“Words can travel thousands of miles. May my words create mutual understanding and love. May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

How often have we allowed ourselves to say a harsh word or two to a friend or a family member in a moment of anger or irritation? I have witnessed too many parents berating their children in public, sometimes over the slightest mistake made by the child or when the child was simply being playful like how most children would be. I have seen the spirit of these children diminish as seeds of fear, anger and frustration were watered before my eyes. Words have power. They can be used mindfully and responsibly to inspire motivate, create, heal, and offer guidance and support. They can also hurt, abuse, divide, attack, lie, gossip, judge, and diminish.

Buddha once said: ‘A person is born with an axe in his mouth. He whose speech is unwholesome cuts himself with an axe.’ The blade wounds us, for what we say of others is often true of ourselves. Our communication often reflects the seeds within us that have been nurtured or neglected.

Jerry Braza shared in his book “The Seeds of Love” :

Loving speech implies deep listening, taking the time to be still and quiet long enough to listen to what takes place in our minds and hearts so that we are better equipped to respond mindfully to others. We usually tend to speak from the head rather than from the heart. It is typical to be thinking and planning what to say from the head. At other times, the need to be right interferes with heart communication. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?

When we focus on feelings and happiness over righteousness and superiority, we create a communication from the heart. These are the cornerstones for emotional intimacy and a means of developing a deeper connection with others.

“No man should talk one way with his lips and think another way in his heart” – The Talmud

How do we water the seed of loving speech?

Thich Nhat Hanh said: ‘Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope.’

Jerry Braza shared further: ‘In every moment, as you are about to communicate electronically or verbally, mindfully stop and realize the potential impact of the message you are about to send. Does it inspire confidence, joy, and hope? Or does it foster greater suffering in yourself and others? A friend who responds to your illness with ‘I send you healing light and energy’, versus ‘Why haven’t you taken better care of yourself?’ is watering the seeds of loving-kindness in you with loving speech.

Loving speech is best achieved by our awareness of how our words reduce suffering and inspire hope – or how they create more suffering. Knowing the power our words can have, it is important to consider the impact of what we say.

How will our next words water the seeds of joy, compassion, and equanimity?

How do my words fuel the seeds of anger, fear or jealousy?

]]> http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/loving-speech-is-speaking-from-the-heart/feed/ 0 http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/deep-listening/ http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/deep-listening/#comments Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:06:12 +0000 http://davidtay.sg/?p=802

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” – Epictetus

This thought is such an apt reminder for all of us as often I noticed that we are hardly present when we are with one another. We are either distracted with our smart phones, responding constantly to messages that are often not urgent; or our minds are thinking about something else and are somewhere else – we are hardly there in the moment with the person.

I came across this sharing from Jerry Braza in his book “The Seeds of Love” on the topic of ‘Deep Listening’, and I would like to share his thoughts with everyone:

“How many times are you with someone yet not really there? How often have you shared deeply with another but not felt that you’d been heard? Our society is plagued with parents who aren’t present for their children and co-workers more interested in what is on their computer screen or phone than the person visiting their office. With the ability for 24/7 connectivity, we often get so busy tending our social networks that we miss the most precious connections that are right in front of us – connections with ourselves and others. Thanks to technology, people around the globe are more in touch and yet simultaneously more isolated. The familiar habit of ‘hurry sickness’, a need to judge or fix problems,or the need to defend our view keeps us from being present with one another.”

“Deep listening encompasses more than just being attentive to what another is expressing. It has far-reaching implications for the depth at which we can be present with another. Deep listening implies that we are engaged in an open, non-judgmental way. We are not listening for a break in the conversation so that we may add our perspective or opinions. We are listening in a way that helps people better understand themselves by offering them the freedom to express themselves openly. Our focus is completely on them, and we need do nothing but sit in compassionate silence and give our attention. Perhaps this can best be described as listening from the heart.”

How do we break away from this mindless pattern in our relationships?

