Certainty, as most people espouse it is fear based, but clarity is not paranoia and we cannot create clarity. We can only see clearly, and that is possible partially in those moments of surrender. We are not the way of the world, the way of the world is in us. When we see that unity, that nature is in us.
Will there always be a bit of fog? There will always be paradox, but even paradox isn’t insurmountable. There is your way, and the way of the world. But your way doesn’t arise in contradiction to the way of the world. Even the seeming conflict isn’t a contradiction. Destruction isn’t evil. Anything not dynamic is static, and decays by entropy if by no other opposing force.
It is possible that a person is at a stage where they need to butt heads with the world. It is a very experiential way of learning about life. For some surrender has to be won, and they win by losing the fight with the world. Once they have it, it will endure. Where others who are more reflective will have an insight that will endure briefly, then they get distracted. The seeming erratic person, the “undisciplined” soul, is no more foolish than the contemplative ascetic.
In Taoism they deny any difference between the fool and the sage, but they do speak of the path. The sage does it on purpose, takes risks, makes mistakes. Doing this because they know it is the way of the world. It’s the living death of stasis that is mistaken. Being the brick in the wall, a cog in the machine. Some think Taoism is about apathy, in fact this is mistaken. It’s about seeing your drives in context.
Be a brick in the machine? In fact for those who find the bigger way, they carry a lot of spiritual weight and can in fact be very much a brick in the machine. In a sense they carry the world on their shoulders, and it is no weight, no burden. The burden is this unnatural BS we politely call enculturation. Being well adjusted, normal.
The drives that are sanctioned, keeping up with the Joneses, seeking the status rather than our natural and real needs, these are in fact apathy. A refusal to look within, to seek for ourselves, to really get our true needs met and thus we do what’s expected. Work and be good little producers, and wonder why we feel so unsatisfied. We over eat and indulge in self destructive vices. All really because they are expected, even if frowned upon.
Vices are not really a subjective phenomenon. In fact, deviation from instinct is a vice. Deviation from true nature. It isn’t your true nature to eat when you’re not hungry. But it is your nature to seek community and some find it online. Just because finding human contact online in Second Life for example, is seen as unusual, it doesn’t mean it’s a vice. I don’t see my relationships online as a game, and in fact quite the opposite. Second Life is not an abandonment of my Real Life or a distraction. It is more of an outgrowth and actualization of potential. An opportunity to manifest that the petty circumstances used to distract me from. I am aware of my community, but I live in a city that very factually only exists to be a shopping center for the surrounding rural types.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~