Imagine Getting More (Zap Oracle Card # 332)   copyright 2007, Jonathan Zap

One of the most potent of spells or enchantments that can bind you into the matrix is to live under the compulsion of always having to imagine getting more in the future.  Under this spell you become a donkey forever hypnotized by an imaginary carrot just up ahead. The carrot, the “more”, that ever glitters in your mind’s eye like a ring of power, could be many things—–sex, money, power, fame, looks—-often the imagined more is a vision of that more perfected life just up ahead, the one in which you have realized your ideal weight, made your first hundred million, and have an amazing lover with whom you live in a house featured in Architectural Review…  The phrase in the cigarette ad— “Imagine getting more…”—- is meant to encourage you in the profitable belief that cigarette smoking leads to getting more sex. The warning label, black and white and boxed in, reminds the alert mind that what you will be getting more of is cancer.  What you get more of when your eyes are bedazzled by the imaginary carrot just up ahead is more cancer of the soul.  Your vision, your consciousness, is misdirected away from the present moment where it could have more power and life right now.
Most people on the planet experience scarcity in one or more key areas of their lives.  Some scarcities are related to needs and others to wants.  Common areas of perceived scarcity include money, physical resources, social status, youth, looks, sex, physical health, fulfilling relationships, inner resources, and meaningfulness.  Most lives involve strange and tense combinations of scarcity and abundance. For example, a tan and sleek billionaire walking off the tennis court might be dying of a famine of meaningfulness.  Our vision of scarcity is often highly distorted and one-sided. Perceived scarcities range from delusory toxic wants to what would be genuinely fulfilling if we had more of it.
Scarcity comparisons with other people are almost always unreliable and highly distorted. Typically we compare our area of most irritating scarcity with someone else who seems to have that area filled to overflowing.  We never look at the whole portfolio of scarcity and abundance in the other’s incarnation.  We can’t look at it, we’d have to know how their whole life turned out. We see tall, handsome Christopher Reeve galloping on his thorough bred horse, we don’t necessarily see up ahead where he gets tossed to the ground a quadriplegic, and goes through a life phase of horrendous scarcities as he becomes more soulful and compassionate and discovers new forms of fulfillment.
“Imagine getting more” and “envious comparison” are intertwined spells that bind us into neurotic suffering.  These spells promise fulfillment in the future, but create hollowness in the present.
Hollowness is the mind set of the ring wraith as it withers the present while it forever reaches toward that glittering precious just up ahead.  Hollowness is the state of one who forever reaches toward the future to be filled up.
Don’t wither the vitality of the present by looking at it with the eyes of scarcity and victim hood. All too easily you can build a reality tunnel defined by your view of the present as the time of scarcity before you have abundance of money, or before you have the perfect lover, the perfect body…whatever you covet getting more of.  This is the time that counts right now, this time with its strange and tense combination of scarcity and unrecognized abundance, the time that gives you everything you need to work with in the present moment.  Break the spells, become disenchanted and more powerful, work with what you got right now.
See Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life

© 1996, 2009 by Jonathan Zap

Edited by Austin Iredale

WHAT IS A WARRIOR?

Being an interdimensional traveler involves an arduous journey, and the stance that I recommend for this journey is that of the Warrior. Why is being a Warrior important, and what is meant by being a Warrior anyway?

Language is so often a barrier to understanding. The word, ” Warrior ,” for example, presents many problems. Sometimes the best available word has a shadow, a dark area of connotations that may be alien or even contradictory to what we are trying to convey. If we want to convey the possibility of a more effective focus in our lives, the word “discipline” comes to mind. But “discipline” can also mean to punish, and our Puritan heritage gives the word an unwanted sadistic resonance. In Sanskrit the nearest word to discipline is “tapas,” which has a range of meanings such as the use of austerities to generate and conserve transformational inner heat.  There’s no sadistic or punitive connotation to “tapas,” but it is not a word readily available to most people. “Warrior” is a word that is readily available, but, like the word “discipline,” it carries much unwanted baggage. The word “war” is in “Warrior,” and the connotations of aggression and violence are obvious. But “Warrior” is also a word that in certain circles has been undergoing major redefinition and rediscovery.  Essentially, the archetype of the Warrior is being salvaged from millennia of patriarchal associations.   The best definition I have been able to come up with for “Warrior” that reflects its archetypal  meaning is as follows: A Warrior is someone who strives to live alertly,  intelligently, attuned to the moment in order to serve life affirming  transpersonal values.

Warrior with a capital “W” is one who efficiently serves life affirming transpersonal aims. A warrior with a lower case “w” could be a mercenary, one who serves selfish aims, or one who serves transpersonal but anti-life aims — a Nazi SS officer, for example. Someone could have rippling muscles, be a potent martial artist, highly efficient, focused and determined and yet only be a warrior. Someone else could be confined to a wheel chair and yet be an exemplary Warrior.

DON JUAN’S PHILOSOPHY OF BEING A WARRIOR

My first contact with the unexpected positive significance of “Warrior” was in the writings of hoaxer and trickster-genius Carlos Casteneda. Casteneda writes in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge about his supposed apprenticeship with a Yaqi Indian sorcerer.  During this apprenticeship Don Juan tells and shows Carlos what being a Warrior means through powerfully evocative words and deeds. Being a Warrior is a total life stance, a way of facing the unspeakable difficulty of a human incarnation with grace and skill.

Don Juan uses the word “impeccable” to describe the behavior of the Warrior. The Warrior makes decisions, and he acts strategically and efficiently to carry them out. Many of the statements Don Juan makes about the Warrior are aphoristic and beautiful. Here are a few examples, some of them slightly paraphrased:

No one is born a Warrior; one must elect to become one.

The ordinary man views everything as either a blessing or a curse. The Warrior takes everything as a challenge.

Life for a Warrior is an exercise in strategy.

There are always cubic centimeters of chance that power makes available to the Warrior. The Warrior’s art is to be perennially fluid in order to pluck them.

A Warrior does not allow himself to become obsessed and does not abandon himself to anything.

To be a Warrior means to be humble and alert.

A Warrior must be fluid and shift harmoniously with the world around him.

One needs the mood of a Warrior for every single act. Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. There is no power in a life that lacks this mood.

The Warrior performs even the most trivial of his tasks impeccably to store power.

A Warrior should strive to meet any conceivable situation, the expected and the unexpected, with equal efficiency. To be perfect under perfect circumstances is to be a paper Warrior.

The Warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance. Then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain his balance .

A Warrior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that one has personal possessions that could be blockaded. A Warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened.

Impeccability can exist only in the present.

Impeccability is always available

Being a Warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the last moments of our lives.

Don Juan’s spin on being a Warrior is powerfully existential. Don Juan continually emphasizes the value of being aware of your own death. He encourages Carlos to experience death physically and directly as a shadowy presence standing on his left. Death is described as a powerful ally that has the particular virtue of absolute honesty. In an interview with Sam Keen, Castaneda remarks,

“Don Juan’s approach has a strange twist because it comes from the tradition in sorcery that death is a physical presence that can be felt and seen. One of the glosses in sorcery is: death stands to your left. Death is an impartial judge who will speak truth to you and give you accurate advice. After all, death is in no hurry. He will get you tomorrow or next week or in fifty years. It makes no difference to him. The moment you remember you must eventually die, you are cut right down to size.”

Awareness of our mortality makes us more alive in the moment. It is also cuts through the trivial and superficial. As I have mentioned in previous writings, a wise man once advised me, “Only do things that you will remember well on your death bed.” Absolute honesty is a core characteristic of the Warrior, and the denial of death, the illusory belief that we can put things off, is the cardinal self-deception that keeps us from becoming Warriors. As Don Juan says, “Our greatest enemy is that we never believe what is happening to us,” and, “There are no survivors on this planet.”

There is a strong relationship between being a Warrior and practicing mindfulness meditation, through which one becomes alertly attuned to the present moment. Only by being in the Now can you effectively engage the world. The path of the Warrior makes you a more alive, aware and engaged presence in the world. In the same interview with Sam Keen, Castaneda comments,

“It has been this element of engagement in the world that has kept me following the path which Don Juan showed me. There is no need to transcend the world. Everything we need to know is right in front of us, if we pay attention. If you enter a state of nonordinary reality, as you do when you use psychotropic plants, it is only to draw from it what you need in order to see the miraculous character of ordinary reality. For me the way to live—the path with heart—is not introspection or mystical transcendence but presence in the world. This world is the Warrior’s hunting ground.”

THE SHAMBALA WARRIOR TEACHINGS

Some of the best commentaries on the way of the Warrior are to be found in the Shambala Warrior teachings of Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa was born in Eastern Tibet, the son of peasants. At a very early age he was recognized as a tulku , or incarnate lama.  Trungpa began work on the Shambala teachings during his years in Tibet, where he was the supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries where he received, at the age of eighteen, the degree of Khyenpo (comparable to a doctorate in theology, philosophy, and psychology). As he was fleeing from the Communist Chinese over the Himalayas in 1959, Rinpoche wrote a spiritual account of the history of Shambhala, which unfortunately was lost on the journey. Rinpoche fled to India where he was appointed by the Dalai Lama to serve as spiritual advisor to the Young Lamas’ Home School. In 1963 he traveled to England, where he attended Oxford University as a Spaulding Fellow, studying Western philosophy, religion, art and language. Rinpoche began teaching the Sacred Path of the Warrior in 1976 in the American South West. In Boulder, Colorado, Rinpoche founded the Naropa Institute and a Shambala Warriorship training program.

The Shambala teachings are founded on the premise that there is basic human wisdom that can help to solve the world’s problems. This wisdom does not belong to any one culture or religion, nor does it come only from the West or the East. Rather, it is a tradition of human Warriorship that has existed in many cultures at many times throughout history.

What follows is my way of understanding the Shambala teachings. I would encourage you to read the Shambala material first hand. I would also encourage you to read Jeremy Hayward’s book, Sacred World—A Guide to Shambala Warriorship in Daily Life . Hayward studied with Trungpa for years and was asked by him to write a book from a student’s point of view. My summary of the Shambala teachings is not so much an objective summary but more like variations on a theme inspired by Shambala.  The Shambala teachings should not be held responsible for any of my excesses of language or tangential anecdotes as I attempt to relate them.  I will quote many passages from the books directly so that you can experience their message and lucidity first hand.

THE COCOON

Trungpa refers to the little world of self-limiting habits into which we retreat from the world as “the cocoon.” One of the first steps to becoming a Warrior is recognizing this all too familiar cocoon in which we seal ourselves off from the world. We build a cocoon of self-deception because we ultimately don’t accept ourselves or the world in which we live. We shroud our radiance in a membrane of forgetfulness to buffer ourselves from the vivid, sometimes harsh intensity of the world. The cocoon has a strong relationship to what Jung called “the shadow,” a dark area of the personality thought to be inferior that we would much rather not look at. The cocoon is the claustrophobic, neurotic place we go to retreat from the intensity of life.

The cocoon is as real and familiar as yesterday’s dirty dishes sitting in the sink. We have to be wary about abstractions in talking about the cocoon because abstracting this shadowy place can be another form of hiding in the cocoon. What does a cocoon look like? Every cocoon is as unique as the psyche it encapsulates. To get a more concrete feeling of this concept, let’s take a caricatured look at “Bob’s cocoon.” Bob is a stereotypical cocooned American male. Although a cocoon is an inner psychic space we’ll represent it metaphorically as a physical place.

Bob’s cocoon is a cramped, stuffy room. The room is cluttered, sloppy and lit with electric lights. The windows haven’t been opened in years and are covered with heavy, opaque, dusty curtains. All sorts of mirrors of different sizes and shapes are screwed into the walls. Bob paces around in his underwear nervously examining himself first in one mirror and then in another. The glass in each of these mirrors is subtly warped. One mirror makes Bob look big and fat, another makes him look like a little nothing, in another he looks dangerous and powerful, in another he looks like a square-jawed movie star, in another he looks puffy and out of shape. Looking at all these varying reflections makes Bob anxious and restless. On the television in the background a seductive woman is extolling the delights of a Carnival Cruise to nowhere, and we see flickering images of tables weighted down with rich food and people dancing in a disco. She begins to croon, “If your friends could see you now!”

Bob sits down on the couch, lights up a Marlboro and flips through the pages of the Sharper Image catalogue. His eyes settle on a piece of expensive, high-tech exercise equipment that seems for a moment like it might be just what he needs to turn his life around, but then he thinks about the cost and his overdue credit card bills. This reminds Bob of his ex girlfriend who still owes him money. Bob calls her on the phone and gets her voicemail. He leaves a somewhat nasty, sarcastic message. He hangs up the phone, opens a can of Budweiser and inserts a well-worn porno disc into the DVD player and . . . well, you can fill in the rest.

Certainly there are people who don’t live in a cocoon. But most of us sometimes regress into a personal, little ghetto of narcissistic self-reflections, egoistic wants and self-pity. Sometimes the world seems too much for us, and self-acceptance too difficult. At other times, perhaps during certain moments of peak or optimal experience, we feel what it is like to be more fully alive. At those times it may be wise to pause for a moment and look back with compassion at the cocoon behind us.

What causes us to retreat into that cocoon sometimes? Fear is the answer that comes most readily to mind. But fear, in itself, is not able to make us do anything. Rather it is a timid way of relating to fear that is the real problem. We can work with fear. It is the attitude that wants to deny fear, that wants to be comfortably numb, that causes us to pull away, to disengage from life and hang out in our cocoon.

FEAR

The Warrior’s way is to acknowledge fear, accept it, even make friends with it. Fearlessness is the willingness to face fear. When fear arises, try greeting it with acceptance, like an old friend, and then go about your business. Someone came up with a clever redefinition of fear as “the energy to do your best.” Another well-known, valid  principle is, “Feel the fear, and do it anyway.” When I got involved in mountain climbing I found that my intense fear of heights did not go away. But what I did find is that I could reach for the next handhold, I could continue to climb, to take actions, while I felt intense fear. Fear became one more natural element like the wind, the cold, or the density of the rock. The change I experienced in relationship to fear is fairly typical, and it may be worthwhile to further develop this personal example to see how fear can become an ally.

My first experience with mountain climbing was during an Outward Bound course in the Cascade Mountains of Northern Washington. I was placed near the front of a line of a dozen or so people as we climbed a particular mountain. While we climbed, I was so busy looking for the next handhold or foothold that I didn’t have time to fully experience my fear of heights. But then we got to the summit, which was unusually small and sloped on both sides like the roof of a large dog house. Sitting on top of it was completely safe, but when you looked on either side there was a drop of thousands of feet. My fear of heights seems to work visually, it doesn’t matter how much real danger there is, but rather how much distance I can see between where I am and what lies below me. There came then a very long waiting period caused by some technical problems, and the rest of the group made it to the summit one by one with agonizing slowness. While I waited, there was nothing for me to do but sit, that huge drop off all around me, feeling the most intense fear and vertigo. Adrenaline raced through my blood and I felt my heart pounding. The energy of the fear was intensely physical and felt like electricity running through my inner thighs and into the center of my stomach. I felt the sun beating down, the gusts of cold wind and the rough surface of the rock on my exposed skin. It was a remote area of the Cascades and there was no sign of anything manmade, not even a trail, in the green valley below. The sky was clear and empty, undisturbed by aircraft or vapor trails. I looked at the rust colored lichen growing on the slope I sat on and suddenly felt the rock that was supporting me, that was keeping me from falling, was the living tissue of an organism, the earth, that was sustaining my life, heartbeat by heartbeat.

The intensity of my fear had awakened my senses, physical and spiritual, and I felt the tenuous living connection I had with the earth. Fear helped to pull back the veil, helped me to experience death as an ally sitting close by. It stripped away my comfortable cocoon and allowed me to be more alive and aware. It allowed me to feel the world, the earth, in a more immediate and powerful way than I had ever experienced.

So fear is not the problem. Fear can be a powerful ally, a great and wise teacher, if it is accepted and embraced. Fear is an intense energy that can help us to awaken to the full brilliance of reality.

SUMMONING WARRIOR ENERGY

“Being on line with Warrior energy creates a point of concentration and focus beyond physical fatigue and emotional mood swings. Correctly accessing the Warrior brings energy and clarity.”  —Shambala Warrior Teachngs

In the Shambhala tradition, invoking this heightened state of energy, or “Chi,” is referred to as “raising windhorse.” By using your will to take actions when laziness, fatigue or temptation tries to slow you down, you create this type of energy. In the classic Yoga Aphorisms of Pantajali , it is written that, “Energy is like a muscle, it grows stronger through being used.”

THE VALUE OF “BROKEN HEARTEDNESS”

One aspect of the Shambala teachings that I especially admire is the acknowledgment of the pain and suffering of the human condition. It will profoundly change how you deal with reality, but it will not pretend to eliminate inherent suffering. With long-sustained work, your relationship to suffering can change significantly. For myself, I have found that the mindfulness approach to emotions and thoughts as well as accepting and flowing with life based on the principles of the I Ching have greatly reduced my experience of depression and anxiety. That’s been a great reprieve, but new challenges could bring those forces back into my life at any time. If and when that happens, I expect to be learning new lessons and a new level of wakefulness. Trungpa goes even further than that acknowledgement and states that there is a particular type of emotional pain, a soulful broken heartedness, that is characteristic, even prerequisite, to being a Warrior. This is a refreshing change from the New Age catalogue where every sort of practitioner, whether they are doing hypnotherapy, reflexology or past life regression, has been photographed with the identical beatific, blissed-out smile.

The denial of the shadow, the dark aspect of human existence, greatly promotes suffering. Also,  a willingness to engage the pain and darkness within is an essential ability on the path of self-development and truth seeking. Consider the poem “The Wayfarer,” by Stephen Crane.
The Wayfarer

The Wayfarer,

Perceiving the pathway to truth,

Was struck with astonishment.

It was thickly grown with weeds.

“Ha”, he said,

“I see that none has passed here

In a long time.”

Later he saw that each weed

was a singular knife.

“Well,” he mumbled at last,

“Doubtless there are other roads.”

—Stephen Crane

The way of the Warrior has never been a way to escape suffering or become comfortably numb. Rather, it is a way to actively engage suffering, to accept it from a strong and centered stance that allows you to continue to take appropriate actions while feeling pain. As Don Juan says, “A Warrior cannot avoid pain and grief, but only the indulging in it. A Warrior acknowledges his pain, but does not indulge it.”

Sadness is not a sign of being screwed up or in need of medication. If you look at the world and the human condition, it should be obvious that sadness is one of the most appropriate emotions. The Buddhists say, “All being is sorrow.” Jeremy Hayward, in Sacred World: The Shambala Way to Gentleness, Bravery and Power, writes,

“Pointing to the place of sadness in the Warrior’s path or any spiritual path was one of the most profound teachings of the Dorje Dradul (Chogyam Trungpa). So much spiritual teaching and systems of therapy nowadays are oriented toward finding contentment, joy, love, wisdom, and all the other wonderful things. Sometimes they seem like another version of the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. People who feel genuine sadness are told that they are sick. Psychologists list sadness as one of the symptoms of clinical depression, and the latest wave of self-help books label depression—and by implication sadness—as one of the most common diseases of our time. Perhaps people feel genuinely sad that their lives feel so empty, that the society they were born into is such a mess, and that they and others are suffering so much. People feel this kind of sadness for others, often without being aware of it . . .”

Trungpa and Hayward make a case that sadness is not merely inevitable, but it is actually a desirable state for a Warrior. Sadness can be an authentic state in which a Warrior is in touch with his or her own feelings and feels empathy for others. Sadness can be a strangely fulfilling awareness of the depth of the human heart and the poignant mystery of human existence. Hayward writes,

“An open heart realizes that the human heart is sad when it is genuine. Early American blues and Spanish flamenco—songs of love and separation of any time and place—reveal a sadness that is less an expression of depression or misery than of the depth of the human heart. In the best of these songs there is always something timeless and beyond the personal drama. It rings true to us, and we feel glad. The root of the word sad is the Latin satis, which is also the root of the word satisfied. So sadness is related to being completely full, completely satisfied

Trungpa, in Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior, describes sadness as a state of heightened awareness characteristic of someone who is fully alive:

“You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal.”

“In order to be a good Warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart. If a person does not feel alone and sad, he cannot be a Warrior at all.”

“Arrogant Warriorship does not work. It does nothing to benefit others. So the discipline of renunciation also involves cultivating further gentleness, so that you remain very soft and open and allow tenderness to come into your heart. The Warrior who has accomplished true renunciation is completely naked and raw, without even skin or tissue. He has renounced putting on a new suit of armor or growing a thick skin, so his bone and marrow are exposed to the world. He had no room and no desire to manipulate situations. He is able to be, quite fearlessly, what he is.”

“Although the Warrior’s life is dedicated to helping others, he realizes that he will never be able to completely share his experience with others. The fullness of his experience is his own, and he must live with his own truth. Yet he is more and more in love with the world. That combination of love affair and loneliness is what enables the Warrior to constantly reach out to help others. By renouncing his private world, the Warrior discovers a greater universe and a fuller and fuller broken heart. This is not something to feel bad about: it is a cause for rejoicing. It is entering the Warrior’s world.”

“Experiencing the upliftedness of the world is a joyous situation, but it also brings sadness. It is like falling in love. When you are in love, being with your lover is both delightful and very painful. You feel both joy and sorrow. That is not a problem; in fact, it is wonderful. It is the ideal human emotion. The Warrior who experiences windhorse feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.”

BASIC GOODNESS

The preceding discussion of the need to accept fear, painful emotions and being brokenhearted should not give a false impression that being a Warrior means increasing the pain and unhappiness we already feel. The way of the Warrior is far more likely to eventually create a more positive feeling about self and life. An aspect of the Shambala teachings that seems unique to me in writings on the way of the Warrior, and related to a more positive feeling about life, is an emphasis on what Trungpa calls “basic goodness.” Trungpa writes,

“If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings.”

( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

Recognition of basic goodness in ourselves and the world is a wonderful antidote to the entrenched pessimism, cynicism and low self-esteem that plague so many today. Denial of the shadow in our culture creates a paradoxical focus on everything that is wrong with us, everything in ourselves and our lives that falls short of a commercial ideal. Images of perfect bodies bombard us from magazine ads, movies and television. When we look in the mirror, therefore, we tend to view our bodily reality with negative judgments about how imperfect it seems compared to the airbrushed magazine images. We may perceive our bodies as basically bad and impose punishing diets or regimens to try to make them more like the idealized images. Similarly, we look at our lives and see all the ways they seem empty or lacking. We may also look into a harshly psychoanalytical mirror and see all the dark aspects of our personality and relationships.

Recognition of basic goodness reverses this morbid focus. To recognize basic goodness in your body, for example, consider the fact that you have a beating heart keeping you alive moment by moment. Even while you sleep your heart works to keep you alive. If you have eyes, consider what a gift they are, and what fantastic variety of forms and colors they allow you to perceive. Recognize that your psyche has sufficient intelligence to read these words and comprehend their meaning and that you are capable of understanding and creating complex language structures that allow you to communicate with others. Appreciate that you came into this world in a helpless, dependent condition, and that other human beings fed you, sheltered you and gave you a chance at life.

We may see how much speed and aggression there is among human beings, but consider the abundance of cooperation. People may crowd a sidewalk or cars may crowd a freeway, and most of the time people are working vigilantly to avoid injuring anyone else. Go through a day and notice all the moments in which people work cooperatively with you, acknowledge you, and show some form of simple manners. When you eat food consider how much work has gone into the creation of it so that you could be nourished. Consider the basic goodness of the fact that you probably have sufficient food and water to sustain your life. Feel the warmth of the sun, the fresh feeling of your skin after a shower, the wonderful reprieve of sleep, the solace of talking to a friend and having other human beings to relate to. Trungpa writes,

“The goal of Warriorship is to express basic goodness in its most complete, fresh, and brilliant form. This is possible when you realize that you do not possess basic goodness but that you are the basic goodness itself. Therefore, training yourself to be a Warrior is learning to rest in basic goodness, to rest in a complete state of simplicity.” ( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

In other words, basic goodness does not derive from continually doing good deeds, but just from our being itself. We are a part of the universe, as everything else is, and our very existence itself is a function of the creativity of the cosmos.

Basic goodness can also be expressed as “basic trust.” Hayward writes,

“Feeling and opening your genuine heart of sadness is the key to letting go of your preconceptions and your interpretations of the world. By letting go, you leave your familiar and snug world behind, at least for a moment, and relax into the sacred and strange space of the real world. To do this, you need to have basic trust. Basic trust is not trusting in something but simply trusting. It is very much like breathing. You do not consciously hold on to your breath or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. When you breathe out, you trust that the next breath will come in—you don’t think about it, or wonder about it, you trust. When you take a step, you trust that the earth will support you. When you eat, you trust that your stomach will digest the food. This is basic trust.

“…trust not only the basic functions of breathing, eating, and walking, but the sacredness of your whole world. Such trust grows as you step over the threshold of fear again and again and discover that the world beyond your fear is supporting you.

“Your basic trust relaxes you and lets you be. It is simple, unremarkable, ordinary experience, but at the same time it is very powerful; it has a quality of fulfillment. Like the vast, profound, blue sky that is free from clouds yet accommodates everything, from the small white fluffy clouds of a summer’s afternoon to the violent cumulus of a thunderstorm, you let yourself be with whatever you are feeling.

“But trust can be even more basic. Even when your body is not working according to your idea of health, you can still trust your fundamental wellbeing. Usually we don’t experience this level of trust except in life-threatening situations, but it is a basic state of mind that is always there for us.