“The first goal in deep listening is to develop an understanding of the other. Our purpose in listening is not to win an argument or solve a problem. Often our own personal stories or mental formation can cloud our interactions. At times our stereotypes can create a limited view of the other and often negate the potential of creating emotional intimacy in the relationship. Personally, I find that I have the need to try to fix a problem being shared by making what I feel are helpful suggestions to the issue at hand. In so doing I often miss the opportunity to understand the other’s journey, to see them reflected in the light of who they truly are as individuals, and to learn from their sharing. Sometimes we find ourselves in the position of listening to someone in great pain or deep grief. They may rage at the unfairness of the situation or express profound sadness in their circumstances. At such times it is so tempting to temper or discount their feelings to make ourselves feel more comfortable. However, the art of deep listening can be the greatest gifts to another on their path to healing. Breathing deeply, listening with an open heart, and adopting a non-judgmental attitude are all part of watering the seeds of loving-kindness and compassion rather than fear and negativity.”

Paul Tillich mentioned this: “The first duty of love is to listen.”

Be mindful every time we are with someone – that we are fully present and listening deeply with our hearts.

]]> http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/deep-listening/feed/ 0 http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/are-you-sure/ http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/are-you-sure/#comments Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:38:13 +0000 http://davidtay.sg/?p=805

Thich Nhat Hanh has this wisdom to share with us:

“All of us are only human, and we have wrong perceptions every day. Our spouse or partner is also subject to wrong perceptions, so we must help each other to see more clearly and more deeply. We should not trust our perceptions too much – that is something the Buddha taught. ‘Are you sure of your perceptions?’ he asked us. I urge you to write this phrase down on a card and put it up on the wall of your room: ‘Are you sure of your perceptions?’

There is a river of perceptions in you. You should sit down on the bank of this river and contemplate your perceptions. Most of our perceptions, the Buddha said, are false. Are you sure of your perceptions? This question is addressed to you. It is a bell of mindfulness.”

With this advice and wisdom, I am asking all of us to constantly question our perceptions. Also, too often we don’t ask the right questions to the people who claimed to be authorities of life and religion, and even our society; whether the perceptions they have are right. And sadly, too many of us allowed ourselves to be led in believing certain philosophies or beliefs without questions, and surrendering our powers to these people who claim to have exclusivity to these philosophies or beliefs.

Learning to ask the right questions and questioning these people, are not being disrespectful or being doubtful; I feel that the more we ask and question the perceptions, we pave the way for greater discoveries of Life for ourselves, and open up avenues to choose the life we want.

I am sharing this thought from Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Concentration helps us focus on just one thing. With concentration, the energy of looking becomes more powerful, and insight is possible. Insight always has the power of liberating us. If mindfulness is there, and we know how to keep mindfulness alive, concentration will be there, too. And if we know how to keep concentration alive, insight will also come. The energy of mindfulness enables us to look deeply and gain the insight we need so that transformation is possible.”

How many of us are guilty of encouraging ‘multi-tasking’ – putting it as a virtue to be nurtured in our lives?

I feel that when we ‘multi-task’, our focus is divided and often diluted to the point that we may end up doing all these tasks, mindlessly. And to a certain extent, we pay little attention to the details and often ‘rushed through them’ – mistakenly thinking that by getting them done fast (and all at the same time), we are being efficient.

Though some segments of our work culture puts a premium on such ‘efficiency’, I feel this way of living is quite dysfunctional as it will eventually eat into other areas of our lives. When we are with our loved ones, how often are we truly present in their presence? Not just loved ones but also when we are with others in a meeting or with colleagues at work, do we find ourselves ’somewhere else, and not in the here and now, with them?’ The idea of ‘multi-tasking’ gives the impression that we are paying attention to them and at the same time, able to ‘manage other matters’; but are we really? What is the quality we devote to these numerous tasks? How much insight do we gain when there is a skew towards quantity over quality?

