Enlightement Part 4: Perspective

For perspective:

Do I think I am saying anything new or revolutionary?

Nope.

How could I be when:

Thousands of religions exist
Tens of thousand spiritual teachers are alive and helping
Countless writings and previous poets pondered life.

So the question becomes:

Why do we try?
Why scribble and scratch about as chickens amidst the feed?

All these posts are:
Scribbles of thoughts as I meander each day.
Personal road markers for perspective.

The answer weaves out as:

A Taoist takes anything they write or say lightly.

As I keep pointing out.

It's never about the answers.

What Taoist's take seriously is embracing the moment in wonder.

Thats exactly what each of these posts represents

A moment of wonder in pondering.

After the posting, these blog entries are just as cherry petals in the breeze...

Blowing onwards and away upon the ground,
as the grass continues to grow up and out
from a pink blanket of spring


Very very few will take the petals in as compost for growth.
Possibly a few will look at the various posts and smile.

For myself

I enjoy the wonder in the moment each post represents...

Then to continue to tumble in the breeze.

peace

Part III Hermits, Light and Kindness

What is it most people truly want?

• Food - Shelter
  
  
• Comfort and acknowledgment
  
  
• A sense of self empowerment...
  
  
• Etc, etc...
  

Enlightenment is typically pretty low on the list of things to do for many people.

Matters not.

If you are on the path of enlightenment....

Don't mistake your "inner light" to be a beacon for helping others.

It isn't..

It's your own internal lighthouse in the seas of your life.

When diving into this form of self exploration, our personal inner light becomes a very bright guiding force to help internally in a wondrous journey. However, your inner light isn't something that is directly visible to others.

What is visible to others will be the peace and serenity gained from the process of self improvement.

Peace and serenity are shared in the process of kindness.

Now it's time to connect this post back to an earlier post about kindness.

Don't ever worry about helping others find enlightenment... Kindness itself is the aspect of enlightenment that is sharable to helping others solve the more immediate problems of life.

If you ever desire to be a spiritual teacher for yourself or to others. Remember kindness as a core part of the practice towards enlightenment.

Be kind to yourself..

We are always our own teachers in the life we wander within.

peace

Path of Enlightenment: Part II Hermits and Light

To continue yesterday's post.

Why do people make (or think ) the path to enlightenment (is) difficult.

It's simply a reflection of a person's life.

When making a personal life to be complicated... in reflection typically a person will then make the path to enlightenment to be similarly difficult.

It seems that people make an unconscious choice that the path to enlightenment should follow the path of one's life... this is a pretty simple and direct relationship.

However, if we already are connected , having the "light" within us, then actually no path is required at all to embrace it, all a person has to do is relax and accept it as it is... Since it's there for everyone already...

So here is the trick of the situation: the path of enlightenment... is

(a) the path to become the light...

or

(b) the process of coming to acceptance that one is the light.

the core answer is (b) but 99.99 percent of humanity choses answer (a) to get to answer (b)

A fine difference in grammar. This is the "trap" most people fall into. While option (a) is a perfectly valid choice to explore... it's the path that takes 20 to 30 years of purification and simplification, practice, reduction, personal rebirth and finally acceptance to reach.

The true "trap" here is not everyone accepts that the light is already within themselves, or they don't accept that the light is readily reachable. This is trick of ego, ego has to let go of control in order for the light to shine.

Taking path (b) goes straight to acceptance. However, path (b) will not work, if you hang on to ego... Ego is a very sticky beast indeed. It's sticky for a reason, if it were easy to rejoin to the light... then most of us wouldn't stick around to experience all the hard parts of life either... (I hear a few people going "ah" and getting the connection now)

Seems too simple? That's the point, it is too simple for many people, so instead many people take the harder path for the journey itself. Thats why path (a) is perfectly fine and nothing is wrong for taking it. In fact by taking it, a person does get to experience a whole lot of neat practices along the way to help make the journey more interesting.

This is a core reason why many enlightenment practices teach a person to simplify and reduce down their life to be as simple as possible.

Is this required?

Not absolutely... However, the majority of people who have issues with attachment, typically do require to follow such practices, over quite a few years, to get to the point where they can focus on their inner nature and light.

As I said yesterday. The path to enlightenment is not a matter of dogma, it's a personal choice of direction.

Dogma merely provides guidelines and practices to follow to help a person along the way. For this reason Taoism teaches many dogma's and paths to enlightenment.

I myself prefer option b, which lets me laze under a tree as I watch life bounce about. I have poked about many of the practices within path (a) to help sand down aspects of my nature. Which brings up a point... you can mix and match (a) and (b) also. Live, explore and enjoy life.

Don't worry about the answers, it only comes together once you let it all go... And there is no rush to do that since we have our entire life to play around within to "get it".


I'll be under the tree if you have questions.

