To conform or not to conform
To Ought or to Ought not.
Maybe THAT is the question
Should’a’, Could’a’, Would’a’.
Always more, more, more. Never content.
Will enough ever be enough?
"Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see only the manifestations."
(Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1)
The mystery refers to the deeper things of life; the Source, the Essence.
The manifestation refers to the outward expression of that Essence.
“The distracted, wandering mind of concepts and ideas is fueled by desire - everything that the mind presents to you in the form of concepts is driven by a craving of some sort - for a particular type of experience, for safety, for identity and celebrity, and so on. This is because our evolutionary history is that we developed this type of reflexive mind as it kept us alive - the desire for food and shelter is a good adaptation, the mind which manifests in ideas to achieve those desires, that's pretty helpful in an evolutionary situation.
“The problem is when our attention and awareness get fixated on these concepts, instead of just being in our beings, resting, peaceful, effortless, flowing. Especially in our modern, technological age, people can spend almost all of their time in the conceptual level, never even noticing what's happening on the phenomenal level of actual sensations, let alone the depths beneath of vibration and empty awareness.” (TetrisMcKenna)
So often we spend our whole lives fixated on the surface level and completely miss that which is the Source of existence or the Essence of Reality.
“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” (Tao Te Ching)
https://jwbarlament.medium.com/a-universal-truth-desire-in-buddhism-taoism-and-stoicism-cd28a34526f5
Karate, Judo, and Aikido are great physical demonstrations of how not to fight against but rather blend with the energy and force of the other. There is nothing more powerful than the force of nature, the natural way. All of life works this way. Resistance produces nothing but weariness. Flowing with life is the natural way. And yet we are taught to resist and fight against the natural way.
Cultural conditioning teaches us that everything and everyone is the enemy and they are all out to get us, even god.
They are coming to take away your job.
They are coming to take away your religion.
They are even coming to take away Christmas!
They are coming to take away your home.
They are coming to take away your children.
They are coming to take away everything.
Who are they??? And what is everything???
You are the victim of nothing!
Nobody is out to get you. Life is not out to get you. The universe is not out to get you.
Conditioning is a build-up of external expectations. In order to get back to being, I must let go of and remove everything that is not me. Some conditioning is good and necessary and aligns with who I am. But most conditioning is forcing us to conform and to be what we are not. Conditioning forces us to be what others and society tell us to be.
For example, there is the metaphor of a sculpture. Removing what is not essential and necessary. Leaving what is. There is a figure that has been there all along within that log or rock. But it cannot be seen until we remove everything that is not the sculpture that is waiting to be revealed.
Becoming who we are. Unbecoming what we think we should be. What we are told. Just be. Removing everything that is not me. Living what is by accepting what is.
Weary of the fight? The fight ends when we stop fighting. We are the source of our own fight.
Quicksand metaphor. When we resist, the faster we sink. The more we allow ourselves to settle and relax into it and it allows us to begin to float, or at least stop sinking.
Wu Wei of Taoism. The Way never acts and yet nothing is left undone. This is the paradox of wu wei. Flow. Being in the zone. Effortless action. Unity between the self and its environment. Natural processes.
Natural examples: Hardwood versus softwood. Something that is hard tends to break or snap under pressure but that which has some flex in it can withstand winds and storms. Bamboo is lighter than wood but many times stronger. Bamboo is even stronger than steel.
Living without desire, without resistance. Simplicity. No craving for more, more, more. Contentment. Nothing more than what is needed.
Endless craving and consumption of limited resources on this planet = cancer. Cancer cells take over and destroy everything that is healthy. It is just as destructive as endless consumption.
The more we want the more we are unable to be happy.
Longing, desire, and wanting consume peace and contentment.
I used to remind my young child whenever we’d go into a store and he would go into his begging phase. I would say back to him, “I want. I want. I want.” It is like the seagulls in the movie, Finding Dory. Mine! Mine! Mine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-3e0EkvIEM
Life is enough. It contains everything we need to sustain us.
Everything we could ever need is right here and right now.
As humans, we do not need to wait until we learn to be more evolved, more intelligent, more mature, more advanced in order to become the people we were meant to be. When we stand among native americans that are truly at home in their own skin or learn about aboriginals and other First Nation peoples from continents around the world that are the wise men, the shamans, the respected spiritual leaders within each small village, we find that being fully human is not a future advanced state, it is already here within us and has been for thousands of years.
In many of these communities, the definition of insanity is to accumulate more than one needs.
We need nothing more than what we already have,
just like all things in this universe, the sun and stars and flowers.
We are exactly where we are meant to be.
The answers are not out there somewhere or in the future somewhere.
The people we need to be are nowhere in space or time
except for right here and right now within us.
But we have forgotten who we are.
We have become polluted by civilization.
We have become addicts through desire and wanting.
We have become perverted human beings
by the conditioning that we have automatically downloaded,
by the things we are told to think and believe.
We have become ignorant through the lack of discernment
necessary to sort out the powerful influences
of culture and power and external authority.
We must break our addiction to the hidden agendas and
covert influences that seek nothing but our conformity.
We must remember what we already know.
We must radically return to our roots,
just as the root of the word radical suggests.
We must become original human beings,
remembering and being who we are.
I realized that I no longer wanted to be a second hand person. I wanted to be my own person, an original person, a radical person rather than a cut-out or knock-off, a generic or conformed person.
"I have created mirrors in which I consider all the wonders of my originality which will never cease."
(Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179)
Original comes from the root word meaning origin or source.
Original: directly from Latin originalis, from originem (nominative origo) "beginning, source, birth," from oriri "to rise"
Radical: The Latin word radix means "root." This meaning was kept when the word radicalis came into English as radical. I.E. Returning to its Roots.
Tao Te Ching (Chapter 37)
The Tao never does anything,
yet through it all things are done.
If powerful men and women
could center themselves in it,
the whole world would be transformed
by itself, in its natural rhythms.
People would be content
with their simple, everyday lives,
in harmony, and free of desire.
When there is no desire,
all things are at peace.
“Taoism compares life with a river. The river already has a course or several courses, and once we find ourselves in that river, we can swim against the current, we can hold on to a branch or we can let go and go along with the stream. Most of our lives we swim against the current and we don’t even realize it. Our mind believes that it can and should control the environment, in order to survive, which is kind of egocentric because the vast majority of processes within as well as outside ourselves are not in our control. Taoist way is rather navigating through the river instead of trying to control it. Another aspect of the river that characterizes Taoism is the water itself. The characterizations of water are softness and humility that basically symbolize Taoist virtue.”
The supreme good is like water,
which benefits all of creation
without trying to compete with it.
It gathers in unpopular places.
Thus, it is like Tao.
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 8)
Water may be soft, but it overcomes hardness which we can see in the erosion of rock. And water not only seeks the lower places, it has no purpose, no goal, no specific desire. Yet it nourishes everything thing possible.
Water is the softest and most yielding substance. Yet nothing is better than water, for overcoming the hard and rigid, because nothing can compete with it.
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78)
“That which offers no resistance overcomes the hardest substances.
That which offers no resistance can enter where there is no space.
Few in the world can comprehend the teachings without words,
or understand the value of non-action”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 43.
https://medium.com/novasemita/the-philosophy-of-flow-taoism
Mindlessness and Mindfulness. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sometimes-mindlessness-is-better-than-mindfulness/