Being able to fulfill many tasks entrusted to us is good but when our concentration is diluted, there is a good chance the quality of work is compromised. And if we do not correct it soon enough, this mindless living becomes a part of us in every areas of our lives. And it would not be a surprise that many of us will live our lives in mediocrity instead of showing excellence in everything we do, and being who we are.

]]> http://davidtay.sg/2012/02/the-liberating-power-of-insight/feed/ 0 http://davidtay.sg/2011/09/fear-is-an-illusion/ http://davidtay.sg/2011/09/fear-is-an-illusion/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:36:30 +0000 http://davidtay.sg/?p=793

Many of us have a tendency to be extremely critical of who we are that often we create an illusion of our own reality. I would like to share a passage that I have taken from ‘The Tenth Insight – Holding the Vision’ (James Redfield & Carol Adrienne):

“To a greater or lesser degree, in physical life we build our own version of Hell by staying attached to, and unconscious of, our control drama tendencies. When we forget our connection to our divine source, we have to construct a very narrow set of behaviors in order to reduce the world to a manageable level. Living in a defended zone fenced in by fear, we are not open to the full-blown mystery of life. We have become contracted, defended, fearful, and separate. Our language starts to show our fences in statements like, “I’m a rotten person.” “I’ll never make anything of myself.” “No one loves me.”

When we no longer remember that we set up these limitations in our mind, we project the unrecognized constriction into the external world. Let’s make sure we understand this point because it is an essential part of the crux of our so-called problems in daily life. If we have had certain experiences in life, we are going to see/experience/feel our everyday encounters through this filter of past experience. It’s the nature of desire to want what you don’t have. For example, young Juanita was short and round. She thought girls who are tall and thin had an advantage. Frank was bookish and frail. Since he had a rich interior life, but withdraw from competitive activities, he cultivated an outsider image. Shantara was the middle child of five sisters and felt like a nobody, lost in the crowd. At some level of consciousness, we are always worrying about losing control, being lost, losing our livelihood, being a loser without love, success, or happiness. How appropriate that Christ positioned himself as the shepherd, since a basic human archetypal fear is lostness. If we define ourselves a certain way, we entrench ourselves down a certain path. We can be the misunderstood artist or the uncreative blob. We can be the helpless failure or the efficient expert. We paint ourselves into a corner and then tell everybody that God did it.

Once these judgments are entrenched in our mind as reality, the level of fear is so great that we cannot give it up without experiencing anxiety. No amount of positive thinking is going to make us tall and thin. No amount of rationalization is going to make us a football hero. No amount of resume writing is going to make us special. If you’ve been telling yourself that you are a worthless, shiftless worm, you cannot suddenly shift from that story to nothing. We cannot take out a great big gob of Fear without having a gaping hole that has to be filled in with something else – trust, new wisdom, and connection to God.

The roots of dogma and ideology are grown in the soil of fear. Hell is being caught in our own dogma, our own inadequacies, over and over again without the gift of love, compassion, and greater self-understanding of who we really are. A high level of fear over time is like a low-grade fever, permeating our thinking, fettering our perceptions, and hedging our choices. One woman who relived a past-life said, “One [of my lifetimes] was a great spiritual growth, but through isolation, and in that lifetime there was death by torture. It was near Jerusalem. [Because of my religious belief] there was much trepidation and holding back….Fear of violence, fear of speaking her own mind resulted. Fear must be removed. It has to be out of the way, so that the being can venture forth to new growth experiences. More could have been gained from the other experiences had fear not gotten in the way. Stumbling blocks that are self-imposed just waste time. There are enough of them without creating any.” This woman saw how fear had created losses throughout several lifetimes. Maybe we should think of each lifetime as a painting. What the hey. What colors are you going to paint with this time?