“The strange but real world is trustworthy because it is always present and, so long as we are genuine, it always responds to us. As long as we do not interpret that response in terms of success or failure, it always gives us a way to go forward. Instead of working so hard to get everything in your life just right, you can profoundly trust and let go. When you learn to let go further, you can let the intelligence of basic goodness determine the course of your life, as it does in any case. It brings great joy and relief to be able to let go in this way.” ( Sacred World: The Shambala Way to Gentleness, Bravery and Power )

Here is how Trungpa describes basic trust:

“The sense of trust is that, when you apply your inquisitiveness, when you look into a situation, you know that you will get a definite response. If you take steps to accomplish something, that action will have a result. When you shoot your arrow, either it will hit the target or it will miss. Trust is knowing that there will be a message . . .

“When you trust in those messages, the reflections of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, or reservoir, of richness. You feel that you are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages. A problem arises only if you try to manipulate a situation to your advantage or ignore it. Then you are violating your relationship of trust with the phenomenal world, so then the reservoir might dry up. But usually you will get a message first. If you are being too arrogant, you will find yourself being pushed down by heaven, and if you are being too timid, you will find yourself raised up by earth.

“Ordinarily, trusting in your world means that you expect to be taken care of or to be saved. You think that the world will give you what you want—or at least what you expect. But as a Warrior, you are willing to take a chance; you are willing to expose yourself to the phenomenal world, and you trust that it will give you a message, either of success or failure.”

( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

LIVING IN THE MOMENT

An essential application of the principles of basic goodness and basic trust is being in the now and accepting and working with your situation as it is. Generally, this means respect for, and complete presence in, the everyday, mundane world. As Ram Dass said, “Be here now.” Trungpa advises that we apply the principles of Warriorship by being fully present and mindful in our ordinary domestic life. By bringing order and healthfulness to our own household we create a healthy foundation from which we can bring healthfulness to the world. Trungpa writes,

“The way to experience nowness is to realize that this very moment, this very point in your life, is always the occasion. So the consideration of where you are and what you are, on the spot, is very important. That is one reason that your domestic everyday life is so important. You should regard your home as sacred, as a golden opportunity to experience nowness. Appreciating sacredness begins very simply by taking an interest in all the details of life. Interest is simply applying awareness to what goes on in your everyday life—awareness while you’re cooking, awareness while you’re driving, even awareness while you’re arguing. Such awareness can help to free you from speed, chaos, neurosis, and resentment of all kinds.

“It may seem that washing dishes and cooking dinner are completely mundane activities, but if you apply awareness in any situation, then you are training your whole being so that you will be able to open yourself further, rather than narrowing your existence.

“You may feel that you have a good vision for society but that your life is filled with hassles—money problems, problems relating to your spouse or caring for your children—and that those two things, visions and ordinary life, are opposing one another. But vision and practicality can be joined together in newness.

“The most practical and immediate way to begin sharing with others and working for their benefit is to work with your own domestic situation and to expand from there.”

( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

(Note: In some of the following quotes, Trungpa uses the term drala . Hayward defines dralas as “patterns of living energy and wisdom in the world that you can connect with when you open your mind and heart.”)

“Your physical environment . . . may be as small and limited as a one-room apartment or as large as a mansion or a hotel. How you organize and care for that space is very important. If it is chaotic and messy, then no drala will enter into that environment . . For the Warrior, invoking external drala is creating harmony in your environment in order to encourage awareness and attention to detail. In that way, your physical environment promotes your discipline of Warriorship.

“The attitude of sacredness towards your environment will bring drala. You may live in a dirt hut with no floor and only one window, but if you regard that space as sacred, if you care for it with your heart and mind, then it will be a palace.

“If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual, cramped lives to benefit the world, but if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world. There is no doubt that, if you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to this world will be further chaos.”

( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

VIGILANCE, SKILLFUL INTELLIGENCE AND DISCRIMINATING AWARENESS

Whether in the most ordinary, mundane circumstances or a catastrophic emergency the Warrior strives to maintain vigilance, skillful intelligence and discriminating awareness. It is the Warrior’s duty to remain, as Don Juan put it, “humble and alert.” In a world so filled with suffering and in need of help, anyone capable of conscious, effective actions has continual responsibility. Although it is worthwhile to be relaxed in the sense of “letting go”—a state in which one is fluid and adaptable without unnecessary bodily tension or psychic rigidity and clinging—it is not good to be relaxed in the sense of a slouchy, careless attitude. There is a need to maintain conscious disciplines and to be prepared for anything.

One thing to be prepared for is that certain people may experience this type of vigilance as a subtle threat, or as a disturbing contrast to the slackness that they find comfortable. Such people prefer the path of the partygoer and believe that life is meant to be a mellow, pleasurable experience you can passively float through. Such people are likely to suggest that you “take it easy” and “go with the flow.” The Warrior’s focus on impeccability and presence in the moment may cause them to be unpopular company for those who want only to hang out and kill time.

A Warrior is always vigilant and in a way is never “off duty.” Don Juan and Trungpa both describe being a Warrior as a continual journey in which one must earn Warriorship moment by moment.

(Note: In some of the following quotes Trungpa refers to “the setting sun world.” This term describes the modern “wasteland” world—the toxic environment in which so many modern lives occur.)

Here’s how Trungpa describes Warrior vigilance:

“The important point to realize is that you are never off duty. You can never just relax, because the whole world needs help.

“The Warrior never neglects his discipline or forgets it. His awareness and sensitivity are constantly extended. Even if a situation is very demanding or difficult, the Warrior never gives up. He always conducts himself well, with gentleness and warmth, to begin with, and he always maintains his loyalty to sentient beings who are trapped in the setting-sun world. The Warrior’s duty is to generate warmth and compassion for others. He does this with complete absence of laziness. His discipline and dedication are unwavering.

“The Warrior is constantly reminded that he has to be on the spot, on the dot, because he is choosing to live in a world that does not give him the setting sun’s concept of rest.

“Warriorship is a continual journey. To be a Warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.”

( Shambala: Sacred Path of the Warrior )

WARRIOR APHORISMS

Finally, I’d like to conclude our discussion of the way of the Warrior with a small collection of what I consider Warrior aphorisms. They are in no particular order, some are written by me and some are written by others, but they all express aspects of being a Warrior. Some of the “aphorisms” are actually paragraphs, but have an aphoristic ability to stand on their own.  Following the collection of aphorisms, I’ve included “A Modern Warrior’s Manifesto,” a set of principles created by writer, professor and fifth degree Akido black belt George Leonard.

“If not now, when? If not me, who?” —Jewish saying

“Grace under pressure.” —Hemingway’s definition of heroism

“To serve, to strive and not to yield.”

—Outward Bound Motto from the poem “Ulysses” by Tennyson

“The Chinese language contains much wisdom in its symbols. The two-part character “wel-ji” is equivalent to our word for crisis. One character means danger and the other opportunity. We in the western world focus only upon the danger. Yet the Chinese know the word means opportunity as well. We can open many doors and enrich our lives simply by ceasing to focus only on our fears and by looking more at the creative possibilities for action and change that can arise from a state of fear, anxiety. Outward Bound proposes that we recondition our reflexes to find energy and enthusiasm in the stirrings of fear and stress.”

—From the Outward Bound Philosophy

“But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in the days to come. For I also am a steward.” —Gandalf, from The Ring Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

“Man’s great passion isn’t sex, power or money—it’s laziness.” —C.G. Jung
The Litany Against Fear

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.
—from the Dune books by Frank Herbert

“Yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow is wood. Only today, the fire burns brightly.” —Native American saying

“An advance always begins with individuation, that is to say with the individual, conscious of his isolation, cutting a new path through hitherto untrodden territory.” —C. G. Jung

“There is no harm in falling down. The only harm is in not picking yourself up again.” —Chinese saying

“Act on what the world is presenting to you in the moment rather than what you think of the world.”—Jordan Scott

The following is a collection of aphorisms and paragraphs I’ve created for myself. Some were written in journals or at odd moments when an insight occurred to me.

“When the Warrior finds that a certain pattern of behavior or thinking never seems to produce the desired results, he will try something else.”

The following defines the stance I call “existential impeccability:”

“The immature attitude toward transformation is to see impeccability as a sacrifice to gain a reward. It degrades the present into a sacrifice for an imaginary “transformed” magical future. The immature approach turns all efforts into their opposite, light into dark. True impeccability is existential; it is done for its own sake, not in the expectation of anything. Only such a stance has the detachment from result to achieve the fluidity and adaptability to mean a lasting value. This type of impeccability is not ‘for’ transformation. It is in itself the revolutionary transformation you seek. Transformation occurs when you strive to give up the expectant attitude and replace it with a lasting effort to seek impeccability as an end in itself.”

—from a journal entry I wrote in the Eighties

“The Warrior must be aware that the psyche is conservative in nature, preferring old, self-destructive, neurotic patterns to the unknown. The Warrior must have the insight and determination to break those patterns, particularly those created by early childhood situations.”

“Don’t crack under pressure.”—Ad slogan for Tag Heuer Sport watches. I would rephrase it: “Don’t crack under pressure, but if possible, release the pressure.”

“Impeccability, like being in touch with the body, brings a feeling of connection with the world: being in the moment, being connected to the world, connected to the body that’s in the world.”

“Professionalism is the modern way of saying Warrior-like.  Usually it is applied to skillful work in a particular profession, but its  meaning can be extended to indicate a general impeccability.

“The professional acts impeccably under great stress.”

“Focus on your physical actions in your physical realm. Physically, do the work.”

“Make a decision for the moment and act on it.”

“Leaving the moment is self-deception. Being in the moment is self-love.”

“Insight may be irrelevant and recursive when will is the issue.”

“Pain is part of the beauty of the now. Pain, when experienced in long moments of time, is like a fire burning in the soul. It burns and consumes the oxygen of self-love with terrifying speed threatening to turn us into cold ashes. But then the cycle turns and the pain becomes sadness and one is capable of deeper reflection. By accepting the pain and sadness that you feel in the moment, you enter the moment with your heart and become fully authentic and alive. Accepting this pain is an act of moral courage. Our darker thoughts and feelings, and the realities they may correspond to, are not easy to accept as what’s so. But when we do accept what’s so and continue to act mindfully we become a Warrior. This is the true test and making of a Warrior, how you chose to handle the problem of being when the setting sun of the West burns you with its radioactive rays and your spirit is nauseous and oppressed by flickering shadows. How well do you act toward others while you may happen to be mutating and decomposing at the same time? The Warrior must act impeccably under all circumstances, inner or outer. The Warrior must maintain balance while dark inner chaos whirls about like winds howling in radioactive ruins after the end of the world.”

(end of warrior quotes I authored)

Deng Ming-Dao is a contemporary Taoist sage who has keen insights into Taoism and the Warrior stance.  The following quotes are excerpted from two of his highly recommended books — 365 Tao and Everyday Tao :

“The action must be complete. It must burn clean; it cannot leave any bad ramifications or lingering traces. An act that leaves destruction, resentment, or untidiness in its wake is a poor one.”

“When unpredictable things happen, those who follow Tao are skilled at improvisation. If circumstances deny them, they change immediately.”

“In the midst of great difficulty, a tiny opportunity will open, if only by chance. You must be sharp enough to discern it, quick enough to catch it, and determined enough to do something with it.”

“Make every move count.
Pick your target and hit it.
Perfect concentration means
Effortless flowing.”

“Each day your life grows a day shorter. Make every move count. All that matters is accomplishing what you envision with the greatest dispatch.”

“Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don’t follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: Create your own.”
“When one senses that one has come to the limits of the time and situation, one should conserve one’s energy. Often, this will be in preparation for a challenge to the limits, or a changing over to a new set of constraints.”
“If one is a hermit, one can be quiescent. If one is in the world, one must be aggressive.”

“To be aggressive . . . is to have the prowess and cunning of the wolf. A wolf is shrewd. It does not blindly go into a situation. It scouts things out. It has a sense of itself and its surroundings that is nearly supernatural. Trackers have a hard time trapping it. Prey have a difficult time eluding it.”

“When things go badly, those who follow Tao seek the causes and correct them. If the problem cannot be corrected, they shift the entire frame of reference so that the relative importance of the problem is diminished or eliminated . . .”

“When you act, act completely. Follow through. Do everything that has to be done. Be like the fire that burns completely clean: only from that pure stage can you then take the next step.”

“Not to have feeling is inhuman.
To be carried away by feeling is foolish.
Not to have desire is death.
To be a slave to desire is to be lost.”

“Whether our lives are magnificent or wretched depends upon our ordering daily details. We must organize the details into a composition that pleases us. Only then will we have meaning in our lives.”

“You could tell the secret of life ten times over, and it would still be safe. After all, the secret is only known when people make it real in their own lives, not when they simply hear it.”

“Indecision and procrastination are corrosive habits. Those who wait for every little thing to be perfect before they embark on a project or who dislike the compromise of a partial solution are among the least happy. Ideal circumstances are seldom given to anyone for an undertaking. Instead there is uncertainty in every situation. The wise are those who can wrest great advantage from circumstances opaque to everyone else.”

“Every day passes whether you participate or not. If you are not careful, years will go by and you will only have regrets. If you cannot solve a problem all at once, at least make a stab at it. Reduce your problems into smaller, more manageable packages, and you can make measurable progress toward achievement. If you wait for everything to be perfect according to your preconceived plans, then you may well wait forever. If you go out and work with the current of life, you may find that success comes from building upon small things.”

The following three quotes come from Back to Beginnings, Reflections on the Tao by Huanchu Daoren, translated by Thomas Cleary. They were written around 1600 by a retired Chinese Scholar, Hong Yingming, whose Taoist name, Huanchu Daoren, means “A Wayfarer Back to Beginnings.”

“When you are constantly hearing offensive words and always have some irritating matter in mind, only then do you have a whetstone for character development. If you hear only what pleases you, and deal only with what thrills you, then you are burying your life in deadly poison.”

“If the mind is illumined, there is clear blue sky in a dark
room. If the thoughts are muddled, there are malevolent ghosts in broad daylight.”

“When thoughts arise, as soon as you sense them heading on the road of desire, bring them right back onto the road of reason. Once they arise, notice them, once you notice them, you can change them. This is the key to turning calamity into fortune, rising from death and returning to life.”

And a few miscellaneous quotes:

“Forget the flight plan, from this moment on we are improvising the mission.”  From the movie Apollo 13

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing

because he could only do a little.” —Edmund Burke

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.” —Emerson (1842)

Modern Warrior: A Manifesto
by George Leonard

1. The Modern Warrior is not one who goes to war or kills people, but rather one who is dedicated to the creation of a more vivid peace.

2. The Modern Warrior honors the traditional Warrior virtues: loyalty, integrity, dignity, courtesy, courage, prudence and benevolence.

3. The Modern Warrior pursues self-mastery through will, patience, and diligent practice.

4. The Modern Warrior works to perfect himself or herself not so much as a means to achieving some external goal as for its own sake.

5. The Modern Warrior is willing to take calculated risks to realize his or her potential and further the general good.

6. The Modern Warrior is fully accountable for his or her actions.

7. The Modern Warrior seeks the inner freedom that comes from the study of esthetics, culture, and the wisdom of the ages.

8. The Modern Warrior respects and values the human individual and the entire web of life on this planet. To serve others is of the highest good. To freely give and accept nourishment from life is the Warrior’s challenge.

9. The Modern Warrior reveres the spiritual realm that lies beyond appetites and appearances.

10. The Modern Warrior cherishes life and thus conducts his or her affairs in such a manner as to be prepared at every moment for death. In this light, he or she is able to view all complaints, regrets, and moods of melancholy as indulgences.

11. The Modern Warrior aims to achieve control and act with abandon.

12. The Modern Warrior realizes that being a Warrior doesn’t mean winning or even succeeding. It does mean putting your life on the line. It means risking and failing and risking again, as long as you live.

THE WARRIOR SAYINGS OF DON JUAN

The following quote collection has been culled from the Casteneda books and represents a distillation of Don Juan’s philosophy of the warrior. Regardless of what you may think of the literal veracity of these books(they have been pretty successfully debunked as truthful encounters), they were for many in our culture, including me, the first encounter with the philosophy of the warrior. Don Juan’s teachings about the Warrior stance have the perfection of a Samurai sword or arrows shot by a master Zen archer. Their concise, penetrating power is unequaled, and they pierce ego illusions like diamond bullets. Taken together they amount to a Toltec Warrior Manifesto. Someone once defined stories as “equipment for living.” Don Juan’s warrior teachings are also equipment for living, something never to leave behind, like a blade of impervious metal, a powerful ally to accompany you into any sort of wilderness.

I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have
nothing to defend.
I have no thoughts, so I will see.
I fear nothing, so I will remember myself.

Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.

Warriors have an ulterior purpose for their acts which has
nothing to do with personal gain. The average man acts only if
there is a chance for profit. Warriors act not for profit, but for
the spirit.

For the average man, the world is weird because if he’s not
bored with it, he’s at odds with it. For a warrior, the world is
weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable.
A warrior must assume responsibility for being here, in this
marvelous world, in this marvelous time.

Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be
deliberate, precise and sustained. If that act is repeated long
enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent which can be
applied to anything else. If that is accomplished the road is
clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes
his full potential.

Any movement of the assemblage point means a movement away
from an excessive concern with the individual self. Shamans believe
it is the position of the assemblage point which makes modern man a
homicidal egoist, a being totally involved with his self-image.
Having lost hope of ever returning to the source of everything, the
average man seeks solace in his selfishness.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything
needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts
for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient,
self-explanatory and complete.
Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the
experience of experiences is being alive.

A warrior must focus his attention on the link between
himself and his death. Without remorse or sadness or worrying, he
must focus his attention on the fact that he does not have time and
let his acts flow accordingly. He must let each of his acts be his
last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will his acts
have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as
he lives, the acts of a fool.

Note—Although the quotes use the default masculine pronoun “he,” it is not assumed that warriors must be males. Many of the most powerful warriors in the Casteneda books are female.

Warriors compress time; this is the sixth principle of the
art of stalking. Even an instant counts. In a battle for your
life, a second is an eternity, an eternity that may decide the
outcome. Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time.
Warriors don’t waste an instant.

A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn’t indulge in it.
The mood of the warrior who enters into the unknown is not one of
sadness; on the contrary, he’s joyful because he feels humbled by
his great fortune, confident that his spirit is impeccable, and
above all, fully aware of his efficiency. A warrior’s joyfulness
comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully
assessed what lies ahead of him.

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is
that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary
man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence
of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of
the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks
impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The
average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked
only to infinity.

It is much easier for warriors to fare well under conditions of
maximum stress than to be impeccable under normal circumstances.

What seems natural is to think that a warrior who can hold his
own in the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants with
impunity. But that’s not necessarily so. What destroyed the superb
warriors of ancient times was to rely on that assumption. Nothing
can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of
dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under
those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to
withstand the pressure of the unknowable.

Knowledge comes to a warrior, floating, like specks of gold
dust, the same dust that covers the wings of moths. So for a
warrior, knowledge is like taking a shower, or being rained on b
specks of dark gold dust.

A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s
control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go.
That’s abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind.
No one can push him, no one can make him do things against himself
or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive and
he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

Acts have power. Especially when the warrior acting knows that
those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming
happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever he is
doing may very well be his last act on earth.

If a warrior is to succeed in anything, the success must come
gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

Our fellow men are black magicians. And whoever is with them
is a black magician on the spot. Think for a moment, can you
deviate from the path that your fellow men have lined up for you?
And if you remain with them, your thoughts and your actions are
fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. The warrior, on the
other hand, is free from all that. Freedom is expensive, but the
price is not impossible to pay. So, fear your captors, your
masters. Don’t waste your time and your power fearing freedom.

A warrior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that
one has personal possessions that could be blockaded. A warrior has
nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability
cannot be threatened.

To discard everything that is unnecessary is the second
principle of the art of stalking. A warrior doesn’t complicate
things. He aims at being simple. He applies all the concentration
he has to decide whether or not to enter into battle, for any battle
is a battle for his life. This is the third principle of the art of
stalking. A warrior must be willing and ready to make his last
stand here and now. But not in a helter-skelter way.

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel
enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always
fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without
enlightenment. For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than
to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the
world—a new description where talking is not that important, and
where new acts have new reflections.

Applying these principles brings about three results. The
first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously;
they learn to laugh at themselves. If they are not afraid of being
a fool, they can fool anyone. The second is that stalkers learn to
have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry; they never
fret. And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless
capacity to improvise.

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A
warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless
challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad.
Challenges are simple challenges.

The recommendation for warriors is not to have any material
things on which to focus their power, but to focus it on the spirit,
on the true flight into the unknown, not on trivialities.
Everyone who wants to follow the warrior’s path has to rid
himself of the compulsion to possess and hold onto things.

Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is
feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men.
Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended
by something or someone.

The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a
warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified
in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us.
Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it amy be, and accepts it in
ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as
grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

By the way, Casteneda, just before he died, published an entire book of Don Juan quotations entitled The Arrow of Time.

When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our
toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is
hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.

As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in
the world, he cannot really appreciate the world around him. He is
like a horse with blinders; all he sees is himself, apart from
everything else.

There is no completeness without sadness and longing, for
without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without
kindness and knowledge without sobriety are useless.

Everything that warriors do is done as a consequence of a
movement of their assemblage points, and such movements are ruled by
the amount of energy warriors have at their command.

Power always makes a cubic centimeter of chance available to a
warrior. The warrior’s art is to be perennially fluid in order to
pluck it.

The worst that could happen to us is that we have to die, and
since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free; those who
have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.

What we need to do to allow magic to get hold of us is to
banish doubts from our minds. Once doubts are banished anything is
possible.

A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going
to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short
for witnessing all the marvels of it.

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue. A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else. The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around him.

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die. What stops death is awareness.

The only freedom warriors have is to behave impeccably. Not only is impeccability freedom; it is the only way to straighten out
the human form.

I hope these quotes nourish you as they have me. Save them, print them out, keep them with you for they will never seem dated or irrelevant if you aim at impeccability and the warrior’s stance. — Jonathan

The following quotes come from Back to Beginnings, Reflections on
the Tao by Huanchu Daoren, translated by Thomas Cleary.
They were written around 1600 by a retired Chinese Scholar,
Hong Yingming, whose Taoist name, Huanchu Daoren, means “A
Wayfarer Back to Beginnings.” In it can be seen a form of lay
Taoism dating many centuries further back into history, in which
the historical and sociological insights of pristine Confucianism
are combined with the advanced educational and psychological
know ledges and methodologies of Buddhism and Taoism.
Nothing is really known of Huanchu Daoren, except that he
wrote these meditations on the Tao which were originally entitled,
“Vegetable Root Talks.” He identifies himself as a Confucian,
which means that he is a layman; his Taoist epithet, “Back to
Beginnings,” says in calendrical symbolism that he has passed the
age of sixty, has retired from public affairs, and has started a
new cycle of life.

A tangent on “sacred texts” : I found more of use to me in
this book of Taoist quotes than in the Tao Te Ching. They have a
sparkling sanity and at times seem almost funny in their humble
and common sense veracity. I don’t like the way the Tao Te Ching
is presented as a sacred text. That’s because I don’t like it
when any text is presented as a sacred text. If someone hands you
a “sacred text,” treat it roughly. The truth can take it. Take a
pen and scribble disagreeable notes next to passages that don’t
jive with your inner truth sense. Take a highlighter to any
passages that do ring true, then copy them over in your
handwriting in your own journal or notebook.
No, I don’t regard the I Ching as sacred text either. Using
the I Ching can be a sacred process, but the text can always be
amplified, improved, reedited—that’s why I use multiple
versions.

Much of the violence, gross and subtle, throughout our
descent into history has been at the hands of persons possessed of
and by a sacred text. And that text could be secular too, it
could be the Communist manifesto or the DSM III. Once a text is
considered superior to the felt experience of individual truth
sense it ceases to be a text and becomes an iron lid on human
consciousness.

Huanchu Daoren certainly did not want his writings treated as
sacred, and some of his aphorisms and passages worked better for me
than others. I think the highlighter more sacred than the text.
What lights up in your perception as significant or meaningful is
what counts. As Emerson says (I’m paraphrasing, check his essay,
The American Scholar, for an exact quote) Why should young men sit
in libraries reading Cicero with awe, when Cicero was just a young
man in a library when he wrote what they are reading? I like what
Huanchu has to say because he made me reach for my highlighter
often. —Jonathan

When you are but slightly involved in the world, the effect the
world has on you is also slight. When you are deeply enmeshed in
affairs, you machinations also deepen. So for enlightened people
simplicity is better than refinement, and freedom is better than
punctiliousness.

People are considered pure of heart when they do not approach
power and pomp; but those who can be near without being affected
are the purest of all. People are considered high-minded when they
do not know how to plot and contrive; but those who know how yet do
not do so are the highest of all.

When you are constantly hearing offensive words and always
have some irritating matter in mind, only then do you have a
whetstone for character development. If you hear only what pleases
you, and deal only with what thrills you, then you are burying your
life in deadly poison.

Late at night, when everyone is quiet, sit alone and gaze into
the mind; then you notice illusion ending and reality appearing.
You gain a great sense of potential in this every time. Once you
have noticed reality appearing yet find that illusion is hard to
escape, you also find yourself greatly humbled.

