Good Day to All!
It’s sure lovely to be Home!
I began my day with a short shot of organic espresso and organic butter, followed by some lovely organic tea, some vaporized native tobacco, and!best of all, a lovely huge dump!
Some say sex is overrated and a good shit is truly lovely. Let me tell you friends, after many years traveling the world and dealing with extreme circadian stress, I’ve had to deal with being constipated on the road and I really don’t enjoy the feeling of being backed up inside. I’ve learned a great deal about my body, emotions and mind just from being constipated. I live a very simple, healthy life at home and pride myself on my ability to create beautiful poopy cops. I love flushing them down hoping that such beauty will make it back into the earth to create more beauty.
When I leave home after being here long enough to get my rhythms balanced, I can feel, experience every nuance of my inner processes of digestion, metabolism, assimilation and elimination.
My body is my temple and I keep it clean. I love it and worship it as my temple of Being.
Having that relationship and inner-clarity, as my rhythms become disrupted, I feel the effect of retention. The first thing I notice is that even though I get hungry, I can feel resistance to consumption; there is nowhere for the new foodstuffs to go.
The stomach must have a place to send its contents, which requires that the small intestine has also sent its byproducts to the colon. The entron (digestive – eliminative tract from mouth to anus) is like the conveyer belt at the supermarket. If you keep feeding items to the cashier faster than the bagger can bag, first a backup is created, then the cashier can’t move any more items past the scanner. Naturally, the whole process then, is either facilitated, or inhibited by the bagger.
When my colon (the bagger) gets too tired or confused from having its shifts manipulated by time changes, it becomes a tired worker. It naturally has to create a rest period where it can rest and attempt to restore itself – it stops processing the groceries.
Because the digestive and eliminative processes are an elaborate means of removing nutrients and water that are identical to composting for a garden or farm, when the bagger rests, the composting process continues beyond the point at which the vital, living nutrients have been extracted.
This results in progressive waste accumulation and the unwanted bacteria, parasites and fungi continue to proliferate. This results in the progressive accumulation of their metabolic excretions, which are toxic to the body. As we become progressively constipated, even with good organic waste, our body becomes overwhelmed with biochemical toxins that show their presence right away as a dulling of mental functioning and clarity.
As waste accumulates, all body systems suffer the same effect of constipation at the check stand, slowing down progressively until nothing productive can be done except supporting the bagger.
So, I do tai-chi, breathing squats, drink lots of water. If the systems get adequate rest, then production begins restoring itself to the rhythms of the day where I’m at.
Often though, I’ve got to hit the ground running to teach and attend meetings. As I keep pushing myself at the times when my organs are accustomed to resting, they act as a sleeping truck driver, nodding off as they try to navigate the road I’ve chosen.
If this process is stressed by eating more food, and adding stimulants to support the mission my mind has chosen, the rest cycle is cut yet again. Toxins reach higher and higher levels in the blood stream, stressing the kidney and liver systems, triggering more and more sympathetic nervous system dominance; they body is now surviving the road.
Soon, mental dullness is accompanied by inner-depression, like a tired horse being whipped over and over again.
Energy becomes a limited resource, resulting in diminished physical and psychogenic repair. Yet, the demands on me don’t diminish!
My body begins to ache where it couldn’t effectively repair itself. My emotions become resistant to new experiences, new people, new places in attempt to push me back into myself, where my biological mind hopes my intellectual mind will begin to pay attention.
So, as you can see, when you work with people and their challenges day in and day out while your own body is telling you to stop trying to help the world and help yourself, the ‘I’ becomes challenged by the desire for ‘WE’, and the thought of the ‘ALL’ begins to be daunting.
I must find ways of withdrawing into myself to find peace points where there is no need for physical or mental activity or the system goes deeper and deeper into rebellion for self-preservation. This is a balancing act that ultimately determines our ability to be fully present with others and the world.
This process is reflected up stairs in the mind, which is also dependent upon a well-functioning brain for authentic experience of our thoughts. Therefore, what is occurring below is reflected above as mental constipation.
In verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu states:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
So, what does this really mean?
In the first stanza, Lao Tzu is telling us that the Tao is “whole”, like a perfect circle with no beginning and no end.
