things, could allow him to think a thought he shouldn’t think. Finally, having worked himself around to believing that God wanted him to have the forbidden thought, he relented: “I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hell-fire, and let the thought come. I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world – and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder … I felt an enormous, an indescribable relief. Instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me. I wept for happiness and gratitude.”

Hyde said he was indebted to C.G. Jung, particularly one of his students, Marie-Louise von Franz, and their work with the idea of Mercurius. To the medieval alchemists, Mercury was the metal symbolizing duality – metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery. Mercury was the metal uniting all the opposites. This Trickster energy was known to the Greeks by way of Hermes, the messenger god; in the Roman pantheon, Hermes becomes Mercury.

“C.G. Jung was a fabulously smart guide,” Hyde continued. “The Jungian insight is that the psyche is a community of forces and you need that whole community of forces working together. The pathology is when one member of the community begins to dominate in an individual, so some other part – your Warrior, say, or your sense of justice – gets muted. Or if we’re speaking of a group rather than one psyche, it’s when somebody begins to take over through display of one singular force. In a healthy community, every force will have a counter force. For example, Hermes steals the cattle from Apollo, but at the end of the story, Hermes and Apollo are friends. They find a way to relate. They need each other. You can’t have a boundary crosser unless you have someone who cares about the boundary. Hermes needs Apollo to be able to play with the rules and Apollo needs Hermes to keep things lively.”

To help people come back to a place where they’ve been trapped or lost requires them to become a ‘Hermeneut’ of their own life. They have to be helped to understand that there is an active learnable role to play in relating to the story you tell about your own life, the story you’ve inherited, the story you’re going to create as you live your life. Most Americans are passive recipients of the story that the media wants them to live by and only when you realize it is a story are you able to make different choices. You can interpret the story and be converted – from a passive object of commercial pitchmen into an actor living a life that you yourself create.”

Hyde said he believed a lot of Americans were “numb.” I liked the quote he used from child psychologist Donald Winnicott: “It is a joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.”

To explore within ourselves all the limiting behavior we’ve been taught takes a kind of “imaginative amorality,” the author said. It’s not an immorality, but an archetypal motivation in our own psyche to “play with the rules rather than observe them.”

Hubby is back from the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco – and I got presents! Yay! This dragon headed turtle is one of them, along with some yummy Teuscher’s chocolates and a nice hat and scarf from the Scottish store.

Dragon headed turtles are a Feng Shui charm:

The Dragon Headed Turtle brings with it the ancient secrets that can protect a home from negative energies.

The Dragon symbolizes luck, the turtle long life and the baby turtle is a symbol of new beginnings. The Dragon Headed Turtle (Tortoise, Terrapin,) is the symbol of longevity in your home, especially for the head of the house. The dragon headed turtle is also a powerful symbol of wealth, health, prosperity and protection.

Legend has it that the turtle has within his body the secret of heaven and earth and the design of his shell shows the magic square, which is the guide for life.

This beautiful dragon headed turtle can be used to improve relationships by placing a piece of red ribbon in his mouth, to attract wealth use golden ribbon.

If you are having Health problems place a piece of blue ribbon in his mouth.

To increase his strength place him in the North of your lounge or office or place him behind you when you are sitting at your desk to give you support.

To increase your success or improve your options place one inside your front door on a table, in the evening turn him round to face the interior.

Never place him in the kitchen or bathroom.

On a day when I am not at peace with myself or my surroundings, Ascender comes along and kicks my cage door wide open. I was going to write something about how I am feeling today, but I think I’ll just link to her good wishes instead. Please click on her link below to visit all the bloggers she lists; I don’t have the time to fix all the linky love at the moment here.

Namaste, to all.

Studio Lolo tagged me with this ‘peace and love’ meme; to spread the word to send loving energy and thoughts to the places and people that need it. Rather then tagging others I hope to pass on some urls of my virtual pals who could use some of your loving energy and thoughts. Please leave some virtual peace and love to some people who could really use it right now.

Red Moon at the loss of her daughter

The Daily Warrior successfully fighting ALS for 16 years

Studio Friday is closing down. Stop by and show her some love for her dedication all these years.