Imagine sitting down, beside an old maple tree.
Close the eyes.
Feel dappled sunlight dancing on skin,
Leaves eclipse stray beams
as shadows tango to the light across the body.

Listen to leaves whisper
...joy...
as the wind tussles them
into the air.

Smile as branches complain
in creaking strains
as younger leaves bounce in play. 

Peace

---

PS: more tomorrow.

Questions and more Questions about Finding Inner Peace

I received this question the other day:

I have no idea how to go about resolving the constant questions that go through my head! Asking these questions just makes my life miserable as it always leads to no answers over and over again.

I cant see any light at the end of the tunnel all I see is more questions! Is it possible for people like me to achieve inner peace?

Everyone can find inner peace. The path is through acceptance. However, countless paths for finding acceptance exist. Its just that some seekers take a longer path than others.

I have blogged about finding acceptance many times before. So you can check out earlier posts on this topic, or just search upon the term acceptance in this blog to find other entries.

Countless practices, and systems of belief exist to help people find answers. The biggest problem is finding a practice or system that matches to your nature.

For example: In Zen practice you just keep asking questions and then more questions until the mind says enough is enough and you discover how to let go. Of course Zen then takes this a step further and you ask even more questions just to be sure you mind has learned to be empty of questions.

In Taoism you learn everything is relative which means most answers are not worth chasing. So you let go of the questions and skip straight into acceptance.

In fact Taoism takes this a step further to teach many questions don't have a larger answer at all, that in fact the only answer possible is that you yourself are the answer. In other words, a Taoist reaches the point of acceptance where you yourself are the answer for a majority of the questions you face...

So for a Taoist, questions fall into two categories: Outer Truth and Inner Truth. Questions that fall in the zone of Outer truth are questions which could be consider universal in nature. For example : What is Red? Red is a color... pretty clear cut right? Nope.

Since most questions end up being relative:

For instance What is Red? Well depending on how you perceive the world, Red means something different. So to someone who is color blind their RED may not be the same as your RED.

So questions which are dependent on your nature fall into the category of Inner Truth.

Even more confusing: some questions might have different answers depending if you are trying to answer relative to an Outer Truth or Inner Truth as the "What is Red?" question illustrates.

So when considering this: of course a person can get stuck in endless loops chasing questions. As answers are infinite. A Person can spend an entire lifetime chasing answers only to left still chasing after more.

The real problem is many people try to force questions which are strictly Inner Truth in nature as if they were Outer Truth issues.

This is the root reason religions can cause so many problems: trying to force personal answers upon others.

So back to the question about finding inner peace.

Taoism teaches this:

Inner Peace can be discovered when accepting most questions are Inner Truths. To discover Inner Peace is simply a question of accepting yourself as an answer.

Peace

Mid life Crisis as Midlife Transformation.

A basic truth of Mid life Crisis is it being an ever changing process. In effect it's a time of transformation. It doesn’t make a difference who you are, how organized or how spiritual you are. This is a complex time spanning years in a person's life.

Midlife Transformation isn’t a process of a neat single step. A person living this transformation will experience many changes, make many mistakes along the way and almost always will end up in a place they never even suspected exists. Midlife Transformation most often will lead to several experiences of “Enlightenment” during the overall process.

If you are fortunate enough to have experience such a feeling of “Enlightenment” once, then be aware this is just the starting point of a longer journey. If you haven’t reached the “Enlightenment” you seek, then it means not having yet relaxed into a practice of acceptance yet.

This process of receiving insight and growing is gained by tumbling through all the edges/boundaries of the transformation providing a person perspective. It's this perspective and the changes in your perceptions that fuel the “Enlightenment” process. So don’t hesitate to change, don’t hesitate to practice and try new activities.

When Julie and I guide others in our Personal Retreats, we help a person walk along their life in many ways. The most important teaching being a practice of acceptance. From this point a person can begin to relax into their own nature. Acceptance is the spring from which “Enlightenment” emerges. Once this lesson is shown, we then literally teach many many different practices (be it Dance, Yoga, Qi Gong, Laughter, Taoism, Herbalism, Physics, Hiking, Meditation, Art etc) which help a person towards what they would like to become.

People make the mistake that any new practice they learn could be the key and the actual process of Enlightenment. This is a mistake. Never confuse the tool , a practice, with the destination of Enlightenment. To make this mistake just means taking longer to find your own personal acceptance.

While a practice could lead towards Enlightenment. Thousands upon thousands of practices exist which can be helpful for a person. We each have and will learn many many practices over our life, to fit and make life wonderful to experience.

The process of Enlightenment is simply acceptance and living of one’s life fully!

Midlife Crisis
is the active process of Rejecting your current state of life.

Midlife Transformation
is the active process of re-learning how to be yourself.