In our spiritual existence between Earth lives, we dwell in the true vibration of the universe – we dwell in loving energy. But if we cannot perceive this loving energy, because of our addiction to our false perceptions, we are like the goldfish who, transferred from bowl to ocean, keeps swimming in tiny circles the size of her bowl. True liberation comes when we lose our sense of separateness, our need for control, and our fear of physical death. True liberation is using the full range of the palette – ruby red, alizarin crimson, cadium yellow, yellow ocher, hunter green, purple, terra-cotta, Mars black, blue-violet, gold, silver, and aquamarine. True liberation is being able to smell vomit, sulfur, money, honey-suckle, babies’ necks, garlic, fresh tomatoes, frankincense, peaches and semen, and know that all is God.”

The Fear that we have been living with all of our lives, is nothing but an illusion we have created in our minds, and which has caused us to live of life of separation and duality. Know for certain that we are all One and there is no ‘Us and Them’. A quote from Arthur Ford/Ruth Montgomery in ‘A World Beyond’:

“There is no evil except that which we create, for I have seen no signs of a devil on this side of the veil. We are our own devils, with our own thoughts and subsequent deeds…this evil gathers force as each passing generation leaves its own stamp of evildoing on the force that we think of as a devil…if [evil] is to be destroyed, it will be done through man’s awakening to the fact that even thoughts are deeds and that the ‘devil’ shrinks in size each time we replace an ugly thought or action with loving kindness. Thus we will approach the so-called millennium when good replaces evil in the hearts of those who inherit earth, not only in the flesh but in the spirit, as we are now doing.”

This passage is taken from a chapter in Ernest Holmes’ book: “Living without Fear”. I feel its good to share how positive thinking that is aligned with the Truth in Life, is the determining factor to wholesome living.

“Thoughts are things. This sounds familiar enough; we have all read it many times. But if this is true why can we not think and, through thinking, get what we want? We have been told that we do not get what we ask for because we ask amiss. All this seems very confusing for we also have been led to believe that we should receive anything asked for if we ask believing. It must be that some ideas are more potent than others, that some thoughts have more power than other thoughts, and this is actually the situation.

All thought is creative, but the real constructive creative power of mind comes only from true thoughts. True, positive, and affirmative thought has real power, for it produces the correct answer. Negative thought also has power for it produces undesired conditions. When we place a positive thought beside a negative one, when we recognize the beneficial one and understand the nature of the harmful one, then it is that we find that the true constructive idea can dominate and have complete power over the destructive one. Thus it is that we are told to know the truth if we are to be made free.

Thoughts are things. Yes, true thoughts are true things, false thoughts are false things. If we think according to the nature of the Divine, then shall we get what we want? Yes, provided what we wish for is really the truth. No, if it is not really the truth. We can never get five by adding two and two although we might believe that we can.

But how are we to know what thoughts to think? What should be the content of our prayers and spiritual mind treatments? How are we to know the false from the true? The answer is more simple than it may appear. Goodness is the truth, and so is beauty and strength and life and love and abundance and loyalty. Even the apparently selfish desires of our hearts are true if they do not contradict the fundamental Truth of the universe, which is unity and goodness and purity.

Our difficulty is not great provided we keep a few fundamentals in view. We have a Divine right to all that makes for a happy life. Abundance must be the heritage of our Divine nature. Our life must come from Life, and peace and happiness cannot contradict Reality. We shall not pray amiss if we affirm these things as part of our experience. Therefore, if we ask, believing, according to the Law of our being we must receive.

What we wish for and need is peace, ability, happiness, harmony, plenty, and a greater degree of livingness together with love and beauty. Possessing these we should be in heaven and we ought to be in heaven here and now in our daily living; that is, we should be in harmony with Life. There is no Power in the universe which wishes to withhold good from us – let us forever wipe this idea off the slate of our minds. God is eternal Goodness, hence no evil need befall us either here or hereafter. Life cannot produce death, consequently we cannot die though we pass through the experience miscalled death.