Check out these bloggers who address peace and love almost everyday: 3191, a poetic justice, another poster for peace, anti-war us, Art For A Change, Art of Mark Byran, Artists Helping Children, Blog Like You Give A Damn, Blood For Oil, bricalu, Buddha Project, Change Me, Changing Places, Crafty Green Poet, No Blood For War and Profit, Inhabitat, kamurawayan, Light a Candle, Military Families Speak Out, Miniature Gigantic, Paris Parfait, Peaceful Societies, Pinwheels for Peace, Poets Against the War, rambling taoist, smile, smile, Take it Personally, The Peace Train, Treehugger, Visual Resistance, We Are What We Do, Betmo, Bloggers For Peace

I was reading Sally’s latest article in Yoga Journal today, “Waking Life”, which is excellent, by the way, and decided to check out her web site. She has a number of other excellent articles posted there, including this one which appealed to the engineer in me. Surrender is probably one of the most difficult concepts on Yoga for me (or any spiritual practice).

Sally Kempton, meditation teacher, Swami Durgananda

My favorite surrender story was told to me by my old friend Ed. An engineer by profession, he was spending some time in India, at the ashram of his spiritual teacher. At one point, he was asked to help supervise a construction project, which he quickly found was being run incompetently and on the cheap. No diplomat, Ed rushed into action, arguing, amassing proofs, bad-mouthing his colleagues and staying up nights scheming about how to turn the tide. At every turn, he got resistance from the other contractors, who soon took to subverting everything he tried to do.

In the midst of this classic impasse, Ed’s teacher called them all to a meeting. Ed was asked to explain his position, and then the contractors started talking fast. The teacher kept nodding, seeming to agree. At that moment, Ed had a flash of realization. He saw that none of this mattered in the long run. He wasn’t there to win the argument, save the ashram money, or even make a great building. He was there to study yoga, to know the truth—and obviously, this situation had been designed by the cosmos as the perfect medicine for his efficient engineer’s ego.

At that moment, the teacher turned to him, “Ed, this man says you don’t understand local conditions, and I agree with him. So, shall we do it his way?”

Still swimming in the peace of his newfound humility, Ed folded his hands. “Whatever you think best,” he said.

He looked up to see the teacher staring at him with wide, fierce eyes. “Its not about what I think,” he said. “Its about what’s right. You fight for what’s right, do you hear me?”

Ed says that this incident taught him three things. First, that when you surrender your attachment to a particular outcome, things often turn out better than you could ever have imagined. (Eventually, he was able to persuade the contractors to make the necessary changes.) Second, that a true karma yogi is not someone who goes belly-up to higher authority, but a surrendered activist—a person who does his best to help create a better reality—all the while knowing that he’s not in charge of outcomes. Third, that the attitude of surrender is the best antidote to anger, anxiety, and fear.

I often tell this story to people who worry that surrender means giving up, or that letting go is a synonym for inaction, because it illustrates so beautifully the paradox behind “Thy will be done.” As the god Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, surrender sometimes means being willing to get into a fight.

A truly surrendered person may look passive, especially when something appears to need doing, and everyone around is shouting, “Get a move on, get it done, this is urgent!” Seen in perspective, however, what looks like inaction is often simply a recognition that now is not the time to act. Masters of surrender tend to be masters of flow, knowing intuitively how to move with the energies at play in a situation. You advance when the doors are open, when a stuck situation can be turned, moving along the subtle energetic seams that let you avoid obstructions and unnecessary confrontations.

Such skill involves attunement to the energetic movement that is sometimes called universal or divine will, the Tao, flow, or in Sanskrit, shakti. Shakti is the subtle force—we could call it cosmic intention—behind the natural world in all its manifestations.

Surrender starts with a recognition that this greater life force moves as you. One of my teachers, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, once said that to surrender is to become aware of God’s energy within oneself, to recognize that energy, and to accept it. It’s an egoless recognition—that is, it involves a shift in your sense of what “I” is—which is why the famous inquiry “Who am I?” or “What is the I?” is central to the process of surrender. (Depending on your tradition and your perspective at the time, you may recognize that the answer to this question is “Nothing” or “All that is”—in other words, consciousness, shakti, the Tao.)

Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Wishing you fortune)
Sun Tai Geen Hong! (Wishing you good health)
Man Si Yu Yi! (Wishing you a thousand wishes)
Sum Sung Si Cheng! (Wishing you your heart’s fulfillment)
Bo Bo Go Sing! (May every step be higher and higher)

The Lunar New Year, also celebrated by Koreans, Vietnamese, Mongolian, etc. for hundreds of years, is called Korean New Year, Vietnamese New Year, etc. by other peoples and known in Chinese as the Spring Festival .

