Being YOU is better than being cool…(Tao te Ching part 8)

Sharings from week 8’s Satsang….

How would life be if we didn’t determine what was ‘cool’? And instead followed what we just wanted to do? Making paper mache, collecting rocks, knitting bobble hats….whatever floats our boat? It isn’t really a surprise that we have problems following these intuitive urges when we can also see how easily things can be shut down sometimes. We get told straight away to nip those lofty, strange hobbies in the bud before they blossom, because well….”it won’t earn us a living”, or “that’s not a respectable career path to go into”.

So we hide them away, and try and do the right thing, the ‘academic’ thing, or the ‘cool’ thing. What if our gifts are these things flowing through us? Flowing through the Tao? Isn’t it true that we lose ourselves in what we love? And isn’t life so wonderful when we forget ourselves?

We are so busy doing such a colossal amount of ‘doing’, which doesn’t really need to be done, that we sometimes forget to tune into those little moments of what we love. And sometimes we might not even know what that is yet, because we haven’t given ourselves room to explore it, being so tied up in our doing-ness.

Sometimes the coconuts need smashing. Sometimes we need to step out of the mould. We can get so stuck in rituals, even seemingly ‘good’ rituals, we don’t even stop to ask why we are doing them. Rituals are only powerful when we know where they are coming from. Not just because “That’s what my grandma did” or “that’s just what we do”. Ritual can of course, be helpful and necessary when coming from a place of power, but if it comes from a place of habit, we need to check in again and ask why….to see if that Bhakti, that desire fire, is still in there for it. Do we practice our yoga every day out of ritual? Out of ‘because we should’? Or is the Bhakti still in there to practice because our hearts are reaching for something higher? Sometimes, the only way to find out is to break the rules a little. Be a ‘bad’ yogi. (Go on, I dare you).

True freedom comes from discipline, but even then sometimes the discipline needs to be broken to break into a whole different level of freedom. The discipline then, comes from a freedom to choose one’s way of living. In other words, it is VERY OKAY to break the rules sometimes! So go ahead…be yourself…be uncool, break some rules.

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The verse for your own personal contemplation this week…(Chapter 38)

The Master doesn't try to be powerful; thus he is truly powerful. The ordinary man keeps reaching for power; thus he never has enough. The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done. The kind man does something, yet something remains undone. The just man does something, and leaves many things to be done. The moral man does something, and when no one responds he rolls up his sleeves and uses force. When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos. Therefore the Master concerns himself with the depths and not the surface, with the fruit and not the flower. He has no will of his own. He dwells in reality, and lets all illusions go.

Om om, Adéle x