But what is there left to ask for? Nothing. We need but to accept and make use of that which already is and is for us. But each shall individualize the gifts of Life through his own nature, and this individualization constitutes that activity which personifies through each of us – the eternal Mind of the universe. this is the play of Life upon Itself and the desire to express which is working through all of us. There can be no life without living, no creator without a creation. And there can be no satisfied man without an adequate expression. There is nothing wrong about desire provided desire is in harmony with Truth. A man who has no desires is asleep and needs to be awakened.

What then if we should desire some special thing that we might enjoy it for a reason? Can there be anything wrong with this? Certainly not if this desire harms no one and helps us to express. If, then, we desire some special thing, why should we not ask for and receive it? But how do we ask? By knowing in our own minds that that for which we ask we now have. This creates the image of our desire and makes a definite pattern through which the energies of Mind may intelligently and lawfully act, and to which there may be attracted the conditions necessary for the fulfillment of the desire. And according to our belief, receptivity, and full acceptance will it be done.

We cannot live by proxy or attain by pretense. We are dealing with real laws and actual forces when we deal with mental and spiritual laws, and they cannot be fooled. From our own endeavor will come our own reward, only now we know that we are dealing with a Law which is amply able to fulfill the rightful demands made on It and which is intelligent enough to always bring them to pass. With this in mind we shall do our spiritual mind treatment work gladly and cheerfully and with much less effort, for we are no longer struggling against Life but flowing along with it. We are going with the current and not against it.

We should feel equal to any occasion and overcome by none. We should enter any and all true endeavors with a zest for the game and get a real joy out of living.”

This teaching is taken from The Dhammapada, a collection of the sayings of the Buddha:

“Who shall conquer this world and the world of death with all its gods? Who shall discover the shining way of the law?

You shall, even as the man who seeks flowers finds the most beautiful, the rarest.

Understand that the body is merely the foam of a wave, the shadow of a shadow. Snap the flower of desire and then, unseen, escape the king of death. And travel on.

Death overtakes the man who gathers flowers when with distracted mind and thirsty senses he searches vainly for happiness in the pleasures of the world. Death fetches him away as a flood carries off a sleeping village. Death overcomes him when with distracted mind and thirsty senses he gathers flowers. He will never have his fill of the pleasures of the world.

The bee gathers nectar from the flower without marring its beauty or perfume. So let the master settle, and wander.

Look to your own faults, what you have done or left undone. Overlook the faults of others.

Like a lovely flower, bright but scentless, are the fine but empty words of the man who does not mean what he says. Like a lovely flower, bright and fragrant, are the fine and truthful words of the man who means what he says.

Like garlands woven from a heap of flowers, fashion from your life as many good deeds.

The perfume of sandalwood, rosebay or jasmine cannot travel against the wind. But the fragrance of virtue travels even against the wind, as far as the ends of the world. How much finer is the fragrance of virtue than of sandalwood, rosebay, of the blue lotus or jasmine! The fragrance of sandalwood and rosebay does not travel far. But the fragrance of virtue rises to the heavens.

Desire never crosses the path of virtuous and wakeful men. Their brightness sets them free. How sweetly the lotus grows in the litter of the wayside. Its pure fragrance delights the heart.

Follow the awakened and from among the blind, the light of your wisdom will shine out, purely.”

When we are true to who we are, and live a life of virtue, our light and energy will reach out to many others. And in being who we are, we help one another to awaken to the completeness we all have in us.

It is not my way of Being to talk about negativity but I feel it warrants deep reflection and why this state of negative thinking and emotions are so prevalent in our lives. It is the recognition of what is.

All the cultures and all the religions have been conditioning us to feel negative about ourselves. Nobody is loved, appreciated, for just being himself or herself. We are asked to prove whether we are of any worth: ‘Bring gold medals from the university! Get First-Class Honors! Achieve success, money, power, prestige, respectability! Prove!’ Our worth is not intrinsic; that’s what has been taught to us. Our worth has to be proved. Almost everywhere we go in life, there appears to be a relentless need to ‘prove something to some people’, and sometimes in the company of close friends and family, negativity prevails.

