Finding our way to The Way one situation at a time. I don't know how great it will be, but I expect it will be interesting, and I look forward to it going on past all reason because wonder is just that way. Are you coming or not?
We will never outlive the shame of Donald Trump.
Or the horror of the voters who elected him being proud of him.
How could this come to be?
The Whigs became the Patriots,
but the Tories were always anti-democracy.
Remember that from the beginning
there have been those who hated democracy.
And have been working all this time
to bring to bear what is being borne out
in Donald Trump.
We need a consultation with ourselves
on a regular basis
in order to maintain our balance and harmony,
our direction and flow,
and our life line with our intuition,
original nature,
innate virtues (The things we do best
and enjoy doing most),
and our inherent imagination.
How often do you do what you love to do?
When is the last time you did it?
Regular consultations with ourselves
keeps us on track.
On the path.
At one with the Tao.
In service to what is called for
in each situation as it arises.
Which is all Jesus ever did.
You can look it up.
Jesus was one with himself,
and that made him one with God.
Same goes for us.
When we are one with ourselves,
we are one with Jesus
and one with God.
We are Jesus and God!!!
At least, you can't spit on the difference.
True to ourselves
is true to Jesus,
is true to God.
Jesus' prayer,
"Thy will, not mine, be done,"
Was a prayer to his intuition.
And to God.
Our intuition is the voice of God within.
To be one with God is to be one with our intuition.
Jesus was true to himself,
true to God
True to his intuition.
And all of that is right there for us to do as well.
"There's nothing to it but to do it!" (Maya Angelo)
We walk through death and dying all the time.
We should be accustomed to it by now.
We should be paying homage to it every day.
We should honor the sacred scenes
being enacted all around us.
Life is sacred!
Death is at the door!
Do not miss the holy moments as they come upon us!
Pause with the acknowledgment
of gratitude and appreciation,
of wonder and respect for what has come,
has been
and is going as we watch--
as we are going as we watch--
and be thankful for it all!
The natural world just happens
according to the rhythms and circumstances
of nature,
with everything settling into its role
commensurate with its needs and its possibilities.
The "civilized" world is prone to war,
revenge, revolt, renunciation, repudiation,
getting even, paying back, making sorry
and being in control.
The foundation and thrust of Taoism/Zen
(Zen is Taoism with appreciation for enlightenment)
is the return to doing things naturally.
One Taoist spokesperson, Zhuangz, said,
“To be free, individuals must discard
rigid distinctions between good and bad,
right and wrong,
and follow a course of action
not motivated by gain or striving.
When one ceases to judge events
as good or bad,
man-made suffering disappears
and natural suffering is embraced as part of life.”
I retired after forty years and six months in the ministry
(And that was nearly fifteen years ago.)
My thing was and is hermeneutics.
I'm still going at it.
You can't retire from your thing.
You can't quit.
No vacations.
No escape.
It's wonderful.
We are here to do our thing.
Do you know what I'm saying?
I'm saying, "Find your thing
and serve it with your life!"
The thing you can't help doing.
The thing you can't stop doing.
The thing you are about.
You know, that thing.
My thing is hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is about knowing
and saying what's what,
and getting people together
with the truth of their life.
Even though nobody cares,
onderstands,
Or knows what you are talking about.
I'm talking about crucial matters,
and they are looking for Billy Graham
and Joel Osteen.
It doesn't slow me down.
Who we are and what we are (to be) about
are the only things that matter.
Being who we are doing what we are (to be) about,
are the only things that matter.
That is who I am and what I am (to be) about.
Hermeneutics.
Saying what's what and what we are (to be) about.
Generally, what we are about
is diversion, distraction, denial, escape, addiction.
That has to change.
The way we change it is to quit wanting.
Wanting has us where we are.
Quitting wanting cold turkey
is the solution to all of our problems today,
everyday.
Live without wanting by flipping the switch,
turning the light around--
and start living in service to what is called for
in each situation as it arises, no matter what--
which means: Never Mind What You Want!
I've been saying this for a thousand years,
it's time people started listening.
What would it take
for Donald Trump to be happy?
His chronic dissatisfaction
and his propensity for finding
scapegoats everywhere
keeps everything up in the air
with nowhere to land.
Everything is somebody's fault.
And Trump is going to make them pay.
His fans adore him because The Trump Show
takes their minds off their own malaise--
and their inescapable ultimate realization
that their life is their own fault.
The same thing, of course, applies to Trump.
He is the witless victim of his own life.
And can't stand it.
And the world pays for it.
Just by being there.
The values at the heart of Democracy
have to be worthy of Democracy
or it's just another Autocracy
pretending it isn't,
fooling no one.
Why pretend?
It would be a reasonably close approximation
to say that Taoism was being developed by Shamans
in and near China by around 1500 BCE,
and that Lao Tzu was credited
with writing the Tao Te Ching about 500 BCE,
and that the Buddha was stirring around
in India about that same time.