Blessings often give rise to injury, so be careful when things
are going your way. Success may be achieved after failure, so
don’t just give up when you’ve been disappointed.

Those who live simply are often pure, while those who live
luxuriously may be slavish and servile. It seems that the will is
clarified by plainness, while conduct is ruined by indulgence.

There is a true Buddha in family life; there is a real Tao in
everyday activities. If people can be sincere and harmonious,
promoting communication with a cheerful demeanor and friendly
words, that is much better than formal meditation practice.

Don’t be too severe in criticizing people’s faults; consider
how much they can bear. Don’t be too lofty in enjoining virtue, so
people may be able to follow.

A grub in filth is dirty, but it changes into a cicada and
sips dew in the autumn breeze. Rotting plants have no luster, but
they turn into foxfire and glow in the summer moonlight. So we
know that purity emerges from impurity, and light is born from
darkness.

Conceit and arrogance are acquired states of mind. Conquer
acquired states of mind, and basic sanity can unfold. Passion and
willfulness are part of false consciousness; erase false
consciousness, and true consciousness will appear.

Think about food on a full stomach and you find you don’t care
about taste. Think of lust after making love, and you find you
don’t care about sex. Therefore, if people always reflect on the
regret they will feel afterward to forestall folly at the moment,
they will be stable and will not err in action.

Those who have come to an impasse should examine their
original intentions; those who have succeeded should note where
they are heading.

When the rich and well-established, who should be generous,
are instead spiteful and cruel, they make their behavior wretched
and base in spite of their wealth and position. When the
intellectually brilliant, who should be reserved, instead show off,
they are ignorant and foolish in their weakness in spite of their
brilliance.

After one has been in a lowly position, one knows how
dangerous it is to climb to a high place, Once one has been in the
dark, one knows how revealing it is to go into the light. Having
maintained quietude, one knows how tiring compulsive activity is.
Having nurtured silence, one knows how disturbing much talk is.

To conquer demons, first conquer your mind. When the mind is
subdued, demons withdraw obediently. To control knaves, first
control your own mood. When your mood is balanced, scoundrels
cannot get at you.

In matters of desire, don’t get hastily involved because of
easy availability; once you get involved, you will sink in deeply.
In matters of principle, don’t back off for fear of difficulty;
once you back down, you will lose your ground entirely.

When people are determined, they can overcome fate; when the
will is unified, it can mobilize energy. Enlightened people do not
even let nature put them in a set mold.

When the liver is diseased, the eyesight fails; when the
kidneys are diseased, the hearing is adversely affected. The
disease is not visible, but its effects are. Therefore,
enlightened people, wishing to be free from obvious faults, first
get rid of hidden faults.

There is no greater fortune than having few concerns, no
greater misfortune than having many worries. Only those who have
suffered over their concerns know the blessing of having few
concerns. Only those who have calmed their minds know the
misfortune of having many worries.

In dealing with good people one should be magnanimous; in
dealing with bad people one should be strict. In dealing with
average people one should combine magnanimity and strictness.

Do not think about whatever service you may have done for
others; think about what you may have done to offend them. Don’t
forget what others have done for you; forget what others have done
to offend you.

When those who give charity do so without any sense of
self-satisfaction and without any thought of reward, even a small
gift is great. When those who aid others calculate their own
sacrifice and demand gratitude and recompense, even a great gift is
small.

Your own feelings may be reasonable or unreasonable; how can
you expect others to always be reasonable? It is useful to see
things in this light and thereby correct the contradictions in your
expectations for yourself and others.

Those in public office who do not love the people are thieves
stealing salaries. Those who teach but do not themselves practice
what they teach are mere talkers. Those who try to do successful
work without considering development of character will find it
insubstantial.

In the mind engaged in struggling with hardship, one always
finds something delightful. The sorrow of disappointment arises
in the complacency of satisfaction.

The learned should be vigorous and diligent, but they should
also be free-spirited. If they are too rigorous and austere, they
have the death-dealing quality of autumn but lack the life-giving
quality of spring. How can they develop people then?

If the mind is illumined, there is clear blue sky in a dark
room. If the thoughts are muddled, there are malevolent ghosts in
broad daylight.

People know that fame and position are pleasant, but they do
not know that the pleasure of anonymity is most real. People know
that hunger and cold are distressing, but they do not know that the
distress of not experiencing cold or hunger is greater.

If you fear that people will know if you do something bad, then
there is something good in bad. If you are eager for people to
know when you do something good, then there is something bad in
good.

The workings of heaven are unfathomable—sometimes
encouraging, sometimes suppressing. All this makes sport of heroes
and tumbles the great. Enlightened people take adversity in stride
and are prepared for trouble even when at ease; therefore, they are
not at the mercy of fate.

One should not seek happiness, just nurture the spirit of joy
as the basis of summoning happiness. One should not try to escape
misfortune, just get rid of viciousness as a means of avoiding
misfortune.

The road of truth is broad; set the mind on it, and you feel
expansive openness and broad clarity. The road of human desires is
narrow; set foot on it, and you see brambles and mire before you.

Soil with a lot of manure in it produces abundant crops; water
that is too clear has no fish. Therefore, enlightened people should
maintain the capacity to accept impurities and should not be
solitary perfectionists.

Even a wild horse can be tamed; even metal that is difficult
to work eventually goes into a mold. If you take it easy and do
not stir yourself, you will never make any progress. It has been
said, “It is no disgrace to have many afflictions: I would worry if
there never were any afflictions.”

…people of old deemed freedom from greed precious, and this
is how they got beyond the world.

The eyes and ears, seeing and hearing, are external
plunderers; emotions, desires, and opinions are internal
plunderers. But if the inner mind is awake and alert, sitting
aloof in the middle of it all, then these plunderers change and
become members of the household.

Even if you do no work that is particularly lofty or
far-reaching, if you can shed mundane feelings, that is a great
achievement. Even if you do not strive much for progress in
learning, if you can minimize the influence things have on you,
you will soar into the realm of sages.

In whatever you do, if you leave a sense of incompleteness,
then Creation cannot resent you, ghosts and spirits cannot harm
you. If you insist on fulfillment in your work and perfection in
achievement, you will become either inwardly deranged or outwardly
unsettled.

If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed,
there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon
hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves?

If you are not lax when at leisure, you will be effective when
busy. If you are not absentminded in tranquility, that will be
useful in action. If you are not hypocritical in private, that
will show up in public.

When thoughts arise, as soon as you sense them heading on the
road of desire, bring them right back onto the road of reason.
Once they arise, notice them, once you notice them, you can change
them. This is the key to turning calamity into fortune, rising
from death and returning to life.
( For a modern view on how to do this see Tara Bennet Goleman’s
book: Emotional Alchemy —Jonathan)

In adversity, everything that surrounds you is a kind of
medicine that helps you refine your conduct, yet you are unaware of
it. In pleasant situations, you are faced with weapons that will
tear you apart, yet you do not realize it.

Delicious foods are drugs that will inflame the gut and rot
the bones, but there is no harm if one eats moderately. Delightful
things are all purveyors of destruction and decadence, but there is
no regret if one enjoys them moderately.

Valuing unusual conduct is not as good as being careful about
ordinary actions.

Compromise to please others is not as good as integrity that
annoys others. Rather than be praised without being good, it is
better to be slandered without being bad.

When one is not slipshod in small matters, not hypocritical in
secret, and not reckless in disappointment, only then is one a true
hero.

A thousand pieces of gold may hardly bring a moment’s
happiness, but a small favor can cause a lifetime’s gratitude. Too
much love can turn to enmity, while aloofness can produce joy.

People’s shortcomings should be treated with tact; if you
expose them crudely, this is attacking weakness with a weakness.
When people are stubborn, it requires skill to influence them; if
you treat them with anger and spite, this is treating stubbornness
with stubbornness.

When you meet silent and inscrutable people, don’t tell them
what you are thinking. When you meet irritable and self-serving
people, be careful what you say.

A clear sunny day can suddenly shift to thunder and lightning,
a raging storm can suddenly give way to a bright moonlit night.
The weather may be inconstant, but the sky remains the same. The
substance of the human mind should also be like this.

Perception is a clear jewel that shows up demons; strength is
a sword of wisdom that cuts down demons. Both are necessary.

To notice people’s deceptions yet not reveal it in words, to
bear people’s insults without showing any change of
attitude—there is endless meaning in this, and also endless
function.

Unexpected hardship refines people; if you can accept it, both
mind and body will benefit. If you cannot accept it, on the other
hand, both mind and body will be harmed.

Our body is a small universe; to regulate emotions and
feelings is a way of harmonization.

If those who give are conscious of their own generosity and
those who receive feel indebted, they are no longer family but
rather strangers doing business.

Public behavior is nurtured in private; earthshaking measures
come form careful steps.

Virtue is the master of talent, talent is the servant of
virtue. Talent without virtue is like a house where there is no
master and their servant manages its affairs. How can there be no
mischief?

To get rid of villains and knaves, it is necessary to give
them a way out. If you don’t give them any leeway at all, they
will be like trapped rats. If every way out is closed to them,
they will chew up everything good.

When enlightened people are so poor that they cannot help
others, if they speak a word to awaken the confused or to resolve a
problem, there is also boundless merit in that.

For those who reflect on themselves, everything they encounter
is medicine. For those who attack others, every thought is a
weapon. One is the way to initiate all good, one is the way to
deepen all evil. They are as far apart as sky and earth.

Business and scholarship pass away with the person, but the
soul is forever like new. Fame and fortune change with the
generations, but the spirit is always the same. Enlightened people
surely should not exchange the lasting for the ephemeral.

A net set up to catch fish may snare a duck; a mantis hunting
an insect may itself be set upon by a sparrow. Machinations are
hidden within machinations; changes arise beyond changes. So how
can wit and cleverness be relied upon?

When water isn’t rippled, it is naturally still. When a
mirror isn’t clouded, it is clear of itself. So the mind is not to
be cleared; get rid of what muddles it, and its clarity will
spontaneously appear. Pleasure need not be sought; get rid of what
pains you, and pleasure is naturally there.

One of our predecessors said, “Throwing away the inexhaustible
treasury of your own home, you go with your bowl from door to door,
acting like a beggar”`

Those who trust others will find that not everyone is
necessarily sincere, but they will be sincere themselves. Those who
suspect others will find that not everyone is necessarily deceiving
them, but they have already become deceivers themselves.

Those who are broad-minded and considerate are like the spring
breeze, warm and nurturing, at show touch all being grow. Those who
are envious an d cruel are like the snow of the northlands,
stilling and freezing, at whose touch all beings die.

Diligence means to be keen in matters of virtue and justice,
but worldly people use diligence to solve their economic
difficulties. Frugality means to have little desire for material
goods, but worldly people use frugality as a cover for stinginess.
Thus do watchwords of enlightened life turn into tools for the
private business of small people. What a pity!

Those who act on excitement act intermittently; this is hardly
the way to avoid regression. Those whose understanding comes from
emotional perceptions are as confused as they are enlightened; this
is not a lamp that is constantly bright.

You should be forgiving when others make mistakes, but not when
the mistakes are in you. You should be patient under duress
yourself, but not when it affects others.

Generosity should begin lightly and deepen later, fro when it
is first rich and then lessens, people forget the kindness.
Authority should begin strictly and loosen up later, for if it is
loose first and then strict, people will resent the severity.

If you do not join the polluted, then you are pure; if you
reject society in search of purity, that is not purity but
fanaticism.

The substance of mind is the substance of heaven. A joyful
thought is an auspicious star or a felicitous cloud. An angry
thought is a thunderstorm or a violent rain. A kind thought is a
gentle breeze or a sweet dew. A stern thought is a fierce sun or an
autumn frost. Which of these can be eliminated? Just let them pass
away as they arise, open and unresisting, and your mind merges with
the spacious sky.

When you meet dishonest people, move them with sincerity. When
you meet violent people, affect them with gentility. When you meet
warped people, inspire them with justice. Then the whole world
enters your forge.

A moment of kindness can produce a mood of harmony between
heaven and earth. Purity of heart can leave a fine example for a
hundred generations.

There is much meaning in the word endure. For example, when
dealing with unstable human feelings and uneven pathways in life, without endurance to hold you up, you may fall into a pit in the brush.

You should not be too much of a purist in your way of life, for you need to be able to accept all that is foul. You should not be too clear in making distinctions in social interactions, for you need to accept everyone whether they are good or bad, wise or foolish.

The sickness of indulging desires can be treated, but the sickness of clinging to abstract principles is hard to treat. Obstacles presented by events and objects can be removed, but obstacles presented by social principles are hard to remove.

Polish what you polish until it is like gold that has been refined a hundred times; anything that is done in a hurry is not deeply developed. Do what you do like a thousand-pound catapult; one who pops off too easily does not accomplish much.

At dusk the sunset is beautifully bright; at year’s end the tangerines are even more fragrant. Therefore, at the end of their road, in their later years, enlightened people should be a hundred times more vital in spirit.

Observe people with cool eyes, listen to their words with cool ears. Confront feelings with cool emotions, reflect on principles with a cool mind.

Attention is the mind’s feet; if you do not control your attention strictly, it runs into misleading pathways.

Sexual desire may burn like fire, but when you give a thought to when you are ill, then your excitement dies down. Fame and fortune may be sweet as candy, but when you give a thought to when you die, then their flavor is like chewing wax. Therefore, if people are usually concerned about death and illness, this can also dissolve unreal activities and develop longing for the way.

Even if you can’t get rid of the heat, as long as you can get rid of bother with the heat, your body is always on a cool terrace. Even if you can’t get rid of poverty, as long as you can get rid of the sadness of poverty, your mind always lives in a comfortable abode.

When greedy people are given gold, they are bitter that they haven’t gotten jewels; when they are made barons they are resentful that they haven’t been made lords. Though powerful and rich, their attitude is that of beggars. For those who know how to be content, simple fare is more delicious than rich delicacies, a cloth coat is warmer than fox fur, and an ordinary citizen does not defer to a king or a lord.

If you know that whatever is made inevitable breaks down, you needn’t seek too hard for achievement. If you know that all living beings inevitably die, you needn’t work too hard on health lore.

The powerful and prominent soar like dragons, the heroic and valiant fight like tigers: but if you look upon them with cool eyes, they are like ants gathering on rancid meet, like flies swarming on blood. Judgments of right and wrong bristle like porcupine quills: but if you meet them with cool feelings, that is like a forge melting metal, like hot water dissolving snow.

Those who turn things around by themselves do not rejoice at gain or grieve over loss; the whole world is the range they roam. Those who are themselves used by things hate it when events go against them and love it when they go their way; the slightest thing can create binding entanglements.

Those who like tranquility and dislike clamor tend to avoid people to seek quietude. They do not know that when one wishes there were no one around, that is egotism; and when the mind is attached to quietude, that is the root of disturbance. How can they reach the state where others and oneself are seen as one, where disturbance and quietude are both forgotten.

The realms of good fortune and calamity in human life are all made of thoughts and imaginings. Therefore Buddhists say that the burning of desire for gain is itself a pit of fire, while drowning in greedy love is itself a bitter sea. The moment thoughts are pure, fierce flames become a pond; the moment you become aware, the boat has arrived on the further shore. If your thoughts vary at all, your world will immediately differ, so can we not be careful?

Flowers should be viewed when half open, wine should be drunk only to subtle intoxication; there is great fun in this. If you view flowers in full bloom and drink to drunkenness, it becomes a bad experience. Those who are living to the full should think about this.

Introduction. © Jonathan Zap 2004

Someone once described stories as “equipment for living.” Quality fiction does fit that definition and, of course, so does the right non fiction. The modern Taoist quotes presented here are almost the illustration of this definition. They are like a set of tools, deceptively simple in appearance, but made of an adamantine metal that grows stronger and sharper with long use.

Someone else said, “Don’t read a book unless it is like a ball of light glowing in your hands.” When you find the right book, at the right time, it can be a sphere of light in your hands. The writings of Deng Ming-Dao (a contemporary Taoist whom I excerpt here) were, for me, like a large sphere of amethyst with cooling, calming purple depths. Areas of the sphere had a gem quality transparency and clarity while others had natural inclusions, areas that were clouded by carbon and iron oxide. The quotes presented here are the parts that, for me, had gem quality transparency, that sparkled in my mind’s eye like jewels flashing in the night of time.

If we were to look into an amethyst sphere we would probably all agree on which parts were clear, and which parts were occluded with inclusions and impurities. But if the sphere is a matrix of language, rather than a crystal matrix, the subjectivity of the observer is greatly increased, and the areas of greatest transparency for one may not be the same for another. What I chose to excerpt might not be what you would choose and the selections that follow are no substitute for reading and owning the two books they come from: 365 Tao and Everyday Tao.

365 Tao is set up with a page to contemplate for each day of the year and the pages have been arranged to correspond to the cycles of the seasons and turning points in the calendar. There is even a table in the back that reorients this arrangement for those living in the Southern Hemisphere. I recommend these books as equipment for living and glowing spheres of light for those who have an inner commitment to the Taoist path.

A tangent on “sacred texts” (adapted from an introduction I wrote about Taoist quotes listed on website as “Taoist Quotes”).

I found more of use to me in these books of Taoist quotes than in the Tao Te Ching. They have a sparkling sanity and at times seem almost funny in their humble and common sense veracity. I don’t like the way the Tao Te Ching is presented as a sacred text. That’s because I don’t like it when any text is presented as a sacred text. If someone hands you a “sacred text,” treat it roughly. The truth can take it. Take a pen and scribble disagreeable notes next to passages that don’t jive with your inner truth sense. Take a highlighter to any passages that do ring true, then copy them over in your handwriting in your own journal or notebook.

No, I don’t regard the I Ching as sacred text either. Using the I Ching can be a sacred process, but the text can always be amplified, improved, reedited—that’s why I use multiple versions.

Much of the violence, gross and subtle, throughout our descent into history has been at the hands of persons possessed of and by a sacred text. And that text could be secular too, it could be the Communist manifesto or the DSM III. Once a text is considered superior to the felt experience of individual truth sense it ceases to be a text and becomes an iron lid on human consciousness.

Deng Ming-Dao certainly did not want his writings treated as sacred, and some of his aphorisms and passages worked better for me than others. I think the highlighter more sacred than the text. What lights up in your perception as significant or meaningful is what counts. As Emerson says, “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.”

I like what Deng Ming-Dao has to say because he made me reach for my highlighter often. —Jonathan

This is the moment of embarking.
All auspicious signs are in place.

In order to start, we must make a decision. This decision is a commitment to daily self-cultivation. We must make a strong connection to our inner selves. Outside matters are superfluous. Alone and naked, we negotiate all of life’s travails.

Once we make our decision, all things will come to us.

First comes cleansing of the body…

All growth comes with a shock.

Young people need compassion and guidance, not obscure mysticism. Here are some guidelines for young people:

Remember that you are always your own person. Do not surrender your mind, heart, or body to any person. Never compromise your dignity for any reason.

Maintain your health with sound diet, hygiene, exercise and clean living…

Money is never more important than your body and mind, but you must work and support yourself. Never depend on others for your livelihood.

Choose your friends and living situations carefully, for they will influence you. Find a mentor you can trust, one who can answer your every question, but never give up responsibility for your own life. No one lives your life for you.

A good education is always an asset.

Emotions are transitory and are not a good way to make decisions.

Every day, you must make decisions. Everything you do will have irrevocable effect upon your life. Before you go down any path, consider carefully. Rivers very rarely reverse course.

Know evil, but do not do evil yourself. Remember, there is a way out of the delusions of life. When you weary of the world, find someone who will show you Tao.

(referring to trees) It is with this power that they withstand both the vicissitudes and adornment of life, for neither bad fortune nor good fortune will alter what they are. We should be the same way. We may have great fortune or bad, but we should patiently bear both. No matter what, we must always be true to our inner selves.

Even when it is snowy, the wood cutter must split wood…he must strike the wood with the grain, and he must let the axe fall with its own weight.

Whether it is the time or the method, true labor is half initiative and half knowing how to let things proceed on their own.

Although it is tempting to resent disaster, there is not much use in doing so…Disasters may well change us deeply, but they will pass. We must keep to our deeper convictions and remember our goals. Whether we remain ash or become the phoenix is up to us.

No matter how extreme a situation is, it will change.

It is being off balance that keeps life changing. Total centering, total balance would only be stasis.

That is why, even in the midst of an extreme situation, the wise are patient.

Whether the situation is illness, calamity, or their own anger, they know that healing will follow upheaval.

The closer something comes to completion, the harder and more definite it becomes. Our options become fewer, until the full impact of our creation is all there is. Beauty or ugliness, utility or failure, comes from the process of shaping.

…those who live only for some deferred reward often strain themselves with too much denial.

We must understand how the past affects us, we should keep the present full of rich and satisfying experiences, and we should devote some energy each day to building for the future. Just as a river can be said to have parts that cannot be clearly divided, so too should we consider the whole of our time when deciding how to spend our lives.

The sacred lies in the ordinary.

The action must be complete. It must burn clean; it cannot leave any bad ramifications or lingering traces. An act that leaves destruction, resentment, or untidiness in its wake is a poor one.

Useful trees are cut down. Useless ones survive. The same is true of people. The strong are conscripted. The beautiful are exploited. Those who are too plain to be noticed are the ones who survive. They are left alone and safe.

But what if we ourselves are among such plain persons? Though others may neglect us, we should not think of ourselves as being without value. We must not accept the judgment of others as the measure of our own self-worth…. Thus, to be considered useless is not a reason for despair, but an opportunity. It is the chance to live without interference and to express one’s own individuality.

…wise people travel constantly and test themselves against the flux of circumstance.

Markings in dry clay disappear
Only when the clay is soft again.
Scars upon the self disappear
Only when one becomes soft within.

Demons who enter your circle
must be pushed out.

No matter what world you walk in—office, school, temple, prison, or the streets—-there is an underworld populated with demons. These are people who are avaricious, aggressive, sadistic, and cynical. They not only take advantage of others without compunction, they delight in it. They find pleasure in seeing others suffer.

Whatever you do there is no need to be apathetic toward life. Instead, full participation in all things is the surest way to happiness, vitality, success, and a deep knowledge of Tao.

Worry is an addiction
that interferes with compassion.

When unpredictable things happen, those who follow Tao are skilled at improvisation. If circumstances deny them, they change immediately.

To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives.

We should take the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of temporality.

There are others who follow Tao, but it is not always possible to meet them.
That is why it takes someone both sensitive enough to hear the call and strong enough to walk the solitary path.

The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society. You may see the truth, but you will find that people would rather listen to politicians, performers, and charlatans.

In the midst of great difficulty, a tiny opportunity will open, if only by chance. You must be sharp enough to discern it, quick enough to catch it, and determined enough to do something with it.

When faced with a sad situation, it is best not to languish in it. We can change things by being with different people, moving to other places, or, if all else fails, adjusting our own attitudes to take the initiative.

What is it like to feel Tao? It is an effortless flowing, a sweeping momentum.
It is like bird song soaring and gliding over a vast landscape.

If we fall, we must pick ourselves up and get back on the trail again.

You could labor ten years under a master Trying to discern whether the teachings are true.
But all you might learn is this:
One must live one’s own life.

You must not fail to explore anything that interests you.

Make every move count.
Pick your target and hit it.
Perfect concentration means
Effortless flowing.

Each day your life grows a day shorter. Make every move count. All that matters is accomplishing what you envision with the greatest dispatch.

Spiritual success is gained by daily cultivation.
If you practiced for the day, then you have won.
If you were lazy for the day, then you have lost.
…Whatever system of spirituality you practice, do it every day.

We part at the crossroads,
You leave with your joys and problems,
I with mine. Alone, I look down the road.
Each one must walk one’s own path.

Parting is inherent in all meeting. Nothing lasts forever. Transience is what gives life poignancy. Every person is responsible for him or herself. There is no road to walk but your own.

Banish uncertainty.
Affirm strength.
Hold resolve.
Expect death.

Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don’t follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: Create your own.

Your resolve to tread the path of life is your best asset. Without it, you die. Death is unavoidable, but it is not from loss of will but because your time is over. As long as you can keep going, use your imagination to cope with the travails of life. Overcome your obstacles and realize what you envision.

Hide what you know.
Conceal talent.
Shield your light.
Bide your time.

There is great wisdom in being inconspicuous. …When you know how to hide, you avoid the attention and scorn of others, but retain the strategic advantage of surprise.

When one senses that one has come to the limits of the time and situation, one should conserve one’s energy. Often, this will be in preparation for a challenge to the limits, or a changing over to a new set of constraints.

Ultimately, all relationships are temporary. False attachment to another can become an addiction, a voluntary bondage detrimental to clear perception. We should not bind another to ourselves, should not define ourselves by relationship, should not force another to stay with us…

When it is time to part, then it is time to part. There should be no regrets. The beauty of relationship is like the fleeting perfection of a snowflake.

Life’s pulse is gauged in the hollows, the intervals between events. If you want to see Tao, you must discern these spaces.

Human law is imperfect: There will always be unprecedented circumstances. Thus, we must go beyond rules and operate instead from pure wisdom. We must act with experience, flexibility, and insight. Let us so absorb integrity—experiencing both its triumphs and defeats—-that way we do the right thing intuitively.

Though others have faults,
Concentrate on your own.

Look at a cat as she stretches out contentedly in the sun. There is no thought of the next moment, only the sheer enjoyment of the present. Rest assured that she will still be able to clean herself, still be able to catch mice, and still be able to do all the things that a cat must do. But she is without anxieties, and so she is purely and totally who she should be. She acts as if she were nature’s favorite. And who is to say otherwise?