Everybody is feeling negative about himself, because that’s how he has been made to feel. Our parents have done it to us – this is a heritage, a great heritage. Our teachers have done it to us, our priests have done it to us, our political leaders have done it to us – and so many people are doing it that, naturally, we have become impressed by the very idea that we are worthless, that we don’t have any intrinsic meaning or value, that we don’t have any significance of our own.

Each parent is saying to the child, to each child, ‘Prove that you have some worth.’ Being, just being, is not enough – some doing is needed.

OSHO shared: “My whole approach is that being is intrinsically valuable. Just that you are is such a gift from existence, what more can you ask for? Just to breathe in this beautiful existence is certificate enough that existence loves you, that existence needs you; otherwise you would not be here. You are; existence has given birth to you. There must have been an immense need – you have filled a gap. Without you existence would be less. And when I say this, I am saying it not only to you: I am saying to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to the pebbles on the shore. A single pebble less on the immense seashore and the seashore would not be the same. A single flower less and the universe would miss it.

We have to learn that we are valuable as we are. It is not about the ego – just the contrary. In the feeling that we are valuable as we are, we will also feel others are valuable as they are. Accept people as they are; drop shoulds, oughts – those are enemies. And when we carry so many shoulds: ‘Do this and don’t do that!’, we cannot dance; the burden is too heavy. And when we have been given too many ideals and goals – ideals of perfection which as utterly impossible – that we will always feel we are falling short.

All that we need is to be creative, loving, aware, meditative…if we feel poetry arising in us, write it for ourselves, for our lovers, for our children, for our friends…and forget all about it. Sing it, and if nobody listens, sing it alone and enjoy it. Go to the trees and they will applaud and appreciate it. Or talk to the birds and the animals, and they will understand far more than mankind who have been for centuries…missed out on the real deal in life!

BE who we want to be…and loving it!

OSHO shared in one of his talks:

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look! Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet; if you can’t find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will never be real! I don’t know what sort of a God we have been talking about. The caller calls in a loud voice to the holy one at dusk. Why? Surely the holy one is not deaf. He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks. Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead, wear your hair matted, long, and ostentatious, but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?”

This extract was taken from OSHO:

The fish in the sea is not thirsty – but man is. Man lives in existence, and is absolutely unaware of it. Man is born in existence, breathes in existence, and one day will dissolve in existence. Man is godliness, made of the stuff called God, and yet completely oblivious of the fact.

The fish is not thirsty in the sea – but man is. God is the sea – God surrounds you, within and without. All that is, is divine. God is not a person: God is the presence that is overflowing everywhere in all directions. The radiance, the beauty of existence, the splendors, the majestic, the miraculous, the mysterious – the whole magic of life is godliness.

Godliness has not to be worshipped: godliness has to be lived. And to live godliness you need not go anywhere – you are already in it. To live in godliness you need not cultivate any character. Godliness is already the case. It is your consciousness.

To live godliness you need not become (a follower of any religion) – you are already in it; it is already in you. It is not a question of the future. This very moment godliness is showering on you. But you are closed. It comes, but you don’t receive it. It knocks on your doors, but you don’t listen to it. And it has been knocking for ages.

The old biblical story is: When Adam disobeyed God, he was frightened, obviously. God came in search of him. Afraid, he went behind a bush and hide from God. He was not courageous enough to face him, to encounter him. And the story says God called in the Garden of Eden, ‘Adam, where are you?’

Adam heard it, yet did not respond.

This is not just a story, this is not something that happened in the past: this is what is happening with each of you. Existence calls you – either you don’t hear, or, even if sometimes you hear, you don’t respond. You are hiding! You are hiding from the truth of your own being; you are hiding from yourself. You don’t want to see your original face. Godliness is your original face, and unless you see your original face, you will live in misery.

Misery is nothing but remaining ignorant of one’s own being. To be alert, to be conscious, of all that has been given to you, to be conscious of all that has been bestowed upon you, to be conscious of the treasures that are hidden in your being, is to be blissful.

