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Y'know, I had something really good to write about...

Posted by Tracie on 4/06/2010 02:53:00 AM in , , , , , ,
...and then it just evaporated. I'll sit here for a second and see if it comes back.

Ah, I remember.

I wanted to note that I feel I've found a lot of emotional stability since I started studying The Second Book of the Tao (translated/adapted by Stephen Mitchell, ISBN 978-0-14-311670-7). I'm not linking to a merchant here because I'm not trying to sell anything. :p Pick it up at your local independent bookstore in the Eastern Religion: Taoism section.

I've done a lot of study of Taoism. But it's in the Second Book that it's really clicking, really making sense. Granted, I am in, undoubtably, the best place I've ever been in my life. Not just St. George, Utah, but at DSC, with Brandon, my friends, music and theatre and writing...

Well, as the commentary on poem 26 in the Second Book says:
One of the wonders of what people refer to as spiritual practice (it can also be called "sanity") is that life gets progressively easier. The bumps and jerks, the fumbles and false starts of the apprentice years smooth out, until clarity becomes second nature.
Clarity hasn't become second nature yet, and not all the bumps, jerks, fumbles, and false starts have smoothed yet either. But I am closer than I've ever been to clarity, and there are less bumps and jerks and fumbles and false starts than there once were. And the ones that happen now are of different sorts than the ones that happened in the past.

I know that I would achieve clarity much faster and more thoroughly if I had a master to teach me, but I highly doubt there's a Taoist master in Southern Utah. Either way, I'm getting there, even though it's slower. Therapy helps. It helps a lot. Kathleen is very spiritual, but not in a deistic way.

I realize now that needing people isn't a weakness. But I need to be careful of the people I go to when I'm looking to get my needs met. Some people are caustic. Toxic, even. Creating close relationships with people like that isn't wise. Discretion must be used. Discretion is essential.

I'm still absorbing the idea of nondualism. I still make distinctions between self and other, especially with regard to other people and groups of people. Stereotyping and generalization are things that I can never be rid of - they're tools used by the human mind to avoid information overload. I think that my journey toward nondualism, toward the next step of recognizing that distinctions are not real or significant, will happen later on in time. But I don't know - it could happen tomorrow, for all I know! The sheer beauty of not-knowing is just beginning to dawn on me.

I haven't gotten to the point where I can say, "I love my life." But I am beginning to glimpse how such a sentiment could be possible. And that is very significant.

I think I can say that I am...maybe not excited, but...looking forward, to the future, with cautious optimism, and maybe a touch of detached amusement.

That is also very significant. Very, very significant.

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