Good Wednesday To You!
Things are moving along well in my life.
I’m constantly amazed how the mind loves to judge this as “good” and that as “bad”; the good seems to find an end and the bad seems to be forgotten about when something deemed “good” arrives to displace it as the dominant feature in the consciousness of ego-mind.
I often laugh at myself for falling into the trap of such labels, particularly after the many times in my life when I thought for sure this or that could, or should be “better”, yet I’ve found that if the situation were “better”, I may not have met some amazing person, or found some amazing place to sit in a local garden that wouldn’t have been at the place I thought was “good or better”.
So funny how we love to hold onto our ideas of things, even when they limit our ability to explore and be present with reality.
I got my tai-chi sessions in yesterday, and a nice pushing session.
I’ve been revisiting heavy bench pressing off the Swiss ball and have enjoyed “feeling manly” as I push those weights up and down; another joke I play on myself!
I coupled the Swiss ball bench-pressing with single arm cable pushing for five or six sets. That was lovely.
After the light of day settled, I enjoyed a fire and the sound of the fire as I did some writing last night. That was lovely too.
I think I’ll do that again tonight, but who knows until the night arrives?…
WHEN LOVE IS INJURED!
In the beautiful little book titled, Chuang Tzu – Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson (p. 37)
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Chuang Tzu says, ! “Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete.”
This is a very powerful statement, but what does Chuang Tzu mean?
If you look at my poster above, you can see the green neutral symbol in the middle of the word LOVe.
That symbol represents Unconditional Love (UCL). There love is not injured.
It is Absolutely Complete, yet, UCL cannot “know it is complete” because there is nothing “to know” as a condition other than the Unconditional; you cannot “know you can tie a shoe without a shoe to tie!”
As Absolutely Complete, there can be no experience of love, for there is no other, no-thing to love.
To have “something to love” represents a condition, a judgment; “I love you because you are beautiful and friendly and I don’t love the other because they are!”
Unconditional Love, as I know and experience it within myself, represents “Consciousness.”
Consciousness had conditions within it, we could not be aware of anything else and therefore, would have no free will, nor sense of self; we would have no “other” to party with!
Consciousness may be likened then, to Pure Subjectivity without any object or objectivity.
If we take what Chuang Tzu says, ! “Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete“, and replace the word “right” with Desire, and the word “wrong” with “Will”, we get another view.
Whenever there is “desire” within us, we have agreed within ourselves that there is something missing or unavailable to us in Unconditional Love, which negates the presence of Unconditional Love (God); this is the source of Mind.
This nicely sets us (our ego-minds) up to experience lack, to collect, to hoard, and to protect what we “think we love” and to desire what “we think we don’t have.”
In my diagram above, you can see a list of attributes I’ve assigned to Desire, UCL (Pure Potential) and to Will.
That said, it is important to realize that the attributes assigned to UCL are only juxtapositions, without which, I could not express what UCL represents when in the middle (Neutral) of the polarity created by Desire and Will.
Therefore, when Chuang Tzu says, “!and because the Way was injured, love became complete“, what he’s sharing here is this:
Without the “injury” of believing that “you are missing something, are somehow incomplete, there could be no realization of what UCL is.”
It is therefore, the injury to UCL that allows us the most beautiful experience of “enlightenment”, which is a word that describes having the authentic realization that without the “wound”, UCL could not know, or “be conscious of ITSELF.
The “wound” is a word he’s using to signify the creation of the subject~object relationship.”
Said another way, “God can’t know God until God creates or allows the illusion that God isn’t God to occur, and in that “ALLOWING”, God creates “gods” with nothing other to do (in life) but uncover the mystery.
One who lives in Disneyland day after day, year after year (eon after eon), as you can imagine, Disneyland looses the joy, the freshness, the wonder of “Disneyland”.
Yet, one who “desires to go experience Disneyland and wills the experience, enjoys the arrival and may feel angst over their departure.
Therefore, Disneyland is essentially more “real and magical” to the one who departs and arrives than it is to “one who lives and works there day in and day out”; they have a sense of wonder and desire to explore what’s outside Disneyland.
It is because of our self-imposed limitations that we, “look for God, Love, and Disneyland”; I don’t go to Disneyland because I’m having too much fun stacking rocks, drawing, exercising, eating, gardening and making love at home.
And it is this “injury of thinking we don’t have (UCL) Love that makes completeness an authentic experience when we find what we always had!
How to apply this offering in your life:
If you meditate on what I’ve shared here, it is undeniable.
If it is deniable, it is because you are having too much fun trying to find and get to Disneyland to enjoy the fact that “you are already there!”, which is fine too.
My suggestion is to be very honest with yourself and write a list of the top three things you think “you don’t have” that are stopping you from fully loving yourself and your life.
Then, look at your list and honestly ask yourself:
“Is it True that I don’t have, or that I need such and such to love myself and my life?
Is this just a habit I’ve been conditioned into believing?
Is this because I’m afraid to have a life that is fun, abundant, free because others may be jealous of me or criticize me because they think I have something they can’t have?
Am I afraid to be free because I’m afraid people will expect more from me?”
Most people will find that they’ve written down such comments as,
“I’m unhappy in my life because my husband (boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father, etc!) doesn’t do this or that for me, and therefore, isn’t loving me.”
But in reality, most of us are simply not willing to love ourselves and therefore, allow ourselves to be judgmental and sad when others won’t do for us what we aren’t willing to do for ourselves.
For example, if you took responsibility for giving yourself an orgasm every time you desired one, would you really be so co-dependent on the other “you expect” to give you an orgasm?
Would you be so jealous that they were helping others have an orgasm if you knew you could do that for yourself any time you wanted to?
Maybe your lover is actually loving god by showing them how to find the spot the Church made a sin to find?
When we get brave enough and honest enough to realize the UCL has the Abundance to create a Universe of immeasurable proportions, and beings such as ourselves with immeasurable complexities, then it’s not a big step to realizing that it is you and you are IT!
The chicken can complain about it’s shitty life all it wants to the egg, and the egg can complain about it’s life in shit all it wants to the chicken, but!they contributed equally as co-conspirators.
Once they embrace each other, they find the wholeness that both co-creates, and that is life itself.
That is when Love is complete.
That is enlightenment.
That is the function of Love’s injury.
Anyone that has truly had an enlightenment experience see’s God’s incredible (“wicked even”) sense of humor!
Enjoy the journey!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
