The Tao Te Ching and Dorothy L Sayers

Some might ask, "If there is no good or evil in the long run, then what's the use or the point of trying to be good?" It's a valid question. The point is that when we are fully present in the now, or as the New Testament calls it, "being led by the Spirit", then we know in that moment what action is right for that moment. It does not mean that we should do whatever we feel like in this life, regardless of consequences. To say that only spirit matters and this material world is useless is Gnosticism. While on one hand, that is true, at the same time, it's not true. This is the paradox. It is both true and not true at the same time.

But this kind of worldview that says, "spirit good, material world evil" is just another form of Dualism. Dualism can be helpful in trying to understand the physical world; hot and cold, good and bad, dark and light. I mean, learning to not put your hand on a hot stove is helpful, or learning to not put your tongue on a frozen pole is useful. But people who never mature beyond good v bad, black v white, hot or cold, yes or no can never really understand that everything is interconnected. It is both AND, hot and cold, good and bad.  As the Tao Te Ching points out, light and dark are the same. You cannot know one without the other. Of course, as we talked about before, these are just words and judgments.  As the Tao Te Ching says, “All the world knows and recognizes the beautiful.  Herein lies ugliness.”  In other words, in naming something good or bad, we have fallen into the old egoic trap of mental labels, forms, and judgments.

This brings us back to the interconnectedness of both form and formless. So, we do not take a dualistic worldview that only the formless dimension counts and that all forms are evil. They are both integrated.  Formless begets form, while form begets formless. This is the mystery within mystery. They are the same. Two sides of same coin. Temporary and eternal. Experience and mental concepts. 

Dorothy L. Sayers, Anglican apologist, called this intersection or juxtaposition of spirit and carnal, form and formless, spiritual and physical world "Incarnational living". She describes it as how an artist may be inspired to create a work of art. In and of itself, the creation (artwork) has a form that is inspired by the artist's spirit. In a sense, the artist imbues this piece with a bit of him/herself. But it truly becomes incarnational when another human interacts with it and finds something transcendent in their experience of this work of art. It's not just something the viewer gets from the art, but it is also something they bring to the art when they experience it.

What do we mean by transcendence? Transcendence is not a thing (though we try to give it a name). Transcendence cannot be a goal, otherwise it becomes an object. If I make it my goal to be transcendent or enlightened, then I am operating from my egoic mind, as though true spirituality can be something I use to define myself. This is why the term "holier than thou" really points to an egotistical trait rather than true holiness. Transcendence cannot be an object or goal of the ego. Rather, transcendence only comes in the now. It can only be experienced deeply now.  The path to transcendence is only in the now. It cannot be a future aim or a past glory. It is present moment experience of the one spirit, one life, one consciousness, or communion with God.

It's the deep, experiential knowing without words, beyond labels.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 wrote that he did not come to you with eloquent or persuasive words, but in a demonstration of the spirit's power, so that what you understood was not because of human wisdom or understanding. NLT

"When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan." (1 Cor 2:1) He goes on…

From the NIV- 1 Cor 2:4-7 "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.  We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.  No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began."

True spirituality defies words. True spirituality cannot be understood with the human, limited, finite mind. The person who goes on and on about how spiritual they are has lost the plot. They are unspiritual. Spiritual things cannot be discerned by the egoic mind, or the person controlled by their human understanding. They can, however, be understood on a deeper level, an experiential level of understanding that does not need words.  Even this explanation cannot really get through, because I am limited by words, constructs, and finite forms when trying to describe something which is infinite.

Thought for the day

Surrender!

 I am reflecting on this pointer: surrender to this moment. It’s when I surrender in the now, that I find peace, joy, patience with others, total acceptance of others, and love.  After all, that’s what love is, isn’t it? Love is total acceptance of “self” and others as we are in this moment. I put “self” in quotes as we now know that there is no real self, only a false, mind-made, human- constructed idea of a separate self with its petty, little ego and its self-involved stories and little dramas.  Love sees the conditioned mind and “self” in others, and says, “Okay, that’s what’s there right now.”

We know that what we resist persists. My priest recently shared the gospel where Jesus talks about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. He used it to talk about fighting against racism and social injustice and ecological injustice wherever we see it. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that he had not gotten it wrong, per se, but that he only glimpsed a portion of what Jesus was talking about. Jesus was talking about the destruction of forms.  Remember, everything that Jesus said was a metaphor. Many of my Christian friends would point to the scripture and say, “Aha!  You see Jesus was prophesying doom and gloom, and we should be afraid of the future.”  Many of them point to Matthew chapter 25 and say, “aha! See? Jesus predicted the end of the world.”

But what they fail to realize is that Jesus was merely pointing out the end of this world of form. Remember this sutra: “all forms, all structures are unstable”. This world of form was never meant to last forever. The only thing that lasts forever is now, this moment. Eternity is now.

Now is the one continuously unfolding moment in time. Now is eternity.

And so when people look at the Gospels and say, “see? Jesus predicted hell and gloom”, they forget that he spoke metaphorically. They forget that he was talking about the destruction of all forms. Did the temple in Jerusalem fall? Yes! Of course! Jesus was simply pointing out, though, that all things will disintegrate in this world of form: bodies, ideas, thoughts, buildings, religions, governments, mountains, kingdoms, languages… EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD OF FORM WILL EVENTUALLY DISSOLVE!