To name is to depart from the circle. If you are that circle, you can only name another part of the circle as this or that. Yet, by naming and dividing the circle, you begin to perceive that what is north is not what is south.
This is like naming your head “head” and believing that the headache you are having is a problem that has nothing to do with your clogged up colon. So you take an aspirin to rid yourself of the headache instead of taking rest in respect of your head expressing your state of being. The headache then, is a name that can be named, but is not the eternal name (wholeness), which is the eternally real.
When we become free of desire, be it to convince yourself that you are needed as a teacher, therapist or otherwise, you take rest. You sleep as needed.
In that sleep state, you leave naming and enter into wholeness, freeing yourself from the manifestations of the naming or labeling mind. You enter darkness; there is nothing to see there, nothing to name, nothing to “do”.
Having given yourself a period of nothing to do and nothing to think about, the conveyer belt stops, making all previous processes equal and undivided in their wholeness. You, the checker, the conveyer belt and the bagger become One, for in wholeness, neither is named or labeled and there is no impetus to do, for without name, who knows what to do? If you didn’t know you were checker or bagger, would you have any impetus to check or bag?
Lao Tzu finishes by saying:
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
He is informing us that though it is the nature of the conditioned mind to label self and others and act according to its perception of the label, the truth is that acting out the label places you squarely into time and mind.
Time and mind all function on either side of “NOW”.
This means that you are either acting out of your fears or conceptions of the past, or your desires to be this or that in the future; if I can only accomplish this, I’ll achieve that (label).
After you’ve achieved many many labels, you find that even when you’ve got money in the bank, you still can’t shit, you can’t even enjoy sex because you are so afraid you may fart or even leak!
You can’t be in the moment because you are dealing with the feel and fear of the smell of your labels!
Even when you have achieved your perceived need for physical beauty by getting into shape, you still find yourself challenged because now, those that once loved you are now jealous because having achieved your label of being “beautiful”, you remind them that they aren’t so beautiful – your label begets their labeling.
So, you find that you are a beautiful man and other men find ways of making sure you know you aren’t so beautiful. You get the ladies and the men try to outsmart you on the job to put you in your place or they take every opportunity to kick your ass on the field; “If I can just break that bastard’s nose, he won’t be so fucking beautiful any more and maybe I can steal one of his chicks!”
The beautiful women become the source of much gossip among the other women, who also do their best to inform the men; she may look hot to you, but be careful, she’s got a yeast infection!
So, you’ve labeled and succeeded as long as you can avoid yet another label.
You take yourself “up”, and the gravity of social conditioning pulls you ceaselessly toward the center of gravity of those that like you, love to label.
With all your money and beauty, you keep running into darkness. Out of fear of this darkness, you try every harder to outshine it.
You are now stuck in an entangled process of co-creation where your “this” is dependent on their “that”.
If your idea of beauty wasn’t dependent upon their approval (which means that they too must agree that your beauty is their beauty), you would have no need to create, nor invest in the concept of beauty at all!
You would then find that without the need to shine lights to avoid darkness, that without shining lights, there is no need to avoid “darkness within darkness”. Centered now, in darkness, without fear of darkness, you become aware that it is from Darkness that the dance of light and darkness emerges.
This, Lao Tzu informs us, is “The gateway to all understanding”
Once you know your true nature “IS”, you also know that “being” is not dependent upon doing; “doing and not-doing” create each other as long as there is a label.
That which “IS”, is beyond this or that, light or dark, good or evil. Because there is no-thing there to label, there is Darkness beyond darkness.
If and when you get there with consciousness intact, you experience yourself as pure Abiding, unadulterated WHOLENESS. You see the dance, the play of Maya.
Yet, in that place of Eternal Abundance, joy accumulates so fast, it wants to burst out of you. You want to share.
But to share, you must tell. If you tell, and that place is more beautiful than the place they reside, then the light you are sharing becomes a source of comparison and the show begins yet again.
This is why Lao Tzu also says, “He who knows, doesn’t tell. He who tells, doesn’t know.”
So, you see
I cannot tell you who
What,
Or why I really am
One
With YOU.
I can only tell you how
And why
I love to poo!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