Man is very strange, the strangest animal on the earth. No other animal lives in such anguish – even trees are far more blissful, even rocks have more of the heart than man. They are in tune with existence, or in tune with totality. Everything knows its place on earth, except Man. Man has lost the connection. Man has broken the bridge.

Know that we (mankind) have everything we want inside us, all we need to do is to look deep within and discover the abundance! Man is a seed – be aware and live this truth…because life is indeed blissful.

My most recent encounter ‘dealing with the flu virus’ brought me to my knees to understand fully what it means to let go and let the life force flow freely in me. I was ‘battling’ continuously with the virus with all the remedies I can find. And with every attempt to ‘control’ the situation, the virus persists in staying with me. The ‘wake-up’ call to surrender and let go of control, was when I went into a sporting event with the virus, thinking that I can overcome it with my ’sporting prowess and will-power’, but was stopped short barely 5 minutes into the race, gasping for breath in the midst of  ‘flagging arms and legs’ in deep waters.  During that brief moment, I was completely disoriented and could not muster the strength or the courage to carry on. At that instance, I knew the ego had to finally let go of its control and surrender to the life force. It was eating humble pie in the most dire situation but it woke me up to this ’senseless need for control’. Apparently I have not learned enough to live by letting go, despite numerous lessons in the past. This was another ‘wake up call’.

I could not describe how I felt during this recent encounter as I was not angry or feeling sorry for myself though I acknowledge that I was disappointed that I did not finish the race. However, I was aware that everything happened for a reason, and even if I have yet to know why, I have learned to trust that things will be revealed to me eventually.

I used to shake my fist at the injustice of the world, and I’d rile against tyranny. It made me sad and weak, and it robbed me of energy. In the end I saw that the key to everything is to surrender. I can fix myself but not much else. Surrender offers us the hope of victory in the end, but we have to wait.

Verse 55 from the Tao Te Ching (by Lao-Tzu) taught me to be in harmony with the Life Force:

“He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child. Deadly insects will not sting him. Wild beasts will not attack him. Birds of prey will not strike him. Bones are weak, muscles are soft, yet his grasp is firm. He has not experienced the union of man and woman, but is whole. His manhood is strong. He screams all day without becoming hoarse. This is perfect harmony. To harmony is to know the changeless; to know the changeless is to have insight. Things in harmony with the Tao remain; things that are forced grow for a while, but then wither away. This is not the Tao. And whatever is against the Tao soon ceases to be.”

When Lao-Tzu mentioned the lives of people who are free from the provocation of ‘deadly insects’, ‘wild beasts’ and ‘birds of prey’, he was saying that when their lives are in harmony with the Tao, things will ‘fall into place’ for them. He said that we should look into infants who haven’t yet taken on the ego belief that they’re separated from their originating Source: They can scream all day and never lose their voices like a screeching adult would. Even with underdeveloped muscles, they can fashion a firm grip. Furthermore, babies are pliable and virtually immune to harm from a fall that would break the bones of a grown-up. All of this is called ‘perfect harmony’ by Lao-Tzu.

This verse invites us to realize that what we call luck isn’t something that randomly happens – it’s ours for life when we decide to live by letting go. We attract the cooperative power of the Tao when we release the need to control our life. Living by letting go means releasing worry, stress, and fear. When we promote our sense of well-being in the face of what appears as danger to others, our alignment with our Source frees us from pushing ourselves to act in a forceful manner. Lao-Tzu reminds us in this verse that ‘things that are forced grow for a while, but then wither away’.

I have learned to see it as a way of allowing life’s natural rhythm to flow unimpeded through me. I don’t fight against the virus anymore and the letting go means allowing it to remain in me for as long as it wants. It sounds like a paradox, but when I made the decision to surrender, I felt the energy of the Life Force flowing freely through me, and now I am back on my feet again.

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