Every morning I randomly open up my Tao Te Ching. Yesterday I opened to this chapter:
Everyone is drawn to those who keep the one,
For there lie rest and happiness and peace
Passersby may stop for music and good food,
But it is not possible to describe the Tao.
Without substance or flavor,
It cannot be seen, it cannot be heard,
And yet it can never be exhausted.
I am reminded almost every day that “keeping the one” is deeply rooted in an internal place of quiet stillness ~ an emptiness from which right action can naturally unfold without fear or rushing.
Years ago Barbara and I created a month end meditation about this unfolding way of living. It seems as highly relevant now as it was then. Here is a drawing created by our friend and colleague, Marguerite Drescher which portrays the unfolding nature of creative action.
The point of origination is in silence at the center before the spiral fans out. A true starting place, where the ego, and our brilliant minds and our determined wills, let go of control. It is just space, with no imposition. Perhaps only the whispers of a humble prayer. Just a listening ear with no concern for results. Just patience, minus hurry. The demands of the world held away. True inquiry from the heart, “Who am I?” The deeper field of possibility senses the qualities of receptivity and begins to inform the protected space, in flashes or slowly over time.
Slightly oversimplified, this drawing portrays how true and meaningful endeavors are conceived and brought into form. Nothing works in sequence like this, exactly, but rather proceeds and then returns periodically to the quiet at the center for inspiration and re-calibration with the rhythms and qualities “source”.
This is a deeply nuanced, feminine vessel, in which energy both gathers and settles. Soon enough impulse moves in the quiet. Inclination, ideas arise. Time now for curiosity, dialogue with co-conspirators, new partnerships.
Slowly ideas coalesce, new shoots break surface, a time of tending is needed before they finally bear fruit and ripen – all in their own season and rhythm. From silence and emptiness to action and form and eventually the form withers and dies returning back to the one again.
May we honor the quiet center of “being” in ourselves, where we are one with the creative spirit.
Enjoy your Sunday ~ we are together and apart simultaneously.
With Affection,
Peri and Barbara
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