In all of life, the only thing that separates from Tao is the human ego, because one places oneself before all other things. By contrast, those who follow Tao divest themselves of self-importance and desire for success. They prefer to follow Tao as it flows through the land. They move from place to place as they intuitively sense its direction. Feeling the divine energy, they live in its vital flow. These wanderers have glimpsed the void that is in them and in all
things.

…anything that grows old must be in touch with the sustaining Tao.

It is because of this that those who follow Tao study the ancient. What are the secrets of what has lasted? If we would endeavor to develop wisdom beyond the mere moment, we must ask this question over and over.

When we learn to tap into the power of Tao inside ourselves, we will feel a vitality as strong as a tiger’s. That is pure energy. It is very important to direct that power positively.

Vigilance is not a matter of mere waiting. It is a matter of the correct timing. It takes an exquisite sense of proportion to know that we are not just standing still—we are moving no faster and no slower than required by the situation.

…our essential nature will not change, just as the substance of silk is not changed by dyeing. Nor is our essential nature in need of any change. …we are who we are, and there is no reason to be ashamed of that. That is why we can be immediate in everyday life: we know who we are, and we trust in the process of Tao.

Thus, the ancients taught their students to always accept themselves as they were. This is not only eminently practical—to do otherwise is ultimately impossible—but it is the beginning of the attitude of acceptance that we need to follow the Tao. If we cannot accept ourselves, it is unlikely that we will be able to accept anything that Tao sends our way.

By accepting ourselves, we can then bring great immediacy to our lives.

Without going out of the door, I can know all things on earth.
Without looking out of the window, I can know the way of heaven.
The wise person knows others by observing himself.
The wise person will not go out when fate is in opposition.
The wise person knows when to withdraw into contemplation.

Books allow people to think for themselves, allow access to knowledge forgotten or even out of favor with the times. Books allow knowledge to travel over time and distances greater than the author could ever accomplish in person.

Most important, books encourage allegiance not to kings, but to the learning of the individual. And that is crucial to Tao.

Those who can read the patterns of life are the truly cultured.

Every person who has followed Tao has been a person of culture and refinement. Not only does Tao require study and intelligence, but it also demands the subtle mind of a sensitive person…

The (person who follows Tao) is someone who can read not just human language, but the languages of nature as well. There are patterns and secrets throughout the world—the rings of trees, and tracks of animals, and the traces of water down the sides of a valley are as clear as any scripture. The person who follows Tao does not blindly go through life, but is able to read it on every level. Those who follow Tao are those who know the many languages of life.

…those who seek Tao constantly seek words of wisdom and allow them to accumulate deep in themselves. That is why the ancients always said it takes a person of virtue to hear words of virtue. It takes a person of strength to want words of strength. It takes a person of learning to discern words of learning.

If one is a hermit, one can be quiescent. If one is in the world, one must be aggressive.

To be aggressive…is to have the prowess and cunning of the wolf. A wolf is shrewd. It does not blindly go into a situation. It scouts things out. It has a sense of itself and its surroundings that is nearly supernatural. Trackers have a hard time trapping it. Prey have a difficult time eluding it.

The wolf has its own “virtue” or moral force. It acts according to its own fixed rules. It does not kill excessively, it keeps to its territory, and follows its instinct when mating and caring for its young. If only human beings could be so consistently true to their inner nature!

If those who follow Tao act on a worldly stage, they take the wolf as a model. They know that success in a situation is frequently a matter of aggressiveness. They do not waste their time in trivialities. Instead, they remain supernaturally aware of themselves and their territory. They track others, but in turn obscure themselves. And when the moment of action comes, they act without hesitation.

To be aggressive is the secret of success.

For those who follow Tao, having a strong stance is essential both physically and spiritually. The example of the stance can be applied to every situation in life: you always have to have—and know—your position. Don’t be caught unawares. Don’t be caught without a point of view. Don’t be caught without tactics. The exercise of the stance teaches us that stance must be firm, but never static. From the insight and awareness of one’s strategy, there are dozens of positions to which one can move instantaneously.

In life, as in the practice of stances, one must have both firmness and mobility.

Life is difficult to confront. Chance and ruin are overwhelming; the heart and mind are fragile. Those who manage to assert their will against the odds are admirable. When we are the ones who are able to triumph over adversity, we have reached a rare and fleeting moment.

…Being a hero is a matter of being prepared for a gift in time. Time will give you an opening. It is how you then respond that will decide whether you have taken advantage of your opportunity.

Having any less than heroic aspirations is to settle for mediocrity, and the mediocre never develop the perceptions and reflexes needed to follow Tao.

But if you want to be extraordinary, concentrate only on perfecting yourself…We needn’t care about how others judge us. As long as we grasp the importance of a moment, meet the opportunity, and respond to it with the whole of our being, then we can consider ourselves heroes. This, then, is the true meaning of heroism; you met whatever came your way with every bit of yourself.

To go through life well is to have means at one’s disposal. To have means is to know the laws of life.

…we must have many transformations. Whenever things are not going our way, that is a signal to change. This is called the live way. Those who cannot change, who remain fixed in stubbornness eventually lose. That is called the dead way… Those who follow Tao seek the means that transcend limitations.

Those who follow Tao avoid fixed movements and do not hesitate to act in unorthodox ways.
Tao changes very quickly. Life’s circumstances shift so suddenly that they leave you breathless…
Those who follow Tao do not always do things the straight-forward and orthodox way. Instead of acting according to preconceived ideas, they look for the greatest advantages. Structured thinking or clinging to prevailing dogma are only inhibitions….

When things go badly, those who follow Tao seek the causes and correct them. If the problem cannot be corrected, they shift the entire frame of reference so that the relative importance of the problem is diminished or eliminated….

Therefore, the wise solely follow the shifting and changing Tao and avoid fixed routines. They do not stick stubbornly to ideas or patterns. Tao is formless, constantly creative, and relentlessly in flux. Those who follow Tao seek to change with it.

The inexperienced overreach: they do not know their abilities and limitations. The veterans know exactly what is possible, and they keep everything they need close at hand.

One who knows how to take advantage of natural forces will always be sustained. One who is ignorant of natural forces will be destroyed.

Those who follow Tao are extremely canny. They know the slightest details of what happens around them. Then they take advantage of them. Their lives appear miraculous, but all they do is take advantage of natural events.

Timing is everything in Tao. To act in a way that is harmonious to circumstances and in accord with one’s own heart is rare but precious.

In action, timing is everything
Force doesn’t matter.
Weight doesn’t matter.
Even being morally right doesn’t matter.
All that matters is timing.

…correct timing is something that must be felt in one’s heart. …those who would act according to Tao cannot blame Tao if things do not go their way. It is the individual who must discern what the time calls for and then act accordingly.

Timing means harmonious union. Clumsily destroying things cannot be called good action. To bring things together at precisely the right moment is what deserves to be called timing. A photographer captures light at the right moment. …In these and all other professions, force, cleverness, determination, and power are meaningless if timing does not bring the right elements to bear. What matters is the right action at the right time.

….if you know the time is bad, avoid the situation. If you know a place is bad, avoid it. Evil is inevitable. But it is often possible simply to get out of the way. Some heroes advocate meeting things openly, fighting it out man to man, meeting force with force. Followers of Tao disagree. Whenever possible, they avoid bad times and bad places. They avoid confrontations. In this way, they make as many of their encounters as positive as possible.

(This principle reminds me of an amusing moment in the Castaneda books when Carlos is asking Don Juan, “But Don Juan, what would all your powers do for you if someone was stalking you with a rifle with a telescopic sight?” Don Juan replied: “Well, if someone were stalking me with a rifle with a telescopic sight I just wouldn’t come around.”—JZ)

The crux of following Tao is to know acceptance. If you want to go east, but Tao wants you to go west, then you should go west. If you want to accomplish ten things, but circumstances only allow you to accomplish nine, then accept that. If you meet obstacles to what you want to do, you have to ask yourself how you can adapt. Sometimes you will be able to overcome the obstacles. At other times, you will have to go around the obstacles….

One should never be too proud to adapt. If you see that things are not going your way, adapt quickly. By doing it in a smooth and timely manner, you can avoid disrupting the flow of events. This is call Tao.

JZ: I found an inner resistance in myself when I wrote the line above, “If you want to go East…” There is a flaw in the way Taoist principles are presented, and maybe even in the way they are understood or applied by some Taoists. An impression is given of forever adapting and changing in response to shifts in external conditions. This misses a huge part of Tao. As George Bernard Shaw said: “The mark of the reasonable man is that he adapts to the world he finds himself in. The mark of the unreasonable man is that he expects the world to adapt itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable men.” Tao is not all external, it is internal, intrapsychic as well. Our inner relationship to ourselves is our realm of absolute sovereignty. Aleister Crowley had a concept of “true will”—-an inner calling coming from our deepest self. This is our internal refraction of Tao, and this needs to be followed regardless of whatever resistance external conditions throw at us. We adapt and change with outer circumstances, but never abandon our true will.—JZ

The ancients said that the bird follows Tao, since it is a natural creature, unsullied by human conceptions.
For direction, look to nature. For direction, look into yourself—is it not possible that we have within us an instinct for direction as strong as the bird’s? If you can find that—and it most assuredly exists in each of us—then Tao is sure to follow.

When we walk along a road, we should not regret another road not taken. Those who are mature accept this. We cannot travel on one path while walking another. If we go to one destination, then it is inevitable that we will miss others.

It is tempting to linger upon regrets and suppositions, especially when times are unhappy. Maybe we could have been more famous or richer. Maybe we could have done more as we grew older. But it is far better to remember that we make our own road one day at a time. If we have been fully involved with our own lives and have been making our own decisions, there is no reason for regret.

As we grow older, it becomes critical to fulfill what we find important.

When you think of others before yourself, that is Tao.
When you discipline yourself, that is Tao.
When you feel an activity doing itself rather than your doing it, that is Tao.
When you are aware of what to do spontaneously, that is Tao.
When you can take responsibility for what you do, that is Tao.
When you cultivate different skills with complete attention, that is Tao.
When you enter into lucid stillness, that is Tao.
When you are better than your worries, that is Tao.
When you can control your health, that is Tao.
When you can combine mind and action, that is Tao.
When you can be like water, that is Tao.
When you can be as illuminating as fire, that is Tao.
When you can be as sharp as metal, that is Tao.
When you can be as abundant as the earth, that is Tao.

If you are on the road of Tao and you need healing, seek out the means to acquire it. Whether that means going to a doctor or learning how to maintain your own health, it is a vital part of following Tao. And if you have achieved balance and meet someone you can help, never turn away. Skill is to used not just for yourself, but for the good of those you meet. That, too, is balance and harmony.

What do you do when life is difficult? You could call for help, but that is not always reliable. Sooner or later, life will catch you with no one around.

You might be without food or shelter during a time of natural disaster. You might be alone at a time when help cannot come quickly enough. You may even suffer the tragedy of having all your friends abandon you. That is why those who follow Tao emphasize the importance of having many abilities. If you have the self-reliance that comes with having many skills, you will not lose your equanimity. This cannot be emphasized enough. You cannot truly walk the whole path of Tao until you can cope with the unknown.

People say that those who follow Tao are serene, but that serenity is not because of some meditative trancelike state. It comes from the confidence of one who has ability.

Without controlling how we eat, we cannot control our existence…those who follow Tao have a personal relationship with how they eat and with what they eat. Only then do they have a chance of controlling their destiny.

Secret, private, divine. The left side (of the ideogram Mi–Secret) is the sign for spiritual influence. The right side shows a weapon hidden beneath the two halves of a robe.

What is most precious is always kept secret.

When you do something, don’t hold back. Shoot it all, go for it all. Don’t wait for a “better time,” because the better times are built on what you do today. Don’t be selfish with your skills, because the skills of tomorrow are built upon the performances of today…

When you act, act completely. Follow through. Do everything that has to be done. Be like the fire that burns completely clean: only from that pure stage can you then take the next step.

To live is to work. When we work we learn…It is important to do the type of work that leads not simply to production, but to skill. In other words, the most important type of work is the kind that results from one’s life, not from societal or economic pressures. When we work as part of life it leaves a profound residue in our personality. It produces an attitude of accomplishment, an accumulation of working wisdom impossible to obtain any other way.

The ancients recognized this phenomenon so clearly that work came to signify skill. The kind of work one does—-farm work, art work, spiritual work, or any other work—is not so important. What is important is that one performs one’s work at its most profound level. In olden times, people would say that a craftsperson who had achieved great skill had realized the Tao of that art form.

And once one has realized the Tao in part, the whole is not far away.

It is more trouble to go for what is lasting. People want immediate results and often do not consider the future… The cheap and fast solution becomes useless after a few years and you then have to start over again. Perhaps, over the course of a lifetime of replacement, you even spend more time, effort, and money than if you had acquired or made a lasting item to begin with.

And what of the time spent? Let’s say you need a chest. It is far better to buy one or have a craftsman make you a good one—and then never have to waste time on the issue again—than it is to live out of a series of bags, cardboard boxes, or flimsy wooden ones.

And what of what you do in life? It is far better to do a quality job each and every time in whatever you do. Whether you are repairing a broken door or paying attention to your meditation, do the very best job you can. Then your problems will be fewer.

That which is made by hand improves both the maker and the user.
In the recent past, everything was made by hand.
The objects that were made did not have the precision and regularity of machine-made things. In turn, however, the objects had spirit.

Those who fritter away their energies are ineffective. Those who concentrate surpass others. If you can count the time you’ve wasted in a day, then you know how much room you have for improvement.

The remedy for this is very simple to state but highly difficult to accomplish: finish what you begin. That takes incredible concentration. Once you try this a few times, you will understand. First you will become more realistic about what you can take on. Second, you will marshal all your skill and the greatest perseverance to go the distance. Third, you will be able to complete your task. Fourth, you can only progress by building on the distance you have come.

Finish what you start. That is the great rule when it comes to action. But when it comes to personal development, you are never finished. The great are supreme only because they understand this.

Life is a daily process of compromise, murky meanings, and ambiguity. What is correct one day can be wrong the next. What seems good can all too easily become bad.

And in the examination of character, be as constant as the pine is green—-always.

It is said that there are three levels of friendship. The first is the level of casual acquaintance. The second is where there is sharing. The third, considered most deep, is the level where we trust friends to criticize us.

Ulterior motives at any one of these levels ruin people quickly, and we cannot call such relationships true friendship. When we are with a true friend, we will know, because we can be open and trusting. Such openness is friendship.

When it comes to suffering injustice, there are two types of people. The first says, “I can’t wait to turn around and do this to someone else.” The second says, “This was done to me, and I do not want to do it to someone else.”

When it comes to spiritual accomplishments, there are two types of people. The first says, “I will press on for myself because my knowledge was won so dearly.” The second says, “I will help others, because I know how difficult it is to walk a spiritual path.”

When it comes to facing death, there are two types of people. The first says, “My life is at an end, and I am bitter.” The second says, “In sharing I become more than myself and cannot die.”

In the face of the world’s myriad opportunities, we try to discern what is advantageous to us and avoid the detrimental. We do not move in the world without discrimination, but try to use our own experiences—and not the unreliable opinions of others—to make choices. Thus, although the world is vast, we travel through it in increasingly wise ways.

Even though we acknowledge that our desires are great, we try to pare them down to their most essential. The way to do his is never suppression, but a constant and steady give-and-take between our energies and our opportunities. From the palette of desires with which we were born, those who are wise choose the wholesome. We also recognize that we may have unwholesome tendencies, and rather than feel guilty about them, we seek to discharge them harmlessly. We understand that the more twisted our upbringing and experiences, the more perverse our desires become, so we try to heal the scars of our younger years and keep our lives harmonious.

In trying to follow Tao, there will invariably be conflict between the ideals we pursue and the realities of our lives. Unless we accept this situation, and even learn to work with it, we cannot have the harmony of Tao.

While it’s true that you must pursue truth with no thought of gain, you must, sadly enough, also pursue truth with little thought of support.

We may have lofty ideals, but they are easily thwarted in this turbulent world. The ancients often said, “The more you try to live a good life, the more you will suffer.” It’s true. We must be receptive, even to misfortune: the depths of our character are only revealed upon trial.

..it is a fact that there is no special deal to be gotten by being generous. We should simply be kind because that is the right thing to do. We won’t get a direct reward in exchange for our kindness, and yet nothing else can so awaken us to the spiritual within.

The deepest kindness comes not from simply thinking of others, but in feeling what they feel.

Those who are truly kind are so not because of theory or ethics, but because they feel the suffering of others as directly as they would their own.

That ability to feel human need can develop your sensitivity to feel Tao.

When we understand the importance of moderation, then we will automatically operate from the center.
In all matters, the ancients counseled moderation. For them, the primary sin was excess, for excess destroyed all sense of what was human and plunged a person far from a true way in life.

If all of life can be thought of as a continuous walk along a real path, the worst thing in life is to lose one’s balance on that path. That is why the ancients continually underscored the need for moderation with the word “zhong.”

It is a clearly drawn word—a target with an arrow piercing its center. For the arrow to hit the target, it must fly true. If the archer inclines to the left or right, even by a mere fraction of a hair’s breadth, the arrow will not fly a true path. And once an arrow has hit its target, it has attained the only correct spot—any other place shows imbalance.

So whenever we are confronted with the impossible in life, we need only think back to what the ancients would counsel: be moderate. If we keep that as our aim, then there will be few mistakes in life.

Opposites are really pairs. We cannot have one side without the other.
The ancients believed that all things are divided into opposites, and that it is the interrelationships of these opposites that cause all phenomena in the world.

We have a male side and a female side. We have a left and a right. There is up and down. Without opposites, we literally would not exist.

The trouble comes when we are unable to view things with moderation. We all want to be rich, but we don’t want to be poor. We all want happiness, but we shun disappointment.

That is why the word “dui” is so important. It reminds us that opposites are not mutually exclusive but are actually pairs. If we have sadness, then happiness will come too. If we have love, we will also have to deal with conflict. For all our learning, we will have days where our philosophical outlook will be tried to its breaking point. For all the peace of meditation, we will still have to face work, illness, and stress. There is no path in life that only stands on one side of a pair and never ventures into the other.

The sooner we accept—and work with that—the better off we will be. That is why the way of Tao is the middle way. We cannot have one side without the other in life: it is wisdom to strike a balance between them both.

Know when enough is enough. Some die from hunger, but many die from overeating.
So to be happy, we have to control our desires. The ancients taught two ways to do this. Sometimes they used discipline to curb desire. Sometimes they satisfied their desires. This is the genius of Tao: moderation. We do not need to cling to the extremism of the ascetic. We do not need to lose ourselves in the indulgence of the hedonist. We follow Tao, the middle path.

Hunger comes when food is scarce.
The follower of Tao stays hungry.

Those who follow Tao know hunger and scarcity.
Thus, when times are difficult, they know how to survive. When times are rich, they remember to be cautious.
Those who follow Tao make great achievements, if they are so inclined to come out and act in the world.

Nevertheless, they always stay hungry, so that they are never complacent. They are always out trying to do better. Like an immigrant eager to make a new life, or a boxer trying to win a title, or a tiger searching the jungle for is prey, those who follow Tao know that hunger is a great motivator.

In eating, be moderate. Leave a little room in your stomach. Try to stay lean, not for the sake of fashion, but for the sake of health and motivation.

The mind grows sluggish on too much rich food and fine wine.

However, neither should one become a “hungry ghost,” forever searching the world for something to eat. That is too much the other extreme. Like everything else in life, those who follow Tao use moderation, and they use everything they can–even hunger—to further their travel through Tao.

Having enough to eat: that is joy. Knowing when one is full: that is wisdom.

Eat what is proper. Eat what is right. Although there are elaborate schools of cooking, avoid excess. Although there are fanatic beliefs about diet, fasting, and ritual, avoid obsession. Eat what is natural. Eat enough, but don’t eat too much. The simple application of that dictum is difficult enough.

Feeling and emotion are the colors emerging from the heart.

Not to have feeling is inhuman.
To be carried away be feeling is foolish.
Not to have desire is death.
To be a slave to desire is to be lost.

If feelings are the color of the heart, then let us paint with the brevity and lightness of watercolor.

Just as wind shakes the leaves of the bamboo, so too do we laugh in reaction to the world.

The ancients understood the ephemeral and advised their students not to take life too seriously. Life changes too quickly for us to dwell overly long on any single aspect. Things may go one way for a while, only o change quickly and unpredictably….it is far better to accept and work with its ephemeral quality.

Then, no matter how difficult things are, we can laugh.

As nothing is permanent, there is nothing to take seriously. As there is nothing to take seriously, we should laugh at the world. As we laugh at the world, we should realize that understanding the changeable nature of life is the swiftest way to joy.

Many accomplishments are made by people who study carefully and put in a lot of hardwork, but those who follow Tao would rather celebrate the accomplishments of those who got their best ideas while tinkering, or taking a bath, or eating breakfast, or taking a walk, or sipping tea, or just doing nothing.

A smart person takes play seriously, for in the act of playing is the possibility of going beyond established borders. And Tao, while it is everywhere, is most likely to be found outside of borders. If you want to be with the Tao, it is better to put aside all that is “important” and “significant” and just play. Be natural. You’ll arrive at Tao a lot sooner than if you make a “special effort.”

Build your life brick upon brick.
Live a life of truth,
And you will look back on a life of truth.
Live a life of (delusion),*
And you will look back on delusion.

*Deng used the word “fantasy” in this line and “delusion” in the next line. I feel that “fantasy” was an unfortunate word choice, as fantasy can be life affirming or not depending on the fantasy. A second delusion makes the meaning stronger and clearer, also more symmetrical with the double use of “truth” in the two preceding lines. —JZ

The good of today is based upon the good of yesterday. That is why we should constantly be attentive to our actions.

Take frugal people as an example. They recycle the scraps from their cooking into compost piles. They eat at home rather than in restaurants. They do not waste water. They shop carefully. They do not spend their money on frivolities. This is exactly the type of care that we need for spirituality.

We should not fritter our efforts away on amusements; rather, we should concentrate on endeavors most important to us. We should not randomly gather information; rather, we should try to order it into a comprehensive whole, thereby compounding our abilities to our own advantage…

Whether our lives are magnificent or wretched depends upon our ordering daily details. We must organize the details into a composition that pleases us. Only then will we have meaning in our lives.

Don’t call me a follower of Tao.

Following Tao is an intensely personal endeavor in which you spend each minute of your life with the universal pulse. You follow the fluid and infinitely shifting Tao and experience its myriad wonders. You will want nothing more than to be empty before it—–a perfect mirror, open to every nuance.

If you put labels on who you are, there is separation from Tao. As soon as you accept the designations of race, gender, name, or fellowship, you define yourself in contrast to Tao.

That is why those who follow Tao never identify themselves with the name Tao. They do not care for label, for status, or for rank. We all have an equal chance to be with Tao.

Reject labels.
Reject identities.
Reject conformity.
Reject convention.
Reject definitions.
Reject names.

Those who follow Tao strive for perfection, but they are wary about being called prophets. That is a limited role. Being a prophet represents a great trap baited with the temptation of self-importance. The ultimate aim of following Tao is to transcend identity. Those who call themselves prophets or even masters maximize their identities…

Having someone call you by a title is an interference that you don’t need. When you are seeing the greatest wonder of your life, the last thing you want is to have someone blocking the light.

Mind in the center
Radiates to eight legs,
Creating a supreme web
To sift Tao.

A spider is a perfect creature of Tao. Its body is an elegant expression of its mind: It spins beautiful threads, and its legs are exactly suited to create and walk its web. From its center, a spider radiates its world out with a spare economy.

A spider’s posture in regard to Tao is to set up a pattern. Its mind determines this pattern. It realizes the flow of Tao and does nothing to interfere with it. It simply creates is pattern and waits for Tao to bring it sustenance. That which comes to it, it accepts. That which does not come to it is not its concern.

Once its web is established, a spider does not think of expanding unnaturally. It does not make war upon its neighbors, it does not go for adventures in other countries, it does not try to enslave others, it does not try to be intellectual. It is simply who it is and is content with that.

I am not this fragile body.
We are not our bodies…

This fragile body
Is matrix
For mind and soul.

We cannot afford to neglect our bodies, even if we recognize that we must not identify with them exclusively. Actually, in our search for our true selves, our physical existence is the best place to start. We can alter our lives by how we eat and exercise, and we can expedite our search by keeping ourselves healthy. If we are free of physical blockages and pain, we can identify our inner selves much better.

In the search for the mind and the soul, it is wise to understand that the body is not the true self, but it is also wise to maintain the body. There should be neither denial nor mortification of the flesh, but it takes a wise person to both maintain the body and look beyond it.

Sex, coffee, liquor, and cigarettes
Are the totems of today.
Stimulation has replaced feeling.

In today’s world, these are the unfortunate equations:

Do you want intimacy? Have sex.
Do you want to be energetic? Drink coffee.
Do you want freedom from inhibitions? Drink wine.
Do you want a fashionable prop? Smoke cigarettes.
Why is it that these things have replaced what should naturally be done?

Because people have lost the knowledge of how to do these things without artificial stimulation. Why not seek intimacy through sensitivity? Energy through good health? If we overcome our obstacles, we won’t need inhibition.

Pretension will fall away. Only then will there be a blossoming of Tao.

Loneliness need not be despair.
It could be an opportunity.

