Verse 1 as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.
Byron Katie speaks only to the first two sentences. She states, “Before you name anything, the world has not things in it, no meaning. There’s nothing but peace in a wordless, questionless world. It’s the space where everything is already answered, in joyful silence.” In my interpretation I hear her say that we get in our way by naming/labeling everything. Ms. Katie also says, “There’s nothing serious about life and death.” To me that means we have taken the unnamable and given it a name, life and death. Yet there is no life and no death if we don’t name it that. Life and death is finite. The unnamed is infinite. I think I prefer that there is no life and death, just eternity. I know when my husband, Gary died he wasn’t really dead, he was just no longer in physical human form. The entity I knew as Gary continued on. I believe that to the bottom of my soul. I know he is still around just in another dimension. That is why I believe in eternity. That which can be named is not eternal. All energy, in whatever form, is eternal.
Verse 1 as interpreted by Wayne Dyer:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Tao is both named and nameless. As nameless it is the origin of all things; as named it is the Mother of 10,000 things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery; ever desiring, one sees only the manifestations. And the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding.
In my audio version of Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, Wayne Dyer states that paradoxical thinking is imbedded in eastern thinking; like Yin & Yang, this and that, good and bad. And in the same vein, desiring and desirelessness are two different things. What the Tao is asking us to do is cultivate a practice of being in the mystery and allowing it to flow through us. We must find our own personal way of living the Tao. Dr. Dyer’s advice to us is to first just enjoy the mystery. Let the world unfold without trying to figure it all out. Don’t constantly try to figure others out, just allow them to be. Then he goes on to ask us to let go of labeling everything. Nothing in this Universe is what it is named. The word water is not water and nothing can truly be described by words. He asks us to bask in the magnificence of what is seen and sensed instead of just experiencing the word. One exercise is to stop occasionally and ask ourselves where we are on the continuum of desiring and allowing, reminding ourselves that often desires are more about what we “think” should be not what really is.
I’d like to say that I spent every day of this week thinking about this first verse of the Tao and what it is teaching me. But the truth is, I had momentary flashes of awareness but most of my week was spent either experiencing my houseguests or catching up on things I had neglected while my houseguests were visiting. But I did write a couple of observations in my journal and I will share them now.
“This verse reminds me of the Quantum Physics concept that a quark has infinite possibilities of where it might be but the minute you focus your attention on it, the quark changes. Like manifestation. Everything is in energy form until we focus our attention and our energy on it and then it begins to manifest. My living in Florida in the winter was just a possibility until I focused my attention on it. Then it became a reality. The manifestation is only a piece or possibility of the eternal not the actual eternity of possibilities.”
Later in the week I wrote, “I long to be the namelessness even though I have no idea what that means. But some desire pulls at me to come to it. I have named the nameless God, Creator, Source, and a Power greater than myself, but in naming it I have limited it. What calls to me (deep in my physical heart and deep in my soul) is more than what we humans have tried to define. Today I will try to look at everything I have named and see if I can look beyond the name. Like later this afternoon when I go to the doctor. Let’s see if I can look beyond the doctor and see the person and look beyond the person and see the nameless eternal.”
Again, I would like to say that I spent the whole day looking beyond the labels. At first I did. I poured my coffee and thought of how the coffee was a combination of water and coffee beans and then progressed backwards to the coffee plant and the grower and the dirt and the air and the rain that helped produce the coffee bean in Africa (I was drinking decaf Sumatra). I believe I was able to continue that thought with the eggs I ate and the soymilk I added to my coffee. Then of course I got distracted and my awareness went out the window. I never even made it to staying aware of the doctor. I admit that I did see her more than just a doctor, mainly because she was about 20 years younger than me and the younger the professionals are the harder it is for me to see them as anything but youngster :) But I did not stay in my awareness enough to even ask myself who she was outside of being my doctor other than remembering her comment that when she goes to the beach she goes to Sanibel Island not Fort Myers Beach.
Today I felt pulled to what Wayne Dyer spoke about desire. Desire is a paradox to me. Most of my life I have been taught that desire is bad because I should be happy with what I have not constantly wanting more. Yet in my metaphysical studies I have learned to look at desire with different eyes. Since we co-create our reality our process isn’t about not desiring but desiring because it is what I want and what is best for me. But sometime I need to acknowledge that I desire something because I’m afraid of not having it or I’m feeling miserable bout my present situation. One of my current desires is to find a gentleman to share my life with. Sometimes I know that I truly desire this because I want to get to know someone better and because I love the feeling of loving another human being in that close, intimate way. But sometimes I have this desire because I am lonely or scared of what it will be like to be alone when I am too old to take care of myself. Just as Dr. Dyer suggests, sometimes our desires come from what we “think” is right for us. Thus desire is not right or wrong it is more about what serves me well and what hinders me.
The metaphysical beliefs I have learned sometimes confuse me because if I take these beliefs literally, I learn that if I don’t focus on what I desire I might get something I don’t want. Yet in reality, sometime I desire and sometimes I want to just see what is going to happen. Spiritually I think this is the best course to take. In my eclectic belief system I know that often I limit myself when I do not sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. My Higher Power usually has a better view of what’s going on than I do in my limited perspective, so for me it is knowing about when to desire and when to be desireless.
I once heard that the word desire comes from the latin, de sire, which means from the father. Somehow this comforted me. If I listen to "the Father" I know what my true desire is. Then I went out to Etymonline and here’s what I found to be the origin of this word: Early 13th century from Old French, desirer, from Latin, desiderare, "long for, wish for" with the original sense meaning "await what the stars will bring," from the phrase de sidere "from the stars," which comes from sidris "heavenly body, star or constellation."
So if I believe the Universe is made up of everything in the heavens (stars) and the earth one might believe the nameless to be the Universe. In that interpretation then maybe desire does mean “from the Father.” Whatever desire means, I do know that for me the best place to be is in the middle, balancing my desires with letting go and allowing myself to “go with the flow.” Maybe if I let go and listen to the nameless I will hear the true desire of the Universe for me and then can flow into that desire effortlessly.
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