When he predicted more earthquakes and tidal waves, was he being prophetic, as in predicting the future? No! In fact, the Old Testament scriptures and teachings were so anti-prophecy, so anti-predicting the future, that anyone caught trying to predict the future was to be stoned to death.  It is unfortunate that in the modern, Christian world, the pervading belief and use of the words “prophet and prophecy” always indicate some dire or even glorious foretelling of future events!  Some point to the Old Testament prophets and say, “Look! THEY foretold gloom and destruction if people didn’t get in line with god’s program”!  If they were in the foretelling business of predicting the future, then they were in direct conflict with the very rules their god put into place and should have been stoned to death.  Rather than thinking of prophets as fortunetellers or future predictors, another way to see them is as people who see a much larger picture of the patterns of human behavior. 

So rather than predicting a future of gloom, Jesus was simply commenting on the instability of all forms in this world, even his own religion and culture and language (how many people speak Aramaic now?). 

So what is eternal? God, spirit, the one consciousness, the cosmic Christ, our spirit as a part of God? Yes, we are part of God, spirit, the eternal one. If you think that is too pretentious or assuming, see Jesus’ final prayer that we see that we are one, “even as you and I are one”(John 16).

So how do we find God? You can only ever experience God or oneness with God right now in this moment.

For myself, I grew up raised in fear, always dreading the future, the rapture, the tribulation. I never realized that Jesus wasn’t predicting all this horrible stuff! He was simply pointing out that if left to our carnal nature, our human mind-made constructs, we would, of course, devolve into wars and catastrophes!  This was not about predicting some dreadful future.  It was simply a statement on the egoic mind-made structures of man. So, when I think of that sermon and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem that Jesus spoke of, I see that he was speaking of physical and temporary forms falling away, even (gasp!!!) Judaism and yes, his own physical body. 

One of my dearest friends from church keeps pressuring me to commit to stay at the church forever and ever until I die. And yet, I can’t help but think that maybe the episcopal church is fading away, like all man-made structures. The church of Jesus Christ was never meant to be the end-all be-all of the world of physical form. 

Remember, the finger pointing at the moon is NOT the moon.  Religion is only useful as long as it points us back to oneness with God, but religion is NOT god. And as long as Christians maintain that Jesus the human is the only answer, they miss everything he said. We have missed the most crucial essence of everything he taught. Love can only ever be experienced now. God is now. Forgiveness only ever happens when I recognize that we are the same, you and I are not separate, different.   When I love my neighbor as myself, that’s when I am able to “forgive”, because there is no “other”.  “Forgiveness” is just me recognizing and accepting the form of another as it is right now.  When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, Christians twisted this, especially modern day, American Christians. We think it points to a belief in Jesus the human as God that saves us. But Jesus was speaking metaphorically again. He was saying, “I am”, that is, in being, in stillness, when we are led by the spirit, when we are in spirit, in quietness and stillness, in presence,  in beingness or I am-ness, that we discover the way, the truth, and the life. The Way, the truth, and the life can only ever be found right now in beingness.

I’m beginning to understand why the Buddha said that with desiring comes suffering. When we want or desire life to be other than it is right now, we suffer. We complain, we gripe, we criticize, we judge and we are unhappy. It seems like we can never allow this moment to be as it is. We always seem to want life to be different than it is. We want more. Or we think we have to fix ourselves. We can never seem to be satisfied with life the way it is. But I’m beginning to understand that surrendering to this moment, to life as it’s unfolding right now is where we find peace, joy, love, and God. We spend 99.9% of our lives wanting life to be different, not accepting this moment. We can never seem to be content with what is.  It seems we have to judge it and demand that life line up with our desires and our wants and our hopes and our dreams. And when it doesn’t, we say, “life is so unfair!” 

Surrender to now is the only way to peace.

Unfortunately, recently at church, I did not live out surrendered to this moment in whatever form that this moment takes. I found myself reacting negatively to two guys at church. I think I need a new strategy to help me remember to be surrendered to this moment. My hope is that I will take a deep breath and count to three before I answer someone else either criticizing or giving me instructions. I am not proud of the way I overreacted to both people.  When I recognized that it was my ego and my pain body reacting negatively to their instructions, at least I was able to do that…eventually? But in spite of all my good intentions as I drove to church, I still found myself reacting negatively to people in the band and at church who just rub me the wrong way. This is because my ego was really at work and my pain body was reacting to criticism. And the ego really wanted to be right!  

Today is Monday and I’ve spent the whole morning completely taken over by my egoic mind, fighting with other people in my head, making up conversations with people who aren’t there. LOL! I can’t believe how completely I have been controlled by my mind this morning. Even while listening to Eckhart Tolle, my mind has just been out of control with judgments, criticisms, and angry retorts to people who aren’t even there. I laugh about it now, but it took a while for my mind to disengage. But the more I practice observing my own reactions to others, the easier it gets to let go of this desire to defend some false sense of self.  That is true humility…not feeling the need to defend some imaginary self or attack some imaginary “enemy” in the form of another.  

See Tao Te Ching 16 on emptiness.  The Tao describes emptiness as the truly useful way of being.  An empty cup or vessel is useful precisely because it empty.  If it were already full, where would the usefulness be? Jesus is the perfect example of emptying himself of “self”.  It was in this state of emptiness, true humility, or egolessness, that he was truly useful and showed us the path to God.