Some people claim that self-sufficiency is a myth. A person is a social animal, they declare; people cannot successfully live outside of some community. But that is not the correct way to understand true self-sufficiency. What we are referring to is a supreme sense of connection with oneself and the cosmos around oneself. This doesn’t preclude community with others, but it does prevent the excesses and shortcomings that occur when society is one’s only source of union.

Tao surrounds us. One who is with Tao is never lonely but is an integral part of the natural cycle. In the same way that water surrounds a fish Tao surrounds us. If we feel lonely, then it is only because we are forgetting how we are totally immersed in Tao. That is why loneliness can be an opportunity:

It reminds us that we are dwelling on our own egoistic identity rather than on the support of the Tao.

In the minds of those who follow Tao, duality in life is not clearly demarcated. There is a fuzziness at the line. Day does not have a sharp border with night. So it is with the alternations of the seasons. It is not a simple, smooth continuum from summer into autumn. There is complexity and counterpoint.

If nature is full of subtlety and even false appearances, how wise must we be in order to follow life’s rhythms unerringly?

Everyone has their own style in life. The old have perspective. The young have vigor. We can learn from each other, but we cannot have what the other generations possess. We are each shaped by our generations, and to transcend the limitations of our time is a rare occurrence indeed.

…The secrets of life are already written repeatedly in all the holy books.

They are only secrets because we do not take the time to truly read.
Can you see jewels in the mud?

Today we have a very incomplete relationship to our food. We don’t see where something grows, we eat foods out of season, we buy prepared foods made by someone we don’t even know. There is great power in knowing your food, knowing where it came from, preparing it with your own hands. This food, whether vegetable or animal, died for us. The least we can do is partake of it thoroughly and with respect.

You could tell the secret of life ten times over, and it would still be safe. After all, the secret is only known when people make it real in their own lives, not when they simply hear it.

Every morning means a fresh start on things. If yesterday was trying and exhausting, today is a given opportunity to do something different. If yesterday was full of triumph and satisfaction, today is a free chance to go further. All too often we wake up, think of our schedules, and assume that we must act according to the same dull script. We need not. If we find what is unique to each day, we will have freshness and the greatest fulfillment possible.

Although we have talked about our relationship to Tao in terms of positioning and timing, the clear discerning of intervals is just as important. Geese keep a perfect distance between them to establish a dynamic equilibrium; so too must we fit in with the intervals of a day’s events. If we, like the geese, act in unison with these moments, with each other, and with the season, then we will be in total concert with Tao.

Today is poised between yesterday and tomorrow. What you may have started yesterday can be continued or interrupted today. Every morning is a new day. That observation is so simple as to seem trite. If we could observe the simple, there would be no need to study Tao.

Cat sits in the sun.
Dog sits in the grass.
Turtle sits on the rock.
Frog sits on the lily pad.
Why aren’t people so smart?

Those who follow Tao are fond of pointing out the wisdom of animals. When they see a cat sitting motionless in the sun or a turtle who stretches her head upward in a still pose, they say that these animals are meditating. They know how to be still and conserve their internal energy. They do not dissipate themselves in useless activity but instead withdraw into themselves to recharge…

There is no reason to think of meditation as something out of the ordinary. Quite the opposite. Meditation is the purest and most natural expression we can have. When you next look at a cat or a dog sitting still, and admire the naturalness of their actions, think then of your own life. Don’t meditate because it is a part of your schedule or is demanded by your particular philosophy. Meditate because it is natural.

Don’t be afraid to explore;
Without exploration there are no discoveries.
Don’t be afraid of partial solutions;
Without the tentative there is no accomplishment.

Indecision and procrastination are corrosive habits. Those who wait for every little thing to be perfect before they embark on a project or who dislike the compromise of a partial solution are among the least happy. Ideal circumstances are seldom given to anyone for an undertaking. Instead there is uncertainty in every situation. The wise are those who can wrest great advantage from circumstances opaque to everyone else.

Wanting everything in life to be perfect before you take action is like wanting to reach a destination without travel. For those who follow Tao, travel is every bit as important as the destination. One step after another. That is still central to the wisdom of Tao.

Every day passes whether you participate or not. If you are not careful, years will go by and you will only have regrets. If you cannot solve a problem all at once, at least make a stab at it. Reduce your problems into smaller, more manageable packages, and you can make measurable progress toward achievement. If you wait for everything to be perfect according to your preconceived plans, then you may well wait forever. If you go out and work with the current of life, you may find that success comes from building upon small things.

You may be capable of great things,
But life consists of small things.

Big things seldom come along. One should know the small as well as the big. We may all yearn to make lasting achievements and to be heroes, but life seldom affords us the opportunities to do so. Most of our days consist of small things—the uneventful meditations, the ordinary cooking of meals, the banal trips to wok, the quiet scratching in the garden—and it is from these small things that the larger events of life are composed.

We rarely have the occasion to make grand gestures. The champion gymnast’s greatest moment is but an hour out of an entire lifetime….If we want to be successful, it is to the small things that we should pay attention.

We must not fall into the trap of waiting for life to be perfect. They complain that fate is against them, and the world does not recognize their greatness. If they would lower their sights, they would see all the beautiful opportunities swirling at their feet. If they would humble themselves enough to bend down, they could scoop untold treasures up into their hands.

One willing to take his own life into his hands
Will not hesitate to take the lives of others…

Beware the brave man. He may be a hero, willing to risk his very life, but he will also be willing to endanger the lives of others. After all, he is a risk taker and therefore does not see much wisdom in conservation, compassion, and carefulness. Such a person will threaten others, force his will upon others, and even murder others not out of passion but out of something much more deadly—rationale. He will justify his actions according to ideology, patriotism, religion, and principle.

When attacked, a brave man goes forth with strength, power, and confidence. In that boisterousness, there is little awareness of the subtle. Life is not simple, and it takes a great deal of time to master. Perhaps that is why the brave are youthful while the wise are old.

If I don’t want to be known, I cannot be known.
The best actor can divide role from self…

People think that they know you. Soon you begin to play the role that they place on you. Why should you act a certain way to please others? You should do things from you inner awareness and from your own feelings. If they do not accord with the herd, then so much the better.

You should change when it pleases you. Your life is flexible. If you let other people shape you, then you will never know independence.

The sages say that all life is illusory, and they usually lament this. The way of Tao is to use this fact and not let it oppress you. If you want to dodge others, then step behind one of the myriad illusions in this world. If you do not volunteer anything and you neither confirm or deny, the opinions of others can never stick to you. Then you will be left in peace.

True sages never go by appearances. When it comes to introspection, they are not deceived by the appearances their own minds spew out. They know that if they want to get at the truth, then they must pierce to the very core.

So if you would hide from others, avail yourself of the false appearances of life. If you would know yourself, distinguish between the false appearances of life. Above all, do not be put off by the illusory nature of life. Use it.
Everything in this life can be an advantage to the wise.

Though life is a dream,
Act as if it isn’t.
Act with no weight.

You may understand that life is but a dream, but that doesn’t free you from the responsibility to act. This dream may not be of your own making, but you must still engage it and operate within the parameters of the fantasy. You must become the producer, director, and actor of a phantasmic stage play. Otherwise, you are aimlessly adrift.

Meditating is to wake up. Few of us have acquired the skill to be in constant meditation. Therefore, we awake and dream, awake and dream. The moments of enlightenment are like the times when swimmers come up for air. They gain a breath of life, but they must submerge once again. We are all swimmers on the sea of sorrow, bobbing up and down until our final liberation.

The initial difficulty of spirituality is a schizophrenia between true understanding and the sorrow of everyday life. Our enlightenment clashes with the outer impurities. That is why some novitiates withdraw into isolation. Once people gain true spiritual insight, they dispense with this split. They can live in this world and yet not be stained by it. They are the strongest and most serene swimmers of all. They act, and yet they barely disturb the water. Their actions are outwardly no different from ordinary actions, but they leave no wake.

Tao may be known as directly as water is knowable to a fish. My Tao will not be the same as your Tao. We are both individuals, with different background and thoughts. As soon as Tao enters into us, it takes on the colors of our inner personalities. When it passes out of us, it takes on the colors of our inner personalities. This is an ongoing and constant process, like water lowing through a fish’s gills. Just as the water nurtures the fish, so too does Tao nurture and sustain us. As long as we continue our immersion in Tao, we will be as safe as a carp in water. When we separate from Tao, we are as helpless as a fish out of water.

Be self-sufficient but not isolated.
When the king of China closed the borders,
Centuries of stagnation and decadence began.

All the philosophy of Tao is intended to lead to self-sufficiency. Whatever one needs to do in life, one should be able to do on one’s on. Whether one is trapped in the wilderness or whether one is dealing with a social gathering requiring etiquette and grace, one should be able to cope with aplomb and ease.

Being self-sufficient is not the same as being isolated…problems can arise in people who are so self-sufficient that they fail to engage life fully. Either they will implode from the sheer weight of their own decadence and stagnation, or they will explode once the outside world confronts them with something they cannot comprehend.

Those who follow Tao roam the world. They may not avail themselves of the temporary advantages of withdrawal and intense self-cultivation, but they do not become permanently isolated. They flow with the Tao, are with all things, and
therefore avoid decadence.

How do you know when your own life verges on decadence?

Certainly when the force of form becomes more important than the force of substance. When etiquette and morals become more important than understanding and righteousness. When procedure becomes more important than creativity. When gratifying your lust becomes more important than giving to others. When patriotism becomes more important than measured governing and enlightened treatment of other nations. When the act of eating becomes more important than considerations of nutrition…When one’s own comfort becomes more important than the suffering of loved ones. When ambition becomes more important than benevolence. When prestige becomes more important than charity. When the academy becomes more important than the streets. When loud expression becomes more important than listening to others. When outrageousness becomes more important than communication. When connoisseurship becomes more important than simple acts. When style becomes more important than function. When books become more important than teachers. When expedience becomes more important than the elderly.

When you smell these things happening, you are not far from decadence.

Lightning rod at the pinnacle
Attracts power by its mere presence.
In the same way, we must work
For substance and height.

If we want communion with heavenly powers, we need only attain the proper spiritual height. Then heaven will come to meet us as surely as lightning is attracted to a lightning rod. The effort is only in the becoming, in the purification of our characters, in the reaching upward. Once the situation is correct, union is inevitable…

Of course, no one is required to make an effort in life. We can all go the easy way. But then we are still lightning rods. Only the forces we attract arenot the powers of heaven, but the powers of demons, misfortune, and predators…The fact is, no matter what kind of person you are, you will attract something to yourself. One of the major ways to control what comes to you is to refine your substance.

The irony of spiritual living is that you become more sensitive and subtle. Therefore, you become intolerant of the coarse. There is not much choice in this. If you want to catch the subtle things in life, then you must become refined yourself. But the coarser things will then accumulate all the more quickly. A coarse sieve in a rushing stream will hold back only debris and large rocks. A fine mesh will catch smaller things, but it will also retain the large…

The solution lies in floating on the current of Tao, uniting with it. That way we no longer seek to hold or to reject.

Poverty of any kind need not be a deterrent if you know how to utilize the wealth you possess. You must embrace your fate, work with it, and take advantage of it.

Ultimately, we cannot truly grasp anything permanently in life. We re born naked, we die naked, and in point of fact we live naked. What we take to us—our clothes, our wealth, our relationships—are all external to us. They are easily taken away from us by bruising fate.

Perhaps even the poorest of situations is rich, because all the futility of life leads us to embrace Tao…

The wrestler was once more solid than a bull.
He loved to flex enormous, oiled forearms
Before he delightedly vanquished foes.
But now, brittle skin is taut over bone,
And his wheeze is a ghost of his manly bellow.

At any point in life, it is prudent to contemplate the nature of prowess. If you have it, glory in it, and use it wisely and compassionately. But you should not think that it is you yourself who are doing these things. You are borrowing this strength. It isn’t yours. It is a gift, something here for you for as long as you are lucky to have it. …When you have been humbled, what is gone? You are still here, here to feel the pain of not being able to do what you were once able to do—unless you learn how to exercise your prowess without identifying with it.

Those who fail to learn this become bitter old people. They curse life. They lose faith. That is because they placed all their self-worth in their abilities and not in who they were…

Young people often have a mania for more and more information. But mere accumulation is not enough. The more you take in, the more that data needs to be managed. Without that, you have encyclopedic knowledge and miniscule wisdom.
True wisdom is a qualitative value built on a quantitative foundation…

One might say that wisdom is not simply a mental process but the sum total of a human being.

Watching a performance of warriors, I was told, “This fighter’s tradition is six hundred years old.”

And I saw a performance so mired in ritual—-
As if nothing valid had happened in six hundred years.
We must honor the classical without being irrelevant.

What makes a tradition alive? The adherents must be fully capable of manifesting the greatness of their tradition in contemporary settings. If someone says that they are expert in traditional medicine, then they must be able to heal others today…

We should not ape the habits and theories of a long dead people and time in the name of tradition. We must be ruthless in this respect. Unless the force of tradition allows us to manifest a unique greatness, there is no reason to keep it.

The drunk falls from the cart but is not hurt.
You throw hesitation aside but look stupid.
To be truly uninhibited is a rare grace.

Ancient societies were tribal;
The current group did the thinking.
Current society is splintered;
The individual must be complex.

…It is good to strive for purity, but if you conceive of purity as a fight against the filth and dust of the world, you doom yourself to obsession and futility. The only way to achieve actual purity is to realize your essential oneness with all things. If you are one with everything, then even filth is pure. For this to happen, you must transcend all distinctions in yourself, resolve all contradictions. With this erasure, the mirror-bright soul and the dust are all dissolved in a single purity.

…We cannot allow ourselves to be hobbled by the woes and alienation of our race or nation. It is our responsibility to overcome these, even if we can only succeed in our hearts.

By following Tao, we join a larger spiritual order. There is a great comfort in being part of something that is not tied to place or state. Indeed, since Tao is not wholly relegated to the material level, it can never be taken away from us. Even if we are exiled from our homes and thrown into the most miserable prison, Tao is there for us. Once we enter it, we need never be frightened by the threat of alienation again.

© 2006,  2008 Jonathan Zap

Edited by Austin Iredale

“Mechanical resistance” is one of the great defining aspects of the matrix in which we are presently incarnated.  It is a force in our lives as powerful as gravity or mortality, and it overlaps and influences almost any area or parameter of our incarnation we can possibly think of—corporeality, illness, aging, money, sexuality, time, objects, consumerism, computers, technology, art, travel, etc.  I’m trying right now to think of an area of my life that does not involve mechanical resistance, and I can’t think of a single one.  If instead I try to think of areas of my life where there is mechanical resistance and where I wish there was less, the list that populates itself in my mind is so numerous and detailed that it starts scrolling off the mental desktop.

The list is not quite infinite in a technical sense, but might as well be. It would be akin to typing “sex” into google and trying to scroll through every result.  I just did that and got 413,000,000 results. And if I scrolled through all of them, I would probably find a little button on the bottom of the final screen that reads, “Show the next 413,000,000 results.” Similarly, when I do an intra psychic search, a wet drive search, on “mechanical resistance,” and click on the “search my entire life history” and “search all areas of my personality” options, I get a scrolling list of just over eleven trillion files, and I know that this is just the first page of results.  Or at least these are approximately the search results I would get if I had a brain/computer interface chip implanted in my cortex, which, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet occurred.

I decided to create a bit of mechanical resistance for you, the reader, by not defining mechanical resistance in the introductory paragraph. Mechanical resistance is as easy to recognize as a stubbed toe, but it is also as hard to define as life itself, because there are trillions of subspecies of mechanical resistance.  For example, your computer loses its ability to play MP3s, a subspecies of mechanical resistance, so you go to the help screen to look for a number for tech support, but they hide those live contact phone numbers near the bottom of an obscure menu you can’t find, because they want to discourage you from using phone tech support. This is just one of the numberless subspecies of mechanical resistance—intentional obfuscation in voice jails or websites to keep you from interacting with a live person.  Since you can’t find the tech support number, you instead go to where they want you to go: the friendly link to an “Online Troubleshooter.”  You click on the link but get a “Cannot display this page” warning.  Something has caused your internet connection to go down. You check for loose connections, do the Windows internet connection troubleshooter, neither of which work, so you restart your computer, which solves the connection problem that happened for reasons you don’t understand, and never will understand, but that will almost certainly cause more connection problems in the future. This is the denial of internet service subspecies of mechanical resistance.  Now your connection is back up and you type, “MP3s won’t play,” into the search window of the online troubleshooter.  “Zero results found” is the infuriating result. Another subspecies of mechanical resistance—the outrageous and nonsensical failed search return.  You know that you are not the first person in the universe to have a computer that failed to play MP3s, so you type in variations like, “No audio MP3, MP3 failure, MP3 trouble, MP3 player problems.”  Zero results for any of these, so then you just type in “MP3,” and now a whole set of results comes up, and right near the top of the list is “MP3s won’t play.”  So now you click on that, and a beautiful window pops up, it says “MP3 Won’t Play Problem Solving Wizard.”  This is more than you even dared to hope for, some sort of digital avatar designed exactly for the sort of problem you are having.

Your hunched-over posture of defeat shifts, and you sit up straighter and stretch, your body relaxing from the frustration of dealing with several subspecies from the vast phylum of computer-based mechanical resistance, a major branch of the mechanical resistance tree of life.  But when you stretch you inadvertently knock your cell phone off the table and engage another vast phylum of the mechanical resistance tree of life—the unintended gravitational effects pertaining to small and valuable objects phylum.  Now you have to undo all the effects of stretching because you have to bend down and reach under the table to the cell phone, which you can’t quite reach with your fingers.  You use your right leg and foot to reach toward the cell and sort of rake it over to your hand, which is then able to grasp it by stretching to your furthest limits and wrenching your neck and back in the process.  You succeed in grasping the cell and bringing it back to the table, what an astronaut doing an EVA would call a “positive capture.”  But the weight of the cell phone doesn’t feel right, there is a weird hollowness and you investigate, turning it over, and discover that both the plastic cover that holds the battery in and the all-important battery itself were ejected by the fall, rendering the all-important cell phone as dead as a person would be if they had suffered a fall that resulted in the ejection of one or more major organs.  You can’t even see those missing organs, so the hand grasping with foot raking assist capture protocol is absolutely not going to create a positive capture.  Meanwhile, the all-important cell phone is flat lined, your most important link to the outside world has gone dead and will remain so until its major organs are restored.  This calls for drastic action, and drastic action always means deeper descent into mechanical resistance.

You are forced to leave your swivel chair, and with it all illusion that problems can be solved instrument-cockpit style, with you comfortably seated while troubleshooting problems with mouse and keyboard and so forth.  Like a groveling animal, or crawling infant, you search the hideous tangle of wires beneath your desk to find the cell’s missing organs and . . . success: positive capture. You find both the battery and the battery gate, and are ready to return to the cockpit, but as you transition from all fours back to the flight deck your knee inadvertently hits that glowing red rocker switch on the all-important surge protector, which is the crucial link, the absolute link, between your computer and the power grid.  You turn the switch back on, but of course your computer has crashed because of the momentary interruption of power.

You are back on the flight deck now staring at a blank screen, your back and neck feeling tight, and the slow dull ache of neck pain due to herniated discs in your neck—C5 and C6—is creeping up, and you sense the morning slipping away, like so much of your life, into the gaping, thorny pit of mechanical resistance.  You press the power button on your computer so it can reboot.  Next in the hierarchy of necessary actions, you put the battery and plastic battery cover back on your cell phone, restoring its viability as an electronic organism.  There is a tiny feeling of satisfaction when the plastic battery gate clicks shut, but you are so seduced by that momentary victory, while still feeling oppressed by the thought that the morning is slipping away, that you fail to recall a key cell phone restart protocol.  When power is interrupted to your cell phone and the power is then restored, the device comes back on, the screen lights up, but the phone function is actually off and needs to be turned back on.  But this crucial restart cell protocol falls between the cracks of your attention, because when you snapped that battery gate back into place and you heard that positive clicking sound, you had a tiny moment of vanity, false pride, confidence that you were getting back on track.  Instead of being in the moment, you were already thinking ahead to when the computer would finish booting up, at which point you could open a browser, at which point you could go back to online troubleshooting, at which point you could search for “MP3,” at which point you could find the link to restore the “MP3 Won’t Play Problem Solving Wizard.”  Following this future timeline in your mind’s eye, you are now blissfully ignorant of the fact that your cell is still, from an operational point of view—at least as related to its telephonic functionality—a corpse.  It looks perfectly intact sitting there beside you on the desk, but in actuality it is effectively decapitated, the all-important link to the outside world is dead and you don’t know it, and this means that you will miss a number of crucial phone calls this morning, and the loss of these all-important phone calls will create mechanically resistant suffering and problems that will continue to affect your life in the days and weeks to come.  Later you will realize that although the dead phone looked perfectly intact, you should have noticed that the light flashing every three seconds on the phone to indicate that it is in service was not flashing.  This failure, the grievous human error of not noticing that flashing light, is the close analog of rescuing someone from a serious fall, restoring any ejected organs they may have lost, feeling even a sense of personal triumph in this rescue and organ restoration, and then failing to notice that the rescued person was not breathing, a crucial detail that if omitted defeats the whole point of the rescue.

But you don’t notice that your fallen companion has not drawn breath since the fall. In a state of glib ignorance, you assume that your cell is alive and linking you to the outside world, you assume that it is a living and active transceiver, a functioning telephonic interface, while in actuality it is a plastic corpse lying inert by your side.  You don’t notice its inert status; don’t notice that you are making dangerous and naïve assumptions, because you are in a state of blissful ignorance due to the fact that finally, triumphantly, you have restored your connection to the MP3 Won’t Play Problem Solving Wizard.  This Wizard generates an all-American aura of can-do problem-solving confidence.  It stands amidst the wreckage and multiple frustrations of your morning like an astronaut with that right-stuff glint in the eyes, ready to take charge of your Apollo 13-like computer and keep working the problems until they are solved one by one.  Probably this wizard will link you to other problem solving wizards, which will fix all the troubled areas of your life, step by step.

Your relationship to the MP3 Won’t Play Problem Solving Wizard involves neediness, high expectations, and idealization.  This sets you up for painful shock and disillusion when you click next and the MP3 Won’t Play Problem Solving Wizard states, “First check and see if your USBN Driver Ports Access Processor is enabled, then click next.”  This is not all what you expected or wanted.  For one thing, you don’t have the slightest idea what a “USBN Driver Ports Access Processor” is. More importantly, you don’t have a clue where it is and how to check if it is enabled, and the Wizard doesn’t tell you, it just assumes, it makes an ass out of “u” and “me” by assuming you are as familiar with the USBN Driver Ports Access Processor as you are with the front door of your house.  You could ignore this step and click next, but in so doing you would completely invalidate your entire relationship to the Wizard, because it told you very specifically to check on the enablement status of your USBN Driver Ports Access Processor “first,” meaning that this check must precede any other steps leading toward solving your entire MP3 won’t play problem.

Faith in your relationship to the Wizard has been shattered, and now you realize a critical mistake you made that led to the unraveling of your whole morning.  You realize that when you couldn’t find the hidden tech support phone number you should never have put up with that, should never have let yourself be suckered into the online troubleshooting program.  You should have stood up for yourself, should have found the number and then added it to the contacts file in your cell phone for future reference, should have been talking to the outsourced tech support people in India, should have gotten to the bottom of the MP3 problem with a live human contact. And if you had taken that critical step you would also have discovered that the cell phone service had not been turned back on.  Shoulda, woulda, coulda.  You realize these regrets are taking you nowhere, you need to bite the bullet, you need to go back to the original help page and look for that hidden contact tech support menu. You need to . . .

—OK, I’m going to break in here, because if I were to continue the narrative of mechanical resistance that this hypothetical “you” is facing, I would have to continue right up to the point where you are leaving your body at death, the system restore point, where at least potentially you could reboot into a different matrix, one that was not based on the mechanical resistance operating system.

I went into the narrative above to create some mechanical resistance, to draw you into the world of mechanical resistance in a way that I couldn’t if I gave a concise definition in the intro paragraph and then listed the ten steps to solve mechanical resistance through the power of positive thinking and that whole Dr. Phil approach to the crucifixion of human incarnation.  The concise, glib approach would be a massive disservice to victims of mechanical resistance . . . sorry, a disservice to mechanical resistance survivors everywhere, rising to the special challenges of the Mechanical Resistance Matrix.

To be perfectly honest, I also went into the narrative because I wanted to, still want to, punish mechanical resistance itself.  Before I go into my philosophy of how to deal with mechanical resistance, I want to disrespect and degrade it, pay it back for all its petty humiliations; I want to make it feel powerless and pathologized, want to make it feel like a petty health problem that will one day be obliterated by a tiny little pill. In short, I want to make it into an acronym. I will make it into an acronym.  From this point forward, I will refer to mechanical resistance as “MR.”

I just noticed something about this devastatingly short acronym, MR, which makes it even more appropriate.  It looks just like “Mr,” as in “Mr. Jones.” And since “Mr.” denotes a formal masculine salutation, it strongly connotes the whole patriarchal age, an age of suits and faceless bureaucrats, the perfect degrading connotation for this acronym, and the perfect means of disrespecting MR and the whole corporeal incarnation horse it rode in on.