2008′s socially adept Rat year brings us charisma, intelligence and the ability to charm the pants off of just about anybody – literally. Romantically, 2008′s repertory will be as eclectic and varied as this first sign of the Zodiac. High-strung, curious, and ever alert to sexual opportunity, during Rat years we will all feel the need to make an emotional connection with our love partner. It is after sunset that the Rat year comes alive with numerous acquaintances, lively discussion, and intensely romantic interludes. We will all value companionship and love more than anything else this year. Enjoy the concealed and stealthy midnight hours ruled by the Rat of romantic secrets and delicious debauchery. People fall in love easily during Rat years and we will all be prone to some memorable infatuations. In the last Earth Rat year (60 years ago) Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male stunned the country with revelations about infidelity, homosexuality and other issues.

Positively, in the previous Rat year of 1948, the Jews of Palestine declared independence and the State of Israel was born on May 14, 1948. Negatively, another major beginning occurred that year on May 26, 1948 when the government of South Africa embraced Apartheid bitterly dividing the country. Financially, socially and globally, for better or for worse, 2008 is pregnant with potential.

2008 will also be an intellectual one, as the Rat is the curious professor of the zodiac. Expect a renewed passion for knowledge, and interest in the sciences in 2008. Travel and a hunger for new experiences, will also beckon. The 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar began operation in the previous Earth Rat year of 1948 and the “Big bang” theory of the universe’s origin was first postulated. In Aztec, New Mexico Three radar units tracked a falling UFO and a military search party was dispatched from Camp Hale in Colorado. The search team finds a crashed 30-foot disc, recovers remains which is stored in Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB.

Words and language will become ever more important and poets, musicians and writers can easily produce their best work to date under the influence of the talented Rat. Exchanging and communicating are the priorities of a Rat year. A hyperactive and restless year of potential nervous disorders and neurosis of every type. A good year to explore relaxation methods such as meditation more thoroughly. You may find yourself more sensitive to illness, environmental insults and allergies this year as well, so be sure to get that flu shot and eat your vegetables!

Lewis Hyde – Home

Clever at deceit, tricksters are equally clever at seeing through deceit, and therefore at revealing things hidden beneath the surface. In Chinese legend, for example, only the trickster Monkey can see through the disguises of evil monsters who hope to eat him and his friends. With his “fiery eyes and diamond pupils,” Monkey is “the one who has perception.”

In many traditions this kind of deep sight belongs to the prophet, for prophets are those who can perceive the spiritual world beneath the veil of the mundane. Tricksters have similar powers, Lewis Hyde argues, and thus they too have a prophetic role to play, though theirs is prophecy with a difference: no traditional prophet lies and steals to deliver his message.

Traditional prophets disrupt the mundane to point toward eternal truths, but the prophetic trickster disrupts the “eternals” themselves, and in so doing points toward the plenitude of this world, the fullness it has when not obscured by all our ideas, structures, and rules for living. Traditional prophets point toward things that time cannot touch, but the prophetic trickster points toward time itself, toward the changing noise of this world, not the constant harmony of distant spheres.

The Hindu god Krishna makes a good example. As soon as Krishna has grown up, he stops stealing butter and starts stealing love. On moonlit nights he plays his flute, letting its charming melody drift over the garden walls until the faithful women of the town abandon their marriage beds and come dance with him in the forest. Krishna is a thief of hearts, but not because hearts are scarce. Dancing in the woods, he multiplies himself a thousand times so as to appear fully to each of the women, and gratify each one’s desire to be his lover.

But if there is no scarcity, why be a thief in the first place? Because the abundance that Krishna wants (and symbolizes) is available only when ordinary moral structure has been removed. In the Hindu culture from which this story comes, marriage does not express private desire so much as the social setting of family alliances, property, land and inheritance. In some parts of India, in fact, they say that love should never be the basis of marriage, since to introduce desire into the realm of structure would confuse and weaken it.

But in the trickster myth, desire becomes prophetic precisely because it can reveal the fullness that lies beyond the walls of convention. Stolen love opens windows onto that larger world. Society needs its designs if it is to endure, but trickster’s mischief regularly shows that no design can encompass creation’s great abundance. Trickster is the prophet whose actions reveal the uncontainable plenitude of this world.

Why then, have to be human?
Oh not because happiness exists,
Not out of curiosity…
But because being here means so much;
because everything here,
vanishing so quickly, seems to need us,
and strangely keeps calling to us… To have been
here, once, completely, even if only once,
to have been at one with the earth –
this is beyond undoing.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

“It is only through letting our heart break that we discover something unexpected: The heart cannot actually break, it can only break open … To live with a broken-open heart is to experience life full strength … When the heart breaks open, it marks the beginning of a real love affair with this world. It is a broken-hearted love affair, rather than the conventional kind based on hope and expectation. Only in this fearless love that can respond to life’s pain as well as its beauty can we be of real help to ourselves or anyone else in this difficult age. The broken-hearted warrior is an essential archetype for our time.”