And that about 206-220 CE Buddhism was being
introduced into China from India,
and introduced as Ch'an (which became Zen)
into Japan about 552 CE.
All of which is to say that we have been handling,
refining, interpreting, reinterpreting, passing around
religious ideas for over 3,000 years
and we do it as though we know what we are talking about.
Here's the rub with Buddhism and Zen:
Classic/Traditional Buddhism is strict,
by the book (the Dharma)
and insistent on doing it like it is supposed to be done--
which is like someone else (Buddhist teachers)
says it should be done.
Zen is intuitive, not rational/logical,
and is to be experienced, not explained.
Zen is what happened when Buddhism met Taoism.
Taoism took what it liked from Buddhism,
the experience of enlightenment,
doing Zen like they intuit it ought to be done,
and threw away Buddhism's scriptures, doctrines
rituals, and practices and called itself
"Zen Buddhism" in 625-705 CE.
If you don't like what you read here,
I invite you to do your own research,
making internet inquiries
to your complete satisfaction.
Authenticity is spontaneous,
unintentional,
automatic,
from the heart,
"as one thus come,"
like a baby pooping in the bath tub,
or a cat playing with a ball.
Live not-thinking,
just responding to the here, now,
doing what is called for
unconscious of anything
other than doing what is called for.
Be what is needed in the moment,
at one with the moment,
moment after moment,
unaware of anything beyond the moment.
Like stopping on red
and going on green.
Live to not-know what you are doing,
and to not-grade yourself
on how well you are doing that.
We ground ourselves,
orient ourselves,
recover our balance and harmony
by dropping into emptiness, stillness, silence
and waiting for clarity regarding what's what
here, now,
what is called for
and how we need to respond to it
out of our original nature,
innate virtues (What we do best
and enjoy doing most),
inherent imagination
and intrinsic intuition.
Then, it is only a matter of standing up,
meeting what needs to be met,
and doing what needs to be done.
At one with ourselves,
we can do whatever the situation requires.
Any time,
anywhere.
What do you need to know?
What would be most helpful to you
over the time left for living?
How to tune into--
and turn yourself over to--
your internal guidance system
that comes packed into our DNA
would be among the most helpful
things you could do for yourself.
Part one of the process requires us
to be aware of how we get in the way of,
interfere with,
the work of communing with our intrinsic intuition.
Get this: The Profit Motive is the Original Sin.
It is the only sin.
It shuts us down,
scrambling the messages coming to us from our intuition.
When we live from wanting/desiring/having to have anything,
we can no longer attend our inner drift toward
what is called for in each situation as it arises.
Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
we have a better idea,
and eyes only for the bright lights
and exciting possibilities of the modern equivalent
of "Gay Paree."
We have to shift over to Jesus' mind set in Gethsemane:
"Thy (with the "Thy" being our intuition) will,
not mine be done!"
We have to flip that switch
and transfer our loyalty and devotion
from our wanting/desiring/craving addictions
to our intrinsic intuition which always has
our best interest at heart.
We live to serve our intuition.
Our relationship with our intuition
is that of The Moved in response to The Mover
(Joseph Campbell).
And no one can manage that transition but us.
And Campbell is quick to warn us:
"That which we seek
is found far back in the darkest corner
of the cave we most do not want to enter."
And thus, the metaphor of Jesus declaring
his loyalty in Gethsemane in a manner
that leads to Golgotha is exactly equivalent
to what is asked of each one of us
in flipping from our wanting/desiring self
to our intrinsic intuition and swearing
allegiance to her no matter what.
That is the first thing.
The second thing is nurturing our relationship
with our intuition by taking up the ongoing practice
of dropping into the emptiness, stillness, silence
(One thing, not three)
to sit and wait for clarity and focus
in terms of what is called for in each situation
as it arises--with no concern for our profit or loss,
our gain or deficit.
Here, too, is the importance of our nighttime dreams
and our spending time with them,
looking for what they are saying to us
about the life we are living
and the life we need to be living instead.
We aren transitioning from the way we have been living
to the way we need to be living
in the time left for living.
Not for any gain or merit or reward!
But for the simple joy in doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it.
We are shifting into living our life
as our life needs us to live it.
And the reward for that is doing it!
And the punishment for that is not having done it--
and bearing that burden in what awaits us
on the other side of death.
The realization of having wasted our life
is the reason for the weeping and gnashing of teeth
in Jesus' parable of what happens after we die--
not because of hell or any other kind of punishment,
but because we failed to live the life that was ours to live.
We have from now until we die
to turn things around.
Why not?
The following sequence of five guys intuitively,
spontaneously merging as one in doing the right thing,
at the right time, in the right place, in the right way
is a remarkable capture of the Tao in action, in the moment
of its unfolding, and it is "just what it is" as
"one thus come," "here, now." The perfect response
to the situation in its unfolding. That is the Tao. Wu-Wei at its best! There are five players on a basketball team.
All five players touched the ball. The Tao of teamwork!
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