Now I know what at least some of you are thinking: “This spoiled, over-privileged, yuppie Westerner and his gadget woes, what a whiner. What about Rhaj Patel, the 39-year-old rickshaw driver and father of eight who lives an impoverished life of hardships in Bangladesh, who, although half-starved, has to run through the crowded streets of Bangladesh on his blistered feet dragging his rickshaw, trying to find a customer, trying to make a few rupees to feed his starving family.  That’s real mechanical resistance, computer problems don’t even count; most of the world doesn’t even own a computer.”

OK, fine. Some people have it harder. From a politically correct point of view, what Mr. Patel has to go through is probably ten to fifteen percent more mechanically resistant then what I have to deal with most days.  But from another point of view, the technology-spoiled Westerner is the one much more likely to locate the problem of mechanical resistance and seek encompassing solutions to it.  Only the person who has been fully initiated into the world of high-tech gadgets knows what MR really is.  Only a baby boomer raised on the Jetsons, and the belief that middle-age would bring a world of gleaming control panels in an immaculate smart home filled with helpful robots catering to my every need, and a two space-car garage, only such a person is able to realize just how much this phase of reality and its ubiquitous MR really sucks.  Only those who have owned computerized gadgets that—on the occasions when they actually work—really do create temporary remissions of MR, know just how much suffering there is when all the MR symptomology comes crashing back.  Sure, it says in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes 3:

⁹ What profit remains for the worker from his toil?

¹⁰ I have seen the painful labor and exertion and miserable business which God has given to the sons of men with which to exercise and busy themselves.

¹⁶ Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice there was wickedness, and that in the place of righteousness wickedness was there also

¹⁹ For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even [in the end] one         thing befalls them both. As the one dies, so dies the other. Yes, they all have one breath and spirit, so that a man has no preeminence over a beast; for all is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!

²⁰ All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

²¹ Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goes downward to the earth?

OK, I can understand that: what befalls the beast befalls the man. I just didn’t think that what befalls the man applied to a baby boomer growing up at the dawn of the space age, where technology was supposed to get us light years past what befalls the beast. But now, in middle age, my baby-boomer belief that we would triumph over MR into a techno utopia has crashed. Now I live in a universe where I realize that what befalls the beast befalls the shiny new gadget, and therefore befalls the person who owns the shiny new gadget, and therefore there is absolutely no escape from MR while we live in the MR matrix, the MRM.  Ultimately, we will solve this, probably by some baby-boomer messiah tapping into the source code of the MRM and teaching us to fulfill the promise of the New Age and to truly create our own realities.  Meanwhile we need, I need, a philosophy, a practical philosophy for dealing with MR.

“MR: can’t live with it, can’t live in the MRM without out it.” That’s almost a philosophy, but it is annoyingly existential and fatalistic.  I know I can’t live without it, but I need to know how to live with it without getting overwhelmed by stress.

The first step in creating such a practical philosophy is for me to switch off the over-the-top, gadget-crazed, mutant baby-boomer voice, which is starting to exhaust me, and seems more like MR rather than the rebellion from MR it started as.

Taking a break from my voice, I just did an I Ching reading on how to handle MR. Since the I Ching doesn’t have an ego, and since it probably does not own a computer, it didn’t have to vent and rant for many pages as I just did. Instead, it offered  an appropriate stance toward the problem in calm and concise words.

The main hexagram I got was #62, usually called “Preponderance of the Small.”  I particularly like the general text on this hexagram in Sarah Dening’s The Everyday I Ching , and I very particularly like her name for this hexagram: “Attention to Detail.”  These three words encapsulate a practical,  warrior-like stance for dealing with MR; they are a very helpful reminder to me, because I have never been a good detail person.  This was apparent from early childhood, even from psychological tests.  I was good at high-level pattern recognition, but not good at noticing off details.  I am an introvert, and so much of my attention is going into my inner world that I lose track of details happening in the outer 3-D world.  Small object tracking is a problem, when I transition from one place to another I tend to leave things behind. This relates to what used to be called the “absent minded professor syndrome.” Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, who had one of the richer inner lives of any human being, is an example.  According to his son Michael, whenever he went to the bank they would give him back the gloves, umbrella, or other items he left previously.  One time he put his deposit in his mouth and passed his false teeth across to the teller.

It’s easy for me to be all the way into my inner world, but it is hard for me to be all the way out in the 3-D physical world, unless it is some special circumstance like mountain climbing.  So much of what I have to do in the outer, physical world seems boring and mechanical to me, and meanwhile there is so much interesting content going on inside my psyche.  Lots of people want to do anything to get outside of themselves, to distract or focus themselves on anything but the tape loops and psychic entropy in their heads.  But this has not been the case for me in many years.  Inside my psyche, intuitions are in constant birth, images and thoughts appear, realizations, Socratic dialogues, and much of this content is highly interesting and entertaining.  Meanwhile, so much of what I have to do in the outer physical 3-D world seems boring and mechanical—cleaning, laundry, going here and there doing errands, and so forth.  While I go about these tasks, I am usually not completely focused on them.  I am largely in my inner world, and headphones and radio show interviews, spoken books, etc. on my tiny MP3 player very often supplement that inner world. This audio track is often so entertaining and interesting that I look forward to doing the most completely mechanical tasks, like laundry, so I can focus in on the audio content. Most of the novels I take in are on tape/CD/MP3.  Some tasks, like laundry, are so mechanical that this is perfectly appropriate.  I don’t need to think about folding shirts, my automated kinesthetic memory knows how to do it, and I can be in the world of a novel, for example, and do the job just fine.  But there are other external jobs and activities that involve details that require more than automated attention.  Some of them, like troubleshooting a computer problem, demand all my focus and need great attention to detail.  Also, if your inner world is not so entertaining, if it is oppressing you with psychic entropy and tape loops, then follow the principle coined by the self help movement:  If in doubt, focus out. Shift your focus from inner chaos to acute attention to the details of the outer world.  We can start to enumerate specific and practical principles for dealing with MR:

1. Pay attention to detail .

2. If you neglect, ignore, or unconsciously presume upon details, those details will most likely bite you in the ass.

3. If in doubt, focus out.

The Everyday I Ching begins its general text on #62 with a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”

The general text describes a situation where great undertakings may not be possible, and thereby the small preponderates. Ms. Dening writes:

“Go calmly about your daily routine. Occupy yourself with ordinary, everyday         matters.  Do not consider any task as being beneath you.  You cannot be too thorough in your attention to detail.  Know your limitations.  Do not over-extend yourself or try to take on more than you are truly capable of.”

These are almost deceptively simple sentences because they are loaded with crucial insights expressed in everyday language. “Go calmly about your daily routine.”  Calm, attentive patience is the most effect way to deal with MR. If I’m not calm, if I let frustration get to me and I become frantic, compulsive, or angry in response to MR, then I am likely to force progress—the key won’t turn in the lock, so I force it and it breaks off in the lock, necessitating a repair by a locksmith.  But if I patiently, and with great attention to detail, jiggle the key in the lock, I may find just the right way to open it.  Knowing my limitations is another key for me to improve my stance toward MR. A stereotyped example is that I gauge time based on how long I think it should take me to do various things, not on how long it actually does take, and not allowing for the MR that inevitably makes things take longer than I think they should.

4. Go about your day with calm, humble precision, considering no task beneath you. Be realistic about what you can accomplish and how long it will take.

Many of my Zap Oracle cards make the statement, “Don’t do anything you won’t remember well on your death bed.”  A more practical version of this would be to ask yourself the following question throughout the day: “What’s the best use of my time right now?” Yes, you should prioritize doing the highest value, most meaningful life tasks.  That’s why I get up in the very early morning.  Having just awoken from my dreams, I am in my best state to be creative.   “Peak time” is the time of day when you are most alert and energetic. My strategy for most days is to use the morning, usually my peak time, for my highest value tasks—writing, research, working on the Zap Oracle, counseling people—then after a few hours of that, I tend in the early afternoon to have a bit of an energy slump, and I use that less alert time for more mundane tasks.  I have to be careful not to neglect the high value activities, or the necessary mundane ones.  The computer is a good example, because most of my high value activities, like the writing I am doing right now, require, or are greatly facilitated by, the computer.  Working on computer problems cannot be neglected because it will directly undermine the high value creative tasks. A crucial insight is contained in the sentence, “Do not consider any task beneath you.” I would like to have a personal staff, or at least a couple of artificially intelligent robots that could take care of mundane details for me, but I don’t.  I need to know how to make my computer work, and as frustrating and inane as many computer glitches turn out to be, there is a computer literacy training happening as well; I am learning how to live with a computer at this phase of technology, where computers don’t have enough artificial intelligence to recognize their own problems or listen to a verbal description and set to work fixing themselves.

About a year before he died, I met Joseph Campbell at a Jungian conference on Long Island.  He mentioned that he had just gotten his first personal computer, and as soon as he took it out of the box he knew it was a god, but wasn’t sure which one.  After interacting with it for a while he realized it was Yahweh, the god of the Hebrew Bible, “All rules and no mercy.”  If that’s the nature of the god, then it is true, “You cannot be too thorough in your attention to detail.” Similarly, when you interact with the moving physical world—driving, biking, skiing, whatever—it is important to recognize that you are bound by the merciless rules of macro objects and Newtonian physics.

5. Ask yourself, “What is the best use of my time right now?”

6. Try to preserve peak time to work on the highest value tasks.

7. Many mundane tasks are crucial and require complete focus.

There is a whole other level of meaning to not seeing any part of the work beneath you.  Many people, probably most people, are ambivalent about having a corporeal incarnation.  Some thinking types seem to be a bit disembodied, they seem to be hovering just above their body and reluctantly and inattentively interfacing with it when necessary.  (See The Glorified Body for more about our transforming relationship to body.) This dualism and understandable disidentification with the body increases the suffering of MR and intensifies various forms of MR through neglect.  Some people treat their body as a kind of portable shopping bag.  They throw things in it, and if those things cause MR symptoms, they just throw in more things to compensate.

8. The body deserves great—but maybe not obsessive and all-consuming—attention to detail.  Neglect it, and the MR of corporeality only intensifies.

Ms. Dening continues: “If you fly too high, you will lose control. Keep your feet on the ground and enjoy the simple things of life . . . Do not be too proud or ambitious.”  Our spirit body would like to fly high above MR. I want the computer to do what I want when I want it. Most of the time it does. But if I am on a roll with some creative writing, and feel too above the mundane to continually back up my work, well we all know how that story ends.  Jung felt that the crucifixion was the central metaphor for the human condition; we are caught between the vertical axis of the spirit and transcendence and the horizontal axis of the grounded life, which also includes the dark side of our personalities.  Easterners and New Agers, and others that tend to focus on vertical transcendence, tend to neglect the difficult horizontal work of integrating their own personal shadow, and therefore they end up acting it out unconsciously on everyone. Google “Andrew Cohen” for a classic example.  If I neglect the details of the horizontal plane of existence—what’s happening with my body, emotions, relationships, objects, finances, time, etc—then those neglected areas will uncooperatively act out, like autonomous complexes, rubbing my face in whatever I neglected.

Ms. Dening continues: “Your challenge is to accept the current situation with grace and a spirit of humility.”  It is humility that eases the self-importance that generates the anger and stress when the ego confronts MR. Encounter MR with humble acceptance, but don’t get self-important about your humility, and especially don’t start thinking you are more humble than I am.  Remember that humility is not masochism, it doesn’t mean you should put up with MR that can be fixed, it means that you are in a better state to fix it—if it can be fixed—when you attend to it with humble precision.

Brian Browne Walker, author of an amazingly concise, precise I Ching, writes in his general text on hexagram 62:

You should not be seduced into struggling, striving, or seeking solutions through aggressive action.  Success is met only by waiting modestly for the guidance of the creative… Trying times are a test of our integrity and commitment to proper principles. The ordinary person reacts to challenges with fear, anger, mistrust of fate, and as stubborn desire to strike out and eliminate difficulty once and for all. While the temptation to act in this way can be great, to do so can only lead to misfortune… she retreats into her center and cultivates humility, patience and conscientiousness.

The healthy way to react to most situations is to interpret them in some sort of positive frame.  B.B.W. implies that trying times should be viewed as a test, and Ms. Dening also suggests viewing the hardships as a test. She writes: “Do not make unreasonable demands or allow frustration to cause you to over-react . . . The situation is a test of your patience and stability.”

Another positive frame is to see the MR situation as a learning experience, a challenge, etc.  Most of the time this is the way to approach MR, but there would be an element of shadow denial if we always tried to put a positive perspective on everything.  Sometimes you may need to grieve, may need to go into a less interpreted acceptance of the painfulness of a particular case of MR.

One of the best positive frames is appreciation of the moment, even if the moment has mundane and/or frustrating aspects.  Let’s say I’m having a stressful phone call with tech support.  But I am also interacting with a pleasant, conscientious person from another culture.  There are nuances to this human transaction, as well as the content about the computer problem. Immerse yourself in the mundane moment and you may discover layers, textures, and sensations of interest that easily get overlooked.

The I Ching reading I had after an intense bout with MR earlier this morning helped bring the creative muse forward, and invited me into the present writing session, a massive one sitting writing session.  If the computer problem had an easy resolution, I wouldn’t have written this, I would have been scanning in 35 mm negatives to store future images for the Zap Oracle, etc.  Useful work, but very mechanical compared to a muse-inspired writing session. The MR got reinterpreted into an opportunity for creativity.

Race car drivers are trained that if they are heading toward the wall they should avoid looking at it.  They should look at where they want to go. In other words, it is more effective to shift your focus from obstacles to the open avenues of possibility.

9. Interpret MR and other frustrations as challenges, tests and learning experiences. Avoid victim mentality.

10. Shift focus from obstacles to open avenues of possibility.

The MR-inspired reading I gave myself led to a passage from the classic Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching, which states:

Thus the superior man . . . must always fix his eyes more closely and more directly on duty than does the ordinary man, even though this might make his behavior seem petty to the outside world. He is exceptionally conscientious in his actions.  In bereavement emotion means more to him than ceremoniousness.  In all his personal expenditures he is extremely simple and unpretentious.  In comparison with the man of the masses, all this makes him stand out as exceptional.  But the essential significance of his attitude lies in the fact that in external matters he is on the side of the lowly.

Similarly, the classic Taoist I Ching states:

“When one acts yet is able to be still, being active in the midst of stillness, stopping in the appropriate place and acting on that, even as one acts one does not    go beyond the appropriate position.”

In other words, you don’t let resistant passages altogether break your rhythm. When appropriate, back off and recognize that there are open avenues of possibility elsewhere. This Taoist attitude  contrasts the naïve ego that will tend to meet resistance with a frantic, angry, overly aggressive attitude, or, conversely, collapse into lethargy and defeatism.

All of the I Ching quotes so far have been from general commentary about the hexagram, but now we move to the first changing line I got, which funnels the general meaning into something more specific about my relationship to MR. The Wilhem/Baynes defines the line as follows:

Nine in the third place means:

If one is not extremely careful,

Somebody may come up from behind and strike him.

Misfortune.

At certain times, extraordinary caution is absolutely necessary.  But it is just in such life situations that we find upright and strong personalities who, conscious of being in the right, disdain to hold themselves on guard, because they consider it petty. Instead, they go their way proud and unconcerned.  But this self-confidence deludes them. There are dangers lurking for which they are unprepared. Yet such danger is not unavoidable; one can escape it if he understands that the time demands that he pay especial attention to small and insignificant things.

This line reinforces many of themes we have already discussed.  Ignore details of MR and you get blind-sided by them: this is what is meant by, “Somebody may come up from behind and strike him.”  Ignore that little sound from your brakes or transmission and a small repair may become a very expensive one or even a car accident.  Ignore bodily symptoms and likewise.  There is a principle in the I Ching of catching things before they exit the gate of change.  For example, you notice the first tiny signs of a developing problem and you nip it in the bud.  A skilled martial artist slows down time to perceive the first signals of movement and direction of an opponent to catch him before a successful strike.  But if you are overconfident and neglect the details, they bite you in the ass.

The Taoist I Ching says, “If you do not overcome and forestall it, indulgence will cause harm, which would be unfortunate.”

The next changing line involves similar cautions. The Taoist I Ching says, “Stop when you should stop, rest and stop the work; act when you should act . . .” Timing, as we all know, is critical to success. We need minute attunement to the vicissitudes of the moment to know whether to go forward or to withdraw.  Ms Dening writes: “Take care not to be over-confident.  Unexpected difficulties could catch you unawares. Pay great attention to detail. Be very cautious and exercise good judgment”

When an I Ching reading involves changing lines there is also a secondary hexagram  indicated. In this case it is  #2, “The Receptive.”  This hexagram is also about being guided by the needs of the moment, and not trying to be ambitious or force progress.  The Wilhelm/Baynes states:

What the hexagram indicates is action in conformity with the situation . . . If he knows how to meet fate with an attitude of acceptance, he is sure to find the right   guidance. The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly,      but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows this intimation from fate . . . The time of toil and effort is indicated . . . If in that situation one does not mobilize all one’s powers, the work to be accomplished will not be done . . . In addition to the time of toil and effort, there is also a time of planning, and for this we need solitude . . . At that time he must be alone and    objective.

Planning is another key strategy for dealing with mechanical resistance, but here we need to draw an important distinction.  Planning does not mean egoistic prestructuring of the future, a brittle lattice of expectations of what will happen and when.  This would be completely contrary to the Taoist approach, which recognizes the future as the unknown and emphasizes intuitive, creative adaptation to the moment.  But emphasis on the now does not replace the need for planning.  This brings us to our next principle:

11. Employ planning as a strategic activity engaged in the present with the full awareness that future developments may require that the plans be changed.

In other words: The plan proposes, but the Tao disposes.

12. The more you are spontaneous, creative, or rebellious, the more you need some structures of discipline, organization, and even scheduling, so that MR doesn’t rule your life.

Not bothering with those structures usually means inefficiency, which is another way of saying MR. Since my essence predisposes me to neglect detail, I must compensate by employing systems to help keep me on track.  If I don’t do this, then the ensuing chaos causes my life to be unpleasantly dominated by the details I neglected.

My personality tends to favor philosophy over practical technique. But since I have pointed out the need to compensate for one-sided tendencies, I’m going to describe some practical techniques that are crucial for me, and that might be useful for you, or might give you ideas for your own approach.

13. Keep a list-making device within hands reach almost all the time. Neglected details almost always begin as something you notice and register as a thought, “I really should look into that noise in the transmission.”  When the thought emerges, there are usually four things you can do in response:

1. You have the thought, and then forget about it.

2. You try to hold onto the thought, try to remember, remind yourself.

3. You record the item in your list-making device.

4. You take immediate action.

Response 1 doesn’t work well in most cases.  Response 2 may or may not work and is stressful and exhausting.  This approach has been compared to carrying a rock around in your hand, and depending on constant muscle tension to keep from losing it.  Response 3 works really well for me, because much of the time it is neither convenient nor efficient nor possible to take immediate action. If it is, then of course Response 4 is the best response.

Crucial for using Response 3 is that the list-making device be able to store an item with the least possible MR. Some people go low tech and write things down on little pieces of paper.  This doesn’t work for me because I always lose little pieces of paper, my handwriting sucks, deleting items means crossing them out, and besides I am a gadget person, I would much rather interact with a reliable gadget than paper.  If you are not a gadget person, then a small notebook and a pen may be perfect for you.  For me, I carry one of those little, inexpensive digital voice recorders.  It weighs very little and is half the size of the smallest cell phone.  Recording an item means pressing one button. This is the least MR list-making device I know.  Sound quality is not that great with these things, so I always say the item twice to be sure I can recognize what I said when I review the items. I also use the same device to record psychological observations, intuitions, and realizations throughout the day. I also keep the recorder by my bed to record dreams without having to turn on a light.  Sometimes I may have trouble falling asleep, and neglected details may come to mind and I can immediately dispose of these into the recorder and get them off my mind.

Instead of processing the different items I record at multiple times of the day, I wait till the morning after I have finished my creative work session and am ready to shift into organizing mode.

14.   A key principle for dealing with MR efficiently is to group similar tasks together.

When I do make the shift into organizing mode, I use an organizer program on my computer, something like Palm Desktop or Outlook.  They all have calendars, daily schedules, contacts, memos, and task lists, and most of what I record fits into one of these features. For example, under memos, I have a video list and a book list. So if someone tells me about a DVD I should get, I make a voice note and then add it to my video list, which I can refer to when I am in the video store.  Another list is my pack list.  I’m leaving for NYC in two days, so I have a NYC pack list as a memo.  As I think of things I need to bring to NYC I make voice memos, and in my morning organizational session add those to the NYC pack list.  I also don’t like writing in a messy checkbook register, so I voice memo the checks I write and put them in a memo file till they clear.

After I review and sort my voice memos, which only takes a few minutes, I delete them.  Next I look at the task list.

15. Task lists, or to do lists, should always be prioritized.

I go through all the higher ranked items on the list, and then leave the really low ranked items—like a website to look at eventually—to be reviewed once or twice a month.  As I go through the list, I consider which few items I need, and am willing and able to do, today.  Those items, I record on the daily schedule at roughly the time they need to happen.  Let’s say I am going to leave the house at 2 p.m.  All the chores that I need to do outside the house I will record for 2 p.m.  Doesn’t mean I will do them all at that time, it means I will be working on them after 2 p.m. and before the appointment I have at 5 p.m.  If I am doing the planning at noon,  under 1 p.m. I will list all the things I need to get done while I am home before I go out.  Then there may be one or two items to do when I get home for the evening, and I’ll list those for 9 p.m.  When I get done making this simple and flexible plan for the day, I synch my computer with my cell phone PDA so I have all the information with me.  Again, I like the gadget approach; someone else could do the same system with a little Day Runner type book.

The need for creative spontaneity and following the muse means I may drop many of those task items if some really high value opportunity comes up.  I had a list of things to do today, but I am choosing to put them off  because I’m on a roll with writing this in one massive session that started early this morning.

Sometimes what the body needs, and what creativity needs, may pull in different directions.  The body is more conservative and benefits from routine much more than the psyche.  The routine schedule—going to sleep at the same time every day, eating at the same time, etc. is better for the body, but may be oppressive to creativity.  That’s why some basic planning and structure, but also the flexibility to deviate from it, is the best approach for me.

Some people need more sleep than others.  There are also cycles with sleep. It’s been said that every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after midnight. If I get to bed by 10-11 p.m., I often have no problem getting up at 4 a.m., but if I stay up till midnight, and don’t set an alarm, I may wake up at 8:45 a.m. I will usually wake up on my own at whatever time I intend.  But waking up doesn’t mean I will get out of bed! I need an alarm clock far enough away that I can’t just keep hitting snooze.  I need to be standing up, and then I get energized very quickly.

Since early morning is my prime time, this is the time of day, and usually the only time of day, when I indulge stimulants—yerba maté, sipped slowly for the first three hours.

Over most of the last eleven years, I have proudly shunned the practice of waking up to alarm clocks because I have associated the practice with mechanical, forced awakening, and a scheduled mundane job.  Now I like it, because it gives me far greater space for creativity. For some, a forced awakening will improve dream recall, but it can also truncate some dreams.  I’ve trained myself to have dream recall either way.

Also, the time before most people are awake, the time before the sounds of garbage trucks and people commuting to work, is a magical time for me. Most people in the community are asleep and dreaming.  The psychic atmosphere of people awake and struggling with morning drudgery is largely absent. The predawn is a very liminal time, a time that still has a connection to the dreamtime.

Am I saying you should get  the same brand of voice recorder I use and wake up at four in the morning?  Hell no.  That’s what works for me at this time.  I hate the one-size-fits-all approach you find everywhere, including in “spiritual groups.”   Remember Tommy, the rock opera by the Who? It was about an actual British kid named Tommy Walker.  Apparently he witnessed a murder and became hysterically blind, deaf, and mute, and playing pinball was a big part of the quirky path that led him to enlightenment.  But then Tommy’s unique path gets turned into a commercialized, one-size-fits-all template:

“Welcome to the camp!

I guess you all know why we’re here.

My name is Tommy, and I became aware this year.

If you want to follow me,

You’ve got to play pinball.

So put in your earplugs,

Put on your eyeshades,

You know where to put the cork!”

I’m not running a camp.  I’m telling you what I do to deal with MR, so that it may stimulate your mind and aid you in the creation of your own approach.

To paraphrase FDR:

“There is nothing to fear, but the fear of MR itself.”