“We set out on a path that is continually surprising — learning to be ourselves, yet also more than ourselves. As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki points out, “When you are yourself, just yourself, through and through, you are the universe. You are not this conditioned person anymore.” Then, though we may dedicate ourselves to helping this world, our well-being will not depend on the outcome. For we are becoming one with that force in the universe that is forever creating itself anew.” — John Welwood, Love and Awakening

“The soul that rises within us,
our life’s star,
cometh from afar
and hath elsewhere its setting.”

– Wordsworth

“Dancing With My Mother”, Elizabeth Williams

I haven’t written or thought much lately about negativity. I dropped my sack of resentments a long time ago, or so I thought. But perhaps I merely traded that large heavy sack for a smaller and lighter one, since I do still feel those resentments popping up on occasion, although I don’t carry them around for very long. I’ve learned to use my inner mirror and my own resources to deal with a lot of the negativity in my life. Sometimes now I forget to do this, though, and on those days when I begin to find myself blaming others, I need to remember that I am resourceful and that any negativity I feel towards others is simply a mirror to something that I am disliking within myself and need to work towards resolving. And sometimes I know I just need to sit with the feelings in the stillness for a while, let them happen and acknowledge them and feel the compassion for myself in dealing with those feelings, so I can return to feeling joyful about my life again.

But now, I feel I am moving once again, to an even deeper part of myself, to the very center of myself. And not everything here is all joyful and happy; there are some deep, dark shadows. I have had dreams of killing the dark negativity, of being grabbed to be taken away by it and turning it around and grabbing it by the throat to choke it. But this is “negative negativity“, as Chogyam Trungpa would say. What I need to learn is to have compassion for these dark places and develop an understanding of why they exist. I need to learn to “be present with my raw edges” as John Welwood puts it. Perhaps if I stop trying to overcome this residual negativity, it will become worthwhile to sit with it and let these remaining storms pass through.

I first discovered this article in May of 2003. I did a search on my posts for the word “present”, and this is the second post that came up. The first is this one on a trip to Disneyland. This seems to be around the time when I actually began to wake up from my deep depression.

Perhaps what it is really all about is simply learning to be present, to be here now, as they say. It seems trite, but once you’ve really learned that, everything else becomes so much easier. Just to be present with yourself, with how you really actually feel in the moment, seems to be what makes us most alive.

Shambhala Sun – Six Kinds of Loneliness

The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.

Shambhala Training Glossary

DRALA: (Tibetan: “dra”, enemy or opponent; “la”, above): “beyond the enemy”. “Unconditioned wisdom and power of the world that are beyond any dualism, therefore Drala is above any enemy or conflict. It is wisdom beyond aggression. It is the self existing wisdom and power of the cosmic mirror that are reflected both in us and in our world of perception.” “One of the key points in discovering drala principle is realizing that your own wisdom as a human being is not separate from the power of things as they are… reflections of the unconditional wisdom of the cosmic mirror. … When you can experience those two things together…then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world…connected to your own vision, your own being. We actually perceive reality. Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully.”

Overcoming the need for an enemy provides access to a deeper source of energy and power in our lives. The Tibetans have a word for this larger energy — drala — which literally means “beyond the enemy”. Chogyam Trungpa describes drala as “the magical quality of existence” that arises out of “connecting the wisdom of your own being with the power of things as they are”. We can perceive the power inherent in things as they are — the radiance of fire, the solidity of earth, the expansiveness of joy, the tenderness of sorrow — only when we drop our struggle with ourselves and our experience — – John Welwood, “Love and Awakening”

Via CharityFocus.

Which also gives us this valuable lesson for the day on giving time instead of money gifts:

More than the amount of time, the sincerity with which we spend our time is far more important. I remember a friend of mine giving me a gift of a story one time — driving up the freeway tollbooth, the driver behind him became very visibly upset thinking that he had cut him off. He could’ve yelled back, but when it was time to pay the toll, he instead paid toll for that car behind him! “That’s my contribution to peace,” he proudly remarked. Underneath that story was a subtle transformation of two lives, and that was much more valuable than a Macy’s gift card.

Giving time doesn’t necessarily take more “time”; rather it requires a shift in one’s mindset. The simplest thing everyone can give is the gift of a commitment to a value — practice meditation daily, work out three times a week, donate money to a charity every month, whatever it is.