It's possible to find guides in this journey, just be careful and try to find a guide who respects your changing nature rather than trying to make you into a clone of their practice. This is a very common mistake people make in their Mid life Crisis.

Trying to be something you are not, actually continues and lengthens the process of a Mid life Crisis.

Discover the secret that Mid life Crisis is actually allowing it to become a Midlife Transformation. This means allowing the change into yourself. Don't limit or try to be something else. Simply explore the options as they occur and along the way this opens up discovery and unexpected joys to life.

The experience of joy itself becomes the guiding light to your own nature without forcing the issues of crisis.

This whole process of movement when done with joy becomes a guiding force known as grace.

Following this basic outline will help turn a Mid life Crisis into a time of wonder and exploration. Yes it always will be a hard journey, but it can also be the most enjoyable journey within one's life when being open to the overall experience.

Grace in your journeys. :)

Peace

Understanding the Empty Space

I have just finished up rough draft versions of several new sections for the Personal Tao book: here is the empty space section (still in process of revising to flow better) An updated book will be published to the site in a week or so after the edit process goes thru its circles of change.

---

We are the light of our own empty space.

What is the Empty Space?

Take some clay. Feel it in your hands. Now spin it upon a potter’s wheel. What is shaped? A bowl comes out. However, the bowl is defined by an empty space, a space enclosed by the bowl’s very form. The empty space holds the water, filling the purpose of the bowl. The actual physical form of the bowl is reflected by the empty space it projects. The final use and form of the bowl being determined in the moment of free will and artistry used to spin out the shape.

In this example the bowl is made from clay. The clay forming the body, but the actual complete bowl projects out as much more than a clay shell; it must include this “empty space” for its definition. In fact to be a bowl is more about the “empty space” over the materials comprising the bowl.

In living, we each have a physical form which is mirrored by an empty space. The process of shaping this space is the very definition of a person’s free will.

Continue to the full article.

Peace

A River of Birds

Life: only as complicated as we make it
Life: as simple as we free ourselves to be!

At times I feel an urge to stop writing. At the moment I could walk away from the Personal Tao. Indeed I have stopped writing the next four sections. No real need is pressing me to say anything else in this moment. Yet "A Personal Tao" is about living, about exploring. By being myself every day I am working on the book, as it's a reflection of the journey thru life. So of course I will write those sections later when the whim sparks back up.

My nature is moving on, never to finish anything but always fullfilling the possibility of each day.

Self discovery is revealing, never to be penned in by fear of what others think of your expression.

This brings me back to a journal entry from the twilight hours of last Sunday:

A river of birds,
thousands schooling past...
Wings buffeting muffled.
The sound, as a stream, around the corner: up in the sky
The sound of a twisting living tornado.

It lifted me high
this wind runnning past.
Not as a flock of birds
but as life flowing.

It's in our nature
to always be moving on.

:)

Peace

Painting

Shades of sadness
Hues of happiness
our palette of humanity.

The process of blending emotions
is the making of our heart.

We cannot just tear apart the canvas
as if to remake ourselves
in a new color.

----------------------

Best to leave this poem un-named, un-finished.
The words I just blurted out
watching a friend struggle with a relationship.
I wanted to record the thoughts for later use.

Our humanity is always an unfinished work.

So much I would like to teach, however,
like this poem: enlightenment, peace, heaven
arise from an inner artistry outflowing from the expression of living.

:)

Peace

Finding Grace

In meandering have you found peace in your movements?

It's such a puzzle at times, the working towards a balanced life.

Yet balance is never a final solution. Especially if balance comes from being an action of response over a process of acceptance.

In the struggle to stay upright, at times life's meaning is spotted in sideways glances. Its feels as if you held still just a little bit longer: life will become clear...

And the answer people seek? Well its...

I hope your movement is graceful and with a smile :)

I guess the secret is discovering that even when tumbled about, life is always graceful.


:)

Peace

Exploring the empty space

Heh: The mysteries of living
Heeee.... the discrepancies of lying

Cut it all apart with the simplicity of truth

Discovering:

Life carries on and on and on

It's the beat of the blood
in the pace of the breath
silhouetting dancing of the spirit.

Leaving always an empty space to reside in.

Our nature is a choice, in the ticking of moments:

Letting outside whims define you
or
swirling it about to be about living

Life carries on and on...
in the simplicity of being one with myself :)


Peace

Journal Entries

Just some entries from my journal.

The path of enlightenment
could be simple
as a single breath

or

complicated
as an entire lifetime

It's a personal decision we each make.

I taste you
Sweet, ripe, ready, moist

You dream of me
everything desired and more

In the modern age people seek immortality thru comfort... Ever lasting life will never be discovered in the cracks of the couch...

To be alive is to openly reveal thoughts over hiding them to be forgotten. To live is an expression of action rather than the burying of dreams.

Peace