See also:  Pathfinding/Daymapping

text and photo © Jonathan Zap 341 Jonathan path finding in Escalante Canyon, Utah This image relates to a very practical and grounded way to navigate your pathway through a chaotic world. I have a very poor natural sense of direction, and yet I was able to use ordinary map and compass skills to navigate myself, and a small group, through a maze of canyons with no marked paths (Escalante Canyon, Utah). The method is fairly simple, but profound in its proven effectiveness. You have a topographical map which you can orient to the visible landscape. You know that the map is not the territory, some features have changed, and some things may have been mapped wrong, but most things will correspond. You know the overall direction you want to go, and you use your compass to locate a near landmark that is along your line of travel. You walk to the near landmark, reorient briefly, and pick a new landmark. This is called “point to point navigation.” Path-finding through life can be like finding your way through a maze of canyons. It is crucial to know the overall direction you want to go. If you don’t already know that overall direction, you need to consult your global intuition. The mind and the ego are indispensable psychic functions, but they will not cut it here. If you use them to determine overall direction you will likely find yourself in some sort of mental ping pong game — What about this? But what about that? But what if this happens? But what if that doesn’t happen? You can’t think your way through to the overall direction, you need to recognize it from the soul level. One way to contact this recognition is to go to a quiet, solitary space and ask yourself: What will I remember well on my death bed? Your honest answers to this core question will usually reveal your true will and the life mission you came here to do? Once you have located your overall direction, the mind/ego alliance is able to serve in an invaluable role employing path-finding technique. An especially propitious time for path-finding is at the start of the day. A natural unit of time lies before you, and you have a goal: to make the best use of your time, consistent with your overall direction, between awakening and bedtime. You locate navigational landmarks in space/time to efficiently orient yourself. A mundane example would be a doctor’s appointment. Maintaining your health is consistent with your overall direction, so this is an important navigational landmark, a point in space and time you know you have to hit. There may be a number of other such points to be recognized as your map of the day takes form. As you prepare your day map, it is crucial that you mark off significant space/time for work on your big dream, something that you have identified as crucial to your life path. A good rule of thumb is that a big dream is going to require a minimum of two hours work per day. The work on your big dream is important, but may not be urgent, like hitting the doctor appointment at a very specific time, or answering a ringing phone. Without a good day map it all too easy to focus on the urgent, small stuff and neglect the important, non-urgent work. This common tendency is called, “majoring in the minors.” When you draw up your day map, it is crucial to gauge time as accurately as possible. My tendency, and it is a very common tendency, is to put down how long I think something should take, as compared to how long it usually takes (about twice or three times as long as I think it should). Add some extra buffer time so that you don’t create tremendous stress by rushing or falling behind. If what you need to do is too much to allow for buffer time, then it is time to triage your projects and activities — what can you afford to let go of, what you absolutely can’t let go of, and what might fall in some middle category. It is better to accomplish some important things really well, plus a modest amount of mechanical chores, than to be in a frantic rush all day trying to accomplish everything you think you should be able to do (usually based on what a superhero could do after twelve cups of coffee). Mark out your day map with majors and a modest number of minors. Your state of mind as you draw up the map is essential. It is crucial that the map-drawing exercise does not become an ego attempt to tightly prestructure the future. You must have a deep recognition that the map is not the territory, that the landscape of the day will likely have unseen and unpredictable features, and you allow as much room for them as possible. You recognize that drawing the map is a strategic activity you engage in the moment, but future developments may cause you to have to redraw the map, and often without a moment’s notice. This is one of the reasons why I like the early morning alone at my desk as my space/time zone of the day for the majors, the high level creative work. This is the time of day least interfered with by unpredictable minor urgencies. I have just stepped out of the dreamtime, and most of the community is still in it, so the field of human consciousness is less mundane. Early morning is my “peak time,” the time of the day when I am capable of my best focus, and I want to align my majors with peak time, my minors with the off peak time. I am using myself as an example, not a model, the necessities and variations of your life may require different strategies. So most days start with a few hours of focused creative work, and when I reach a natural stopping point, I have the whole rest of the day ahead of me to deal with the urgent minors, a couple of non urgent minors, and whatever other majors can be fit in. By anchoring my day, right at the start, with a few hours of high value work, I greatly elevate my morale with real accomplishment, and I am therefore much better able to withstand the often bruising engagement with mundane and mechanically resistant minors. In the morning, after I finish my creative work, I draw up a day map that attempts to put other goals for the day (major and minor) in some sort of efficient order. For example, it is usually much more efficient to group similar sorts of tasks together. There are a few annoying paper work tasks I’ve been neglecting, so I group them together, because once I’ve made the titanic effort to get myself into dealing with annoying paperwork mode, I might as well knock off three such tasks instead of just one. Don’t draw up a day map with the relentless efficiency of the commander of a Nazi Panzer division. Don’t make the day into a death march. Find space for some relaxation, for nurture of the body, for key relationships, some space for all your psychic functions and subpersonalities to breathe. It is crucial, for example, to have the cooperation of your inner child — a core subpersonality — and that won’t happen if your day map is drawn up from the grim perspective of cramming in as many minors as you can possibly imagine accomplishing. For example, I have found for myself that by the last two to three hours of the day, I’ve run out of steam for mechanical minors. I am approaching the dreamtime, my active energy is subsiding,I need to unwind and my imagination wants to come out unencumbered by mundane focus. The end of the day is a great time for me to engage in passive, imaginatively stimulating activity — watching a worthwhile movie is about perfect for this time of day. For some it might be reading a novel, or talking to a friend. I have a slightly loose time marker for when I want to go to sleep. If I can get to sleep before 11pm I will sometimes be able to get up by 4am, but if I stay up past ll pm I will probably need 7-8 hours of sleep. There are cycles with sleep and dreaming, and every hour of sleep before midnight may be worth two after. If I catch the right cycle, I can get in my REM sleep earlier, and have a higher percentage of REM sleep. Since REM sleep tends to happen at the end of the sleep cycle, usually in the early hours of the morning, it is particularly exhausting to stay up late and then wake up to an early alarm that truncates REM sleep. Often we find ourselves faced with a classic problem — our body is a more conservative organism than our psyche. What is good for the body is like what is good for a cat or dog — a consistent, predictable routine. Eating and sleeping at the same time every day is great for the body, but it can be oppressive to the creative spirit. There needs to be a careful negotiation and choice. Sometimes the spontaneous social or creative opportunity is worth staying up all night. More often, at this phase of my life, the best creative opportunity for me is to go to sleep early and have that early morning creative session. If I break that rhythm it can sometimes take me a few days to get it back. Once you have prepared your day map, taking all these things into consideration, you start moving toward your navigational points. It is most efficient to have your map and some sort of list making device within hands reach throughout the day. To do items and future time markers should be immediately noted or listed so that you don’t fatigue and worry yourself by trying to retain them in memory. Finally, be path-oriented, not goal-oriented. Don’t demoralize yourself by continually checking for progress on your long term goals. Focus on the part of the path you are on at this moment; you’ve engaged point to point navigation, so traveling to the next point is where the rubber meets the road. If you feel off kilter, stop and reorient yourself by asking yourself the question, What’s the best use of my time right now? — the answer could be a nap, time off for contemplation, hammering away at minors, work on a neglected major, etc. If the answer or answers aren’t what you are currently doing,take a few moments to reconfigure your day map. Path-finding means orienting yourself toward your big dreams, and making day maps that navigate carefully through majors and minors. Dealing with the chaos of life means journeying as best you can between awakening and bedtime. For more on your relationship to time see: Temporal Fencing and Life Fields and Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life Read Time Shifting, an article by Stephan Rechtschaffen and consider reading the book as well. For more on setting the overall direction see: The Path of the Numinous For a philosophy of dealing with mechanically resistant minors see: Mechanical Resistance Matrix For more on the Warrior path and philosophy see: The Way of the Warrior Warrior Quotes Taoist Quotes

For a philosophy of dealing with mechanically resistant minors see: ttp://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/115/mechanical-resistance-matrix

For more on the Warrior path and philosophy see:

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/61/the-way-of-the-warrior

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/26/warrior-quotes-

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/31/the-taoist-path

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/30/taoist-quotes-

Imagine Getting More (Zap Oracle Card # 332)   copyright 2007, Jonathan Zap

One of the most potent of spells or enchantments that can bind you into the matrix is to live under the compulsion of always having to imagine getting more in the future.  Under this spell you become a donkey forever hypnotized by an imaginary carrot just up ahead. The carrot, the “more”, that ever glitters in your mind’s eye like a ring of power, could be many things—–sex, money, power, fame, looks—-often the imagined more is a vision of that more perfected life just up ahead, the one in which you have realized your ideal weight, made your first hundred million, and have an amazing lover with whom you live in a house featured in Architectural Review…  The phrase in the cigarette ad— “Imagine getting more…”—- is meant to encourage you in the profitable belief that cigarette smoking leads to getting more sex. The warning label, black and white and boxed in, reminds the alert mind that what you will be getting more of is cancer.  What you get more of when your eyes are bedazzled by the imaginary carrot just up ahead is more cancer of the soul.  Your vision, your consciousness, is misdirected away from the present moment where it could have more power and life right now.
Most people on the planet experience scarcity in one or more key areas of their lives.  Some scarcities are related to needs and others to wants.  Common areas of perceived scarcity include money, physical resources, social status, youth, looks, sex, physical health, fulfilling relationships, inner resources, and meaningfulness.  Most lives involve strange and tense combinations of scarcity and abundance. For example, a tan and sleek billionaire walking off the tennis court might be dying of a famine of meaningfulness.  Our vision of scarcity is often highly distorted and one-sided. Perceived scarcities range from delusory toxic wants to what would be genuinely fulfilling if we had more of it.
Scarcity comparisons with other people are almost always unreliable and highly distorted. Typically we compare our area of most irritating scarcity with someone else who seems to have that area filled to overflowing.  We never look at the whole portfolio of scarcity and abundance in the other’s incarnation.  We can’t look at it, we’d have to know how their whole life turned out. We see tall, handsome Christopher Reeve galloping on his thorough bred horse, we don’t necessarily see up ahead where he gets tossed to the ground a quadriplegic, and goes through a life phase of horrendous scarcities as he becomes more soulful and compassionate and discovers new forms of fulfillment.
“Imagine getting more” and “envious comparison” are intertwined spells that bind us into neurotic suffering.  These spells promise fulfillment in the future, but create hollowness in the present.
Hollowness is the mind set of the ring wraith as it withers the present while it forever reaches toward that glittering precious just up ahead.  Hollowness is the state of one who forever reaches toward the future to be filled up.
Don’t wither the vitality of the present by looking at it with the eyes of scarcity and victim hood. All too easily you can build a reality tunnel defined by your view of the present as the time of scarcity before you have abundance of money, or before you have the perfect lover, the perfect body…whatever you covet getting more of.  This is the time that counts right now, this time with its strange and tense combination of scarcity and unrecognized abundance, the time that gives you everything you need to work with in the present moment.  Break the spells, become disenchanted and more powerful, work with what you got right now.
See Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life

photo and text copyright Jonathan Zap 2006

I’ve been getting a lot of messages from people that reflect a deep unhappiness with our present condition and a tendency to cling to unnourishing things to support themselves through the difficulties.  For example, a woman in New York City sent the following:

I listened to you on X Zone tonight.  Re: 2012, my life has really become sitting around and waiting for 2012.  My job, my relationships, etc.  have all become “something to do while I wait.”  I really don’t like what I’ve become, because I feel that I am not living my life to the fullest NOW.  I am just waiting for something better to happen, waiting for something to save me. I am beginning to think that a lot of people feel the same way, based on stuff I’m reading on newsgroups.  A dissatisfaction with “3-D reality” is developing.

But counting down to any date , whether it is the beginning of a vacation or an imagined apocalypse/rapture zone binds you deeper into the unhappy effects of linear time.  See http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/15/clock-time-metastisizing-toward-2012- and http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/14/a-splinter-in-your-mind

While caught in darkness leave room for that white crow possibility, because life can change in a heart beat, and love can enter your life at any moment.

According to an email I received this morning, there may have been a mythical time when all crows were white:
“In nearly all cultures, the raven or crow was originally white. In one of the Greek tales, Coronis , the daughter of Phlegyes was pregnant by Apollo. Apollo left a white crow (or raven) to watch over her, but, just before the birth, Coronis married Ischys . The crow informed Apollo of this, and Apollo was not impressed. He killed Coronis and Ischys , and turned the crow black for being the bearer of bad news. Luckily, Apollo retrieved the unborn child at the funeral, for the child became Aesclepius , the father of medicine.”
Just added text to Zap Oracle Card 200 (image above) which now reads:

Sadness,  mundanity and alienation behind the hyped up false enthusiasm of the Babylon Matrix. We can all see how the black magicians (advertisers, industrial psychologists, etc) of the Babylon Matrix deceive people with images of perfect bodies always in a state of just crossing the finish line and winning the prize. Movie romances, for example, typically feature well groomed yuppie couples going through manic courtship rituals (supposedly humorous) and the finish line is a honey moon or proposal of marriage, etc.  But those finish lines are actually starting lines of long and difficult marathons that have nothing to do with movie glamour. The Babylon Matrix always fools us this way; it encourages us to see graduation, landing the right job, acquiring the dream house or car, capturing the hottie, as finish lines. We’re supposed to be racing toward a glorious moment in the golden spotlight of success, when in actuality we are getting super-sized and depressed by the “happy meal” they just sold us. But it is not just major industry injecting us with sugary, caffeinated hype—it is also the power of positive thinking fundamentalists who can be found in overlapping circles of hyped up yuppie capitalists and marketing-oriented New Agers.  According to them, positive thinking guarantees health and wealth because “you create your own reality.” But this is absurd denial of the shadow. There is a germ of truth there, an important germ, but the statement would have to be heavily modified into something like: “You are the leading force shaping your inner reality which is often the most important factor in shaping your outer circumstances.”  Instead, they adamantly, dogmatically state the principle as they do, a fundamentalist belief in infantile omnipotence.  So how come no sufficiently positive thinking New Ager has created as their own reality (which they can share with the rest of  us) a planet free of environmental pollution and war? If someone is part of a community devastated by a hurricane, was that a lapse in their positive thinking? Success/positive thinking Nazis actually manufacture suffering, they cause ailing people to think their health problems are their personal failure of attitude, and add whole new levels of low self esteem to those struggling with finances and difficult circumstances (most of the species).  These are the folks who have numbered lists, the ten things that ensure success, and simplistic formulas for mastering the vast complexities of life. Whatever success they have is often based on selling hype, their income as a motivational speaker or self help guru motivating other people to do the sorts of work they avoid. “Positive thinking,” is important, especially the avoidance of negative inner tape loops and victim mentality, but it does not guarantee success and omnipotence in the outer world. Beneath all the hype we find people more sad, lonely, alienated and depressed than ever before.  In addition to dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, they must now deal with positive thinking fundamentalism that has them unhappy about being unhappy, assuming that life’s hardships and travails are their personal, cognitive failures.  Fundamentalisms are delusory systems largely created to buffer us from the inevitable difficulties of human incarnation.  I’m not much of a Bible quoter, but Ecclesiastes gives a rare dose of stark, profound realism:

Eccl 3:1 TO EVERYTHING there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven:

Eccl 3:2 A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted,

Eccl 3:3 A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up,

Eccl 3:4 A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

Eccl 3:5 A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

Eccl 3:6 A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away,

Eccl 3:7 A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak,

Eccl 3:9 What profit remains for the worker from his toil?

Eccl 3:10 I have seen the painful labor and exertion and miserable business which God has given to the sons of men with which to exercise and busy themselves.

Eccl 3:16 Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice there was wickedness, and that in the place of righteousness wickedness was there also.

Eccl 3:19 For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even [in the end] one thing befalls them both. As the one dies, so dies the other. Yes, they all have one breath and spirit, so that a man has no preeminence over a beast; for all is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!

Eccl 3:20 All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Eccl 3:21 Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goes downward to the earth?

Eccl 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his portion. For who shall bring him back to see what will happen after he is gone?

Try turning some of those phrases into an advertising jingle or New Age affirmation!  But having said all this, I still favor the positive outlook as you will see in many of my writings.  I favor the positive outlook with integration of the shadow and respect for the suffering of the world. Perception is more a choice than a matter of identifying the one, true reality so it is better to choose the more positive and empowering vantage on things.  A major study was done of optimists and pessimists several years ago.  The pessimists were found to have more accurate reality testing, but in every other category—social, financial, health, etc. the optimists were found to be better off. So be optimistic, but don’t be a Pollyanna, temper it with a bit of realism as well. The real finish line for this incarnation is death, so do the high value things you will remember well on your death bed. Follow the warrior stance I call “existential impeccability”—act with spontaneous precision and integrity in the moment for its own sake and without expectation of a specific outcome. Follow this path and you may find within yourself deep fulfillment never to be found in the sugar/caffeine rush of hyped up superficial positivity.

For a more conscious, profound and humorous approach to positive outlook see Pronoia by Rob Brezny  (freewillastrology.com)  Read my review of Pronoia: http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/93/is-the-world-spiraling-toward-eucatastrophe-or-is-that-just-my-pronoia

For more on the philosophy of reducing suffering by facing the darkness see: http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/12/the-capsule-of-intentionality-

For more on the path of the warrior:

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/61/the-way-of-the-warrior

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/26/warrior-quotes-

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/31/the-taoist-path

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/30/taoist-quotes-

For practical techniques on dealing with negative thoughts and feelings see part III http://www.zaporacle.com/wp/2009/11/a-guide-to-the-perplexed-interdimensional-traveler/

For more on the universal feeling that there is something wrong with this world:

http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/14/a-splinter-in-your-mind

© 2007, 2008 Jonathan Zap

Edited by Austin Iredale

“Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.”—Lao-tse

Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought, which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the Left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the Right.  The greatest of life skills is the ability to live with ambiguity, ambivalence, and paradox, without trying to regularize these uncertainties into finished, absolute truths.  Dynamic paradoxicalism recognizes that most important areas of truth exist as a paradox, where seemingly contradictory elements have a dynamic level of validity based on context specific circumstances.  Although a greater conception that synthesizes the disparate elements of a paradox into a grand unit is an awesome addition to the conceptual toolbox, it is not always the most useful tool in the box.  Dynamic paradoxicalism recommends an ability to slide between the poles of a paradox, in some circumstances favoring the point of view of one side of the paradox, in other cases the other pole, and in still other cases favoring the unified view.

Some may read this introductory paragraph and confuse dynamic paradoxicalism with relativism.  The relativist is the inverted version of an absolutist.  The relativist does not believe in absolute truths—has an absolute disbelief in absolutes—and finds that everything is relative to a point of view, and that most points of view are culturally determined and highly unreliable.  But a relativist is also a self-deceiving absolutist, as they have an absolute belief in relativism.  The most classic statement repeated by relativists—whether they know themselves to be relativists or not—is, “Don’t be judgmental.”  But notice that this statement is perfect in its self-contradiction, as it is in itself a judgment, and ranks nonjudgmental people as more correct than judgmental people.  In philosophy this is called “an error of performance:” you contradict your assertion even as you make it.

Dynamic paradoxicalism is all about judgment, good judgment: the ability to use all your faculties, and especially your global intuition, to make careful discernments about where you need to be in relation to key paradoxes in particular situations.  So, “Don’t be judgmental” should be stated, “Don’t be falsely judgmental.”   Life requires good judgment.   An absolutist would like to replace the responsibility for judgment onto absolute truths, a divine document, and/or people or entities that are supposed to have perfect judgment.  Relativists tend to castrate the ability to make judgments.  They especially like to castrate absolutists, and I can sympathize with that tendency because absolutists propagate like fruit flies around forbidden fruit, and are the oft-sadistic masters of being falsely judgmental.  But relativists also tend to castrate themselves, and everyone, because no one in their view is empowered to make judgments, and their only certitude is the absolute truth of relativism and their absolute judgment in favor of being nonjudgmental.

The three paragraphs above tell you what paradoxical dynamism is, and what it isn’t, and now we are left with cases, illustrations, applications, and reinforcing principles.  Dynamic paradoxicalism is easy to define, but may have limited appeal given the powerful human preference for certitudes and absolutes.  The ego has a difficult and often thankless job trying to mediate between the inner world and the outer world, and it finds ambiguity, ambivalence, and paradox, stressful and confusing.  The ego prefers that the map be the territory because that would make navigation easier. It likes to force premature closure on complex uncertainties, and find all encompassing solutions to life’s problems.  It prefers one-size-fits-all over the complexity of the case specific point of view.  Dynamic paradoxicalism insists that you be the navigator, and that you cannot abdicate your responsibility to make judgments onto a cognitive map of absolutes.  Often people recognize and spurn the false cognitive maps of other absolutists without recognizing that they also live by absolute cognitive maps.  For example, a New Age person will criticize religious fundamentalists without realizing that they also live by absolute cognitive maps such as relativism, you create your own reality, and the power of positive thinking.

The ego understandably hates paradox, ambivalence, ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty, and would like to clear these up into a grand solution.  It wants to take the murkiness and replace it with a shining fundamentalism, or an ism of some sort, a divine map that illuminates all territories: past, present and future. The Ken Wilber version of this tendency would be to take any of these paradoxes and unify them into a grand diagram, a new paradigm that elevates the Wilberite to an Olympian meme, transcendent of all dualities.

Dynamic paradoxicalism puts great value on the ability to live with paradox, ambivalence, ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty, without trying to wrestle them into premature closure and clarification. However, dynamic paradoxicalism doesn’t mean that you forever dwell in the swamps of ambiguity; it means that you wait for genuine illumination and realizations, the kind that aren’t forced, the aha moments when global intuition shows a way through.  While you wait for those penetrating insights, you make the best judgments you can to get through the day.

Dynamic paradoxicalism agrees with the modern Taoist sage Deng Ming-Dao, who writes: “Never under estimate the value of a partial solution.”

If dynamic paradoxicalism were to form an alliance with any other ism, it would be Taoism, but with a key difference.  Taoism, at least the way it is usually presented, is an extroverted version of dynamic paradoxicalism.  The emphasis is on the fluid adaptation to ever changing outer circumstances.  Dynamic paradoxicalism also emphasizes dynamic adaptation to the inner world, and it works from inside out.  The dynamic paradoxicalist centers himself on something like what Aleister Crowley called “true will.”   True will, as I use the term, is your inner refraction of the Tao, the deeply felt sense of enthusiasm, meaningfulness, purpose, and sacred quest toward a life aim. (see The Path of the Numinous ) True will should be followed even when outer circumstance puts up fierce resistance.  True will is the trembling needle of the compass that points the way through the ambiguities, paradoxes, and uncertainties.  Dynamic paradoxicalism, but not Taoism, supports the following quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”

This quote brings us to the first of many of the paradoxes to relate to dynamically:

Adapting to Circumstance vs. Shifting the Matrix

Sometimes the emphasis is on adapting to outer circumstance—it is raining and so we bring our umbrella.  At other times the emphasis is on shifting the matrix, summoning all our will and magic to transform circumstance.  Sometimes it is best to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” Other times it is best to risk our lives to rebel against injustice.  And in still other cases, we choose a middle spectrum position.  A related paradox is:

You Create Your Own Reality vs. Outer Reality Creates You

Recently I was traveling with someone, a very interesting, complex, and worthwhile character, but who also proved to be an absolutist, a New Age fundamentalist whose whole family was under the spell, benign or malign, of various channeled entities.  He believed—though pragmatic and shrewd in most other ways—so absolutely in the you-create-your-own-reality principle—deemed the absolute of absolutes by various entities—that his plan for financial independence was to, “Manifest money into my checking account.”  This was meant absolutely literally, no deposit would have to be made by him or anyone.

The solipsistic assertion, you create your own reality, comes from channelers and the entities they claim to channel.  It originated with Jane Roberts—channeler of “Seth”—in the early 1960s, and has since been picked up by other channelers and associated entities.  For example, Seth says:

“And, if you believe, in very simple terms, that people mean you well, and will   treat you kindly, they will. And, if you believe that the world is against you, then so it will be in your experience”

(hear an audio clip of  Seth saying this: http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/)

As with most channeled material I have encountered, what is presented, usually with aphoristic authority, are dangerous half-truths. (See: The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts ) for more on why you should be wary about channeled material.  In many social situations, what you expect of others will greatly affect how they treat you.  But there are other cases where this doesn’t apply very well at all.  Let’s say I am a Polish Jew when the Nazi army is invading Poland.  Should I seek refuge in another country?  No, that would be a fear-based  surrender to negative thinking.  Instead I should stay put and focus on how kindly I will be treated by the Nazis.

With fundamentalist consistency, other post-Roberts channelers insist on the same absolutism.  For example, John Cali, the channeler of “Chief Joseph,” writes:

“. . .the idea intrigued me, so I kept studying and reading everything I could get my hands on.  Finally, it made sense. I accepted we are totally responsible for whatever manifests in our lives—all of it. It’s either that or we’re victims. I never liked being a victim”

Notice that John’s thinking is the opposite of dynamic paradoxicalism: “It’s either that or we’re victims.”  In other words, it is either one absolute or another, and this is the absolutism I prefer, therefore it applies in all cases. From this point of view, rape victims should be counseled that they invited or manifested the attack—however unconsciously—and need to look for the cause within.  But there are such things as victims, an abused infant for example, but accepting that doesn’t mean the opposite absolutism, that we’re all victims, since there are many people who have discovered ways of being empowered in difficult circumstances. The absolutist never acknowledges that there is a middle range of positions, as well as some cases that fall on either pole of the paradox.

You create your own reality does not work as an absolutism, but it is a major reality formation vector.  In many cases, you do create your own reality, as in the principle, “Psychology is destiny.”  This principle applies most potently to our inner reality, and next most potently to our voluntary relationships and life circumstances—much more so if we live in a relatively free society.  This principle also applies potently, but not absolutely, to the dreamtime.  Since our dreams can involve visits or invasions by other autonomous entities, they may not be entirely our own creations.  Also, it is an unproven assumption that even when we are alone in the dreamtime that the dream is entirely our own creation. I have noticed that the surreal complexity of dreams, with their double and triple entendres and layers of symbolism, does not seem to be at all dependent on the imaginative capacity of the dreamer.  People whose waking personalities seem dull and unimaginative have dreams that seem like they could have been directed by David Lynch.

You-create-your-own-reality absolutists may invoke quantum mechanics to justify their fundamentalism.  Indeed, the wave-particle duality—a photon being a particle or a wave depending on which you expect it to be—does raise questions about reality as observer dependent.  Again, I feel that this principle is a potent reality-forming vector; I just don’t think it is the only vector.  There may be other humans collapsing the wave function based on different intentions than ours, and there is also the gigantic inertia and momentum of the collective human psyche affecting our world.  There is a New Age tendency to use quantum mechanics as a magic wand, or an endless supply of fairy dust, that can be used to justify any proposition, no matter how fantastic.  The abuse of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which was created to have very specific application on the subatomic plane, is used by some relativists and New Agers to mean, “Everything is uncertain,” which for them means, “Anything goes.”

Quantum mechanics does have profound implications, but we can’t be cavalier about applying them to the human reality.  Quantum mechanics applies to the subatomic domain, and it is comprehensible in the language of mathematics, not English, so we need to be careful about applying our personal mythology of what quantum mechanics means to the human domain.

Another way to justify you create your own reality is to radically redefine the “you” in the principle.  If the “you” refers to the personal ego and its wants and desires (which is how most people implicitly use it), then you have the weakest and most repugnant version of the principle.  If “you” is redefined as the self, or expanded to an ultimate degree so that it means a cosmic awareness underlying and connecting everything, then you have the strongest and most valid case of the principle.

Jung defined the “self” as the totality of all the psychic structures. It is the self, not the ego that would have access to what Aleister Crowley called “true will”—a will that derives from essence and that is in accord with the will of the cosmos. If the “you” is the self creating from true will, then the principle becomes far more robust.

In many instances, you create your own reality is the most useful side of the paradox, especially when applied to psychology, individual and collective, and the circumstances created by same psychological factors.  Someone who is caught in a neurotic reality tunnel and has a history of abusive relationships as a result of their own unconscious choices would be well advised to move past victim-of-circumstance self-pity to see how they have largely created their own reality.  But the you-create-your-own-reality absolutists don’t stop there, they apply this principle to victims of tsunami and famine, they apply it overconfidently to cases where huge macro physical events affect an entire population.  In some given case, this could still have a possible validity.  For example, statistical analysis shows that a significantly greater number of people than average make last minute cancellations on plane flights that later crash.  Some given person might have watched the water moving away from the shore and instead of accessing some primal intuition to run to higher ground, as many animals did, allowed some inner intention toward oblivion to keep them on the beach.  Another way of stretching the principle to cover cases like this is to resort to past lives, and to claim, based on no direct evidence, that everyone hit by a tsunami or erupting volcano, etc, had past life karma that made such circumstances right for them, or unconsciously intended by them.  Although this can’t be proven or disproven, it starts to get morally repugnant, as an affluent New Ager can thereby feel that people experiencing macro catastrophic events are still in charge of their own destinies.  From their POV, an infant dying of AIDS is creating their own reality, however unconsciously, as surely as some affluent person repeating a neurotic tendency in romantic relationships.

Although you-create-your-own-reality absolutists never admit this, their principle requires an act of faith as much as any religious fundamentalism.  They never acknowledge how much their principle is divorced from empirical experience.  Why hasn’t some sufficiently positive thinking you-create-your-own-reality person, for example, created a world without any environmental pollution?  If everyone is creating their own reality, why does the rotation and orbit of the earth have such predictable clock work accuracy?  Wouldn’t some true believing schizophrenic who knew absolutely that the earth’s orbit was based on his whims have an influence?  Wouldn’t people who wanted a particular day or night to last a bit longer throw off the Newtonian clockwork?  Does the you-create-your-own-reality principle apply only to benign, politically correct intentions like world peace—which shows no signs of happening, despite all sorts of individual and mass prayers and intentions?  Wouldn’t the principle apply with equal validity to malevolent individuals?  Suppose my intention is to bring a black hole into the solar system or to abuse and manipulate someone else’s reality?  Since we are part of a human collective, what happens when our application of the you-create-your-own-reality principle is inconsistent with other members of the community? How does that get worked out? Even on the individual scale, the principle seems to work in some cases, but not others.  There are all sorts of medical miracles where someone does seem to create their own reality in direct contradiction of medical prognosis.  But this effect seems to go only so far; we don’t, for example, have any documented cases of a transsexual, who absolutely believed he was another gender, waking up one day to find a new set of genitals that matched his beliefs, intentions, etc Somewhere I remember reading about someone who observed many faith healings, and saw many crutches thrown away, but never a wooden leg.  Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

On the other side of this paradox, outside reality creates you.  An example of this point of view is environmental determinism.  Environmental determinists believe that that physical environmental factors determine human behaviors, social structures and culture. I dislike this position as an absolute as well, but the environmental determinist has a much more impressive array of evidence to support their position.  Environmental determinism is the position of a book like Guns, Germs and Steel, which makes a case for climate and microbiological factors as keys to explain why technological civilization would arise in some parts of the world, but not others. Marxism is another case of environmental determinism, where the economic structure of a society is said to determine everything else.  A potent example of cultural determinism is language.  All of us speak and think in one or more languages that long predated us.  Our minds were booted up in a domain of English users,  and this language, determined outside of us, drastically affects our sense of time and our perception of all manner of inner and outer realities.  If I create my own reality than I must have created English as well, since this is too gigantic a factor in my life to have possibly been determined outside of me.

Environmental determinism may be valid in some cases, but  is a deeply flawed proposition if accepted as an absolutism.  Environmental determinism is an extraverted, fundamentalist, materialist point of view.  It does not sufficiently take the human psyche  into account.  Nazism was not merely a response to economic and climatic conditions, but an eruption of the collective unconscious.

According to dynamic paradoxicalism, some things are best understood as realities created by  psyche, others by outside causation, and still others by a confluence of the two factors.  A unified way of including both sides of this duality is to say that, yes, you create your own reality, but this you is not necessarily you as an individual, but rather the universal mind, the source out of which your psyche manifests.

Inner Independence vs. Dependence

Inner independence is the answer to a thousand forms of neurotic torment, and yet there are other times when dependence may be more appropriate.

I’ve written a great deal on the virtue of inner independence.  From the point of view of inner independence, your one obligation in life is to get your relationship to yourself right.  Accomplish that, often a moment by moment accomplishment, and your relations to others, to sex, time, money, power, health, career, political situations, gravity, and movement, will be as good as they possibly can be.  Omit, neglect, or distort any part of the relationship to yourself, and your relations to all those attributes will accordingly be diminished and distorted.  The classic case of inner independence is seeking wholeness within, the inner alchemical marriage of yin and yang, feminine and masculine, rather than seeking to import wholeness from without through another person.

(See: Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom—Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring)

But there are circumstances where dependence may be appropriate.  For example, if a mother has just given birth to an infant, she should be allowed to hold the infant and encourage it to nurse as soon as possible, to allow a bond of absolute dependence to form.  Although inner independence is the sensible approach to romantic relationships, the principle answer to neurotic infatuations, codependence, and fragmentation, the soul may not want to be sensible.  As Blaise Pascal put it four centuries ago, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”  The soul, as James Hillman so often points out, pathologizes. Even the I Ching, which extols inner independence as a supreme virtue, acknowledges the subjectivity of the heart and soul, and allows that some may happily choose dependence.  For example, consider the third changing line of hexagram 61 in the classic Wilhem/Baynes I Ching:

He finds a comrade.

Now he beats the drum, now he stops.

Now he sobs, now he sings.

Here the source of a man’s strength lies not in himself but in his relation to other people.  No matter how close to them he may be, if his center of gravity depends on them, he is inevitably tossed to and fro between joy and sorrow.  Rejoicing to high heaven, then sad unto death—this is the fate of those who depend upon an inner accord with other persons whom they love.  Here we have only the statement of the law that this is so.  Whether this condition is felt to be an affliction or the supreme happiness of love, is left to the subjective verdict of the person concerned.

The sensible, fix-it approach to romantic relationships which assumes everyone wants healthy, functional, stable relationships is a one-sided absolutism.  In an anthology of writings by James Hillman entitled A Blue Fire , there is a chapter entitled “Love’s Torturous Enchantments.”  Hillman points out that, from all times and cultures, the lore about romantic relationships tends toward the problematic and tragic, two people becoming three, betrayal dramas, unrequited situations, Romeo and Juliet.  His point is that the soul may want love’s torturous enchantments, the soul pathologizes.  Inner independence versus dependence “. . . is left to the subjective verdict of the person concerned.”

An Extreme Cautionary Point:

In acknowledging a place for darkness and irrationality, the dynamic paradoxicalist must be very wary.  This acknowledgment can all to easily slide into the indulgence of sophisticated rationalization where one excuses foolishness by acknowledging that darkness has its place alongside light.  This is no small pitfall.  This type of rationalization excuses the sadistic and/or hedonistic antics of abusive gurus, for example, by claiming that they are “crazy wisdom teachers.” Dynamic paradoxicalism is a philosophy best suited for those who are grounded in a strong, Warrior stance.

(See: The Warrior Stance)

The dynamic paradoxicalist must take full responsibility for discerning where they need to be in relationship to the paradox.  If you find yourself leaning toward the dark, lunar, irrational side of a paradox, be very wary about your motives, and see if this is what the totality of you really needs to do. There should be a heavy burden of proof on the decision to abdicate rationality and discipline.

Spiritual genius and abusive guru Chogyam Trungpa is a classic example of sophisticated rationalization. He defined crazy wisdom in the following way:

“But this craziness is not so neurotic; it’s just basic craziness, which is fearlessness and not giving up anything. Not giving up anything is the basic point. At the same time, you are willing to work with what is there on the basis of its primordial wakeful quality. So that is the definition of crazy wisdom, which is sometimes known as wisdom gone wild.”

( See: http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=131)

Huh? Another explanation is that the Buddhist emphasis on vertical transcendence may often mean a neglect of the horizontal plane of development, such as integration of the shadow, which can then rule the personality as an unintegrated autonomous complex.Trungpa’s crazy wisdom path involved sexual abuse of students and drinking himself to death at the age of 48.

Trungpa’s most famous dysfunctional moment occurred when he drunkenly plowed a sports car into a joke shop in Dumfries, Scotland, an accident that left him partially paralyzed. Trungpa seemed almost proud of that occurrence, a great cosmic joke, but what he should have gotten from this episode is a respect for the trickster aspect of the unconscious. The trickster aspect of the unconscious is what so many mystics and metaphysical explorers always seem to miss! If someone like Daniel Pinchbeck, under the influence of ayahuasca, hears the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl speaking to him, then of course that should be taken literally! Doesn’t the history of prophecy and mysticism show us the trickster aspect of the unconscious at work constantly? If you aren’t wary of the trickster function than of course you are going to encounter deities with ego and book concept enhancing prophetic messages. Wherever you cast obsessive attention—conspiracy theorists take note—there are going to be weird synchronicities seeming to confirm your obsessions.

Once again, dynamic paradoxicalism is not an invitation to indulging sophisticated rationalization and going with the trickster aspects of the unconscious. It is a philosophy that is only useful to those with a strong moral center, and who are grounded in a Warrior stance, ready to take full responsibility for their judgments and actions..

One reason why people and groups tend toward absolutisms is the principle known as enantiadromia (en-ANT-ee-a-DROH-mee-a). Jung used the term frequently, but it originates with Heracleitus (b. 540 BC) who seems to be one of the earliest dynamic paradoxicalists.  According to Encyclopaedia Britannica,

A significant manifestation of the logos, Heracleitus claimed, is the underlying connection between opposites. For example, health and disease define each other. Good and evil, hot and cold, and other opposites are similarly related. In addition, he noted that a single substance may be perceived in varied ways—seawater is both harmful (for men) and beneficial (for fishes). His understanding of the relation of opposites to each other enabled him to overcome the chaotic and divergent nature of the world, and he asserted that the world exists as a coherent system in which a change in one direction is ultimately balanced by a corresponding change in another. Between all things there is a hidden connection, so that those that are apparently “tending apart” are actually “being brought together.”

“Heracleitus.” Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Deluxe Edition. (2007)

The physical science of the ancients was preoccupied with earth, air, wind, and fire as the fundamental constituents of reality. Heracleitus was part of that point of view, and he fell for a rather one-sided absolutism that fire was the ultimate constituent and water, earth, and everything else, derived from it.

A savagely cruel and ironic sort of enantiadromia played out in Heracelitus’s own fate:

The death of Heracleitus is perhaps philosophy’s saddest case of the failure of theory to work in practice. Heracleitus identified fire as the principle element of nature and creation. The human soul, as part of the world soul Logos, was man’s fiery part and had to be protected from its opposite, moisture, which dampened the fires while asleep and in excess caused madness. It can only be regarded as tragic irony that he should suffer from dropsy, a condition in which water accumulates in the body. He died in his desperate attempts to draw the moisture out through heat by plastering himself with dung.

http://www.creatorix.com.au/philosophy/02/02f07.html

Enantiadromia is the tendency of living systems to oscillate between extremes.  Heraclietus coined the term and ultimately personified it—a fire absolutist who died of excess water. A more familiar example, someone begins a romantic relationship absurdly idealizing someone, which leads to the collapse of idealization, and now the equal and opposite view that the former beloved is the worst jerk to have ever lived results.  Someone puts himself on an overly restrictive diet and this leads to the equal and opposite binge.  Collectively, many religious systems set up harsh taboos around sexuality, and this leads to the modern tendency to rebel toward promiscuity.  Catholic priests have been known to personify enantiadromia in unfortunate ways.  The pendulum of enantiadromia can often be an unconscious way of relating to paradox, where an individual or collective fluctuates between the extreme poles of the paradox—like celibacy/promiscuity.  Someone rebels from feeling like a victim into believing absolutely in the you-create-your-own-reality principle, where the universe revolves around the individual.

Some versions of a key Ken Wilber insight, the “pre/trans fallacy,”  seem to relate to enantiadromia.  Essentially, the pre/trans fallacy notices a common tendency to confuse pre-rational states with trans-rational states, since both are non-rational.  The “reductivist” version of this is the tendency of “scientism,” which  reduces all transrational mystical states to prerational infantilism, and dismisses authentic spiritual experience as “superstitious nonsense.”  Freud clearly fell for this half of the fallacy, especially in The Future of an Illusion. The “elevationist” version of the fallacy, ubiquitous in the New Age, is to elevate prerational states to the transcendent and to demonize rationality.  From this side of the fallacy, babies are thought to be Buddhas, and anything tribal or aboriginal is romanticized and inflated as infinitely superior to anything modern or rational.  Promiscuity is seen as a daring rebellion from antiquated taboos, even though it is usually in high conformity to what peers are doing.  They recognize as conventional the older sexual morays of the past, but fail to recognize that their rebellion is part of a vast conventionalism of the present, and that this new conventionalism is actually based on a still more primitive level of development than the old conventionalism. Regressing to pre-rational hedonism, indulging every impulse and irrational notion is seen as enlightened, post-conventional and transcendent. This is the state of the typically goofy New Age person who never heard an urban legend or bit of mystical-sounding nonsense without adopting it wholesale. This type of person is fiercely anti-intellectual and anti-rational, so it is impossible to talk them down from their absurdities, even the attempt to do so casts you, in their minds, as this clueless rationalist stuck in their ego. They believe they have transcended rationality, while forgetting that to transcend something you first have to achieve it!

Falling for the pre/trans fallacy usually means that someone is caught on the pendulum of enantiadromia and has fallen for absolutisms. Achieving rationality, analytic ability, and discernment seems too dry and difficult so one swings back to infantile-magical thinking and pretends that it is transcendent.  Building a strong, conscious ego able to withstand the outrageous slings and arrows of fortune seems too difficult, and so the pendulum swings back to infantile omnipotence, and a confused person believes in you-create-your-own-reality as an absolutism.

The dynamic paradoxicalist is capable of a more subtle and variable relationship to paradoxes than the person or collective caught on the pendulum of enantiadromia, flipping back and forth between zero and one, the absolutist poles of the paradox.  The dynamic paradoxicalist is able to respond to subtler cues that his relationship to a given paradox is becoming strained and is in need of compensation, and he is also able to choose middle spectrum positions when appropriate.

On the other hand, the dynamic paradoxicalist doesn’t fall into the fallacy of the “middle path.” The dynamic paradoxicalist doesn’t have to choose the path of Goldilocks, who avoids the porridge that is too hot or too cold and always goes for the tepid mush.  Sometimes we want hot or cold, we may need to experience extremes.  There can be great value in climbing K2, or in the shattering dark night of the soul; aiming always at the middle is a strategy of tepid mediocrity.  A frequent New Age affectation is the verbal emphasis on balance.  Balance is typically used to indicate the middle path position, the 50/50 state where the scales would be balanced.  A perfectly symmetrical statue would have this type of balance, but a much more alive type of balance is dynamic balance, the balance of a ballet dancer or a martial artist.  The dynamic paradoxicalist employs dynamic balance, not the static equilibrium of the 50/50 middle state.

For this reason, the dynamic paradoxicalist is not forever favoring paradox over a position committed to one pole or the other.  There are times when it is better to be engaged at the poles and not in the middle, or in a detached state of appreciating the nondualistic grand paradox view.  The dynamic paradoxicalist is not a proselytizer—as so many absolutists/fundamentalists are—because he recognizes that some people, in some circumstances, may need to engage the poles and may even need to be absolutists or fundamentalists.

From a developmental point of view—an appropriately hierarchical view—many people are not ready for dynamic paradoxicalism.  A newborn baby needs to be allowed to form a bond of absolute dependence, and does not need instruction on inner independence.  There may be healthy structures living at the poles, which should not be attacked by the paradox view.  Some people may be at a developmental stage where they will thrive only by being fundamentalists. Anti-fundamentalism—an ism I often find very attractive—is also a fundamentalism.  The Amish are fundamentalists, and while I wouldn’t want to be Amish, I can respect their way of life.  Some people may also need to swing with the pendulum of enantiadromia, repeating romantic relationships that begin with idealization and end in bitter disenchantment, because that might be their developmental path.

Seligman, and other psychologists who research the positive affective states—what makes people happy—have discovered that religion makes people happier, but only if it is fundamentalist religion.  In considering this finding, a possibility is that fundamentalists may be so used to lying to themselves and believing what they are supposed to believe, that when they answer the questionnaire they believe that they should be happy and confuse that with happiness, which they report on the questionnaire, creating a false finding. If they admitted to being unhappy, that would cast doubt on their fundamentalist way of life.   But it is also possible that on some level they really are happier, they are comforted and even inspired by having a map of absolutes with which to navigate the complexity and ambiguity of life.

One of the states most closely associated with unhappiness is “psychic entropy”—a classic, fragmented state where one is oppressed by tape loops of negative, repetitive thoughts, anxieties, and afflictive emotions.  The term apparently originated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a way to explain why people would lose the desirable state he called “Flow.”  Psychic entropy preponderates in states like boredom and anxiety, where one unpleasantly loses focus and intention.  People tend to be happier in social situations than in solitude because the social distracts and diverts them from psychic entropy. The research also shows that almost everyone is happier in company than in solitude, even people who say they prefer solitude.  An attraction, I believe, of charismatic people is that they act like a powerful magnet, lining up the scattered iron filings of psychic entropy into neat patterns.  The revival meeting preacher, the hyped-up motivational speaker, the rabble-rousing demagogue, the genuinely inspirational visionary, all of these charismatic types are decreasing the psychic entropy of those they are able to magnetize.  A fundamentalism has the magnetic charge of polar extremes and it can take a fragmented person, drifting in psychic entropy, and boost him to a state of much higher-level of functioning, making him happier in the process.

A dynamic paradoxicalist does not have to view happiness as an absolute goal.  Development is often spurred on by pain, by the dark night of the soul, and therefore suffering and happiness are part of a paradox to be related to dynamically.  Higher functioning is not an absolute goal, despite the Western fervor for always being optimal.  Illness and aging, immersion in the imaginal process, the need to engage deeply with emotion, grief, ecstasy, and a variety of other states, may make it appropriate, even crucial, that we surrender on occasion the virtue of being high-functioning and optimal.

A characteristic of most isms is that they usually claim to be efficient factories for turning sow’s ears into silk purses.  This could be a Christian fundamentalist inviting everyone to be born again, or Anthony Robbins inviting you to awaken the giant within—see his book, Awaken the Giant Within —through the magic of neuro-linguistic programming.  There is this false democratic ideal that everyone has equal potential, but the merest glance at the phenomenal world, the slightest consideration of the hierarchies of nature, should dispel this sentimental delusion.  Sure, nature may create some conch shells that are organized around the Fibonacci sequence, the mathematical golden mean, but nature also pumps out midgets and giants, there are the runts of the liter and the champion blood hounds, the omegas and the alphas, the high and the low in every quality—strength, speed, beauty, intelligence, character, creativity, will, you name it.  Therefore, the capacity to benefit from dynamic paradoxicalism is also extremely variable.  From the point of view of the spiral dynamics theory of human evolution, there is a hierarchy of human types organized according to memes, and very large portions of the human species are better suited for fundamentalisms than for a philosophy like dynamic paradoxicalism at this phase of evolution.

The quality and size of a person coming out of a given system usually has a lot more to do with the quality and size of a person entering the system than with the system itself.  Sure, for 6’ 7” Anthony Robbins, neuro-linguistic programming awakened a giant within because he had a giant within, like many highly charismatic people he had a high innate level of personal power.  The problem is that some people may have a midget within, and that midget might actually wake up better within a religious fundamentalism than something like neuro-linguistic programming, which seems to unconsciously assume that everyone has access to more will, inner resources, and self-initiative than is actually the case.  Similarly, if Michael Jordan wrote a book entitled, “Awaken the NBA Star Within,” it might be genuinely inspirational and helpful to a nineteen-year-old, 6’ 9” college basketball star, but may not work so well for many other human types. Even Michael Jordan can no longer awaken the NBA star within.

However, during the Anthony Robbins weekend, all sorts of fragmented people are magnetized by the intense charisma of Anthony Robbins, and get this revival meeting hyped-up high while this towering figure of neuro-linguistic programming zeal is on stage for a couple of days.  But left to their own resources—plus some NLP tapes—they revert to psychic entropy and default to the midget within.  Though, to be fair, some people at the seminar may really have just the right sort of giant within, and may find NLP and the inspirational example of Anthony Robbins to be miraculously helpful.

I’m not criticizing midgets here. There is a need for compassionate acceptance of the whole hierarchy, and this includes recognizing the fallacy of giants bearing isms, who think they will bring out the giant in everyone.  Dynamic paradoxicalism will not turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, and it will not awaken a giant within unless you have a fairly awake giant within you already.

The wise application of dynamic paradoxicalism has more to do with innate ability and essence than a series of formula. What makes someone a metaphorical giant is their operating from the self, the totality of psychic structures, and not merely the ego and/or the mind.  From the perspective of the self, one is aware that perception of what is going on is not merely a diagnosis of an objective outside reality, but is also a choice.  In many cases, there is not a single answer to what is happening, but a choice of timelines one may enter based on interpretation of ambiguous circumstances.  For example, let’s say I lose my wallet.  I can interpret that as a random occurrence—everyone loses things and this is just one more example of that entropic principle.  Alternatively, I could choose to interpret the loss of the wallet symbolically.  Wallets contain ID, and in dreams loss of a wallet often represents loss of an old identity. I decide to incorporate the loss of the wallet into my life mythos, and use this minor shock to help in the release of an old, false identity.  Is one of these perceptions right, and the other wrong?  A strong case could be made for either of them, and there is no single correct diagnosis of the event.  By choosing the random occurrence view I enter one timeline, and by choosing the symbolic, mythological view I enter another.

When psychologists categorize people as optimists or pessimists they sort them based on their “explanatory style.”  A study I read about optimists and pessimists years ago in Omni magazine reported that pessimists turned out to be better at reality testing, their predictions of future outcomes were more accurate than those of optimists.  But in every other area of life they evaluated—-wealth, health, relationships, etc. the optimists were found to be significantly better off. More recent studies have confirmed such findings.  For, a nine year, well-controlled study in the Netherlands found that optimists had a 29% lower mortality rate and were 77% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease than pessimists.

(Source: Archives of General Psychiatry – November 2004; 2004;61:1126-35.
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/).

A dynamic relationship to paradox means that one has more latitude of explanatory style and can choose from more alternative interpretations.  Global intuition can guide one to the interpretation that most empowers the meanings and goals of a particular life path. It would, however, be a one-sided connection to paradox to assume such interpretive latitude exists in every case, and it takes discernment to realize where to use it and where to surrender it. For example, if I wish to send someone an email, I don’t assume much interpretative latitude when it comes to spelling out their email address, though I may have a lot of latitude when it comes to the body of the text.

The dynamic paradoxicalist doesn’t merely tolerate or learn to live with ambiguity, but actually values it.  There is a close connection between ambiguity and free will.  If everything in our world were sharply defined, we would be living in a mechanical world.  To use video games as analogy, if we lived in an early video game like Space Invaders, everything would be sharply defined and mechanical with no ambiguity at all—you know exactly what the computer is going to do, exactly what the rules and the goals are. However, when you play a networked computer game like World of Warcraft, things are much more ambiguous because you have avatars operated by autonomous human beings, and the system is far more open and unpredictable.  You can’t even assume that every avatar will operate to enhance the odds of their survival in the game world, since one of them might be spaced-out or bored, or perhaps entertained by self destruction. When free will enters a system, complexity and ambiguity increases with it.  When things become absolute and unambiguous, free will recedes. This is why relationships are notoriously—or wonderfully—ambiguous.  You can never be absolutely sure what another person is going to do, unless they are a very mechanical person and/or in very mechanical circumstances.  Ambiguity provides greater room for creative interpretive style and for new forms to come into being.  The more ambiguous an inner or outer situation is,  the more the dynamic paradoxicalist can be dynamic.