THE BODY: WHICH YOU ARE NOT

It is always better to pay less attention rather than more to bodily concerns: your hair, clothes, physique, shelter, food, income, beauty, youth, stamina, heart rate, appearance, and on and on. You do not need to judge your body against other bodies; you do not need to overindulge it with luxuries it does not need; you do not need to spend time trying to gratify it.

You can pay attention to your body, provide all its basic needs, keep it healthy and functioning well, be active with it and enjoy it. But do not let your sense of self reside there. Do not identify with the body. Do not let your life’s work be its needs and wants.

You are not your body

You do not need to serve your body. Shed your bodily concerns like so much unwanted old clutter. They are taking up too much space in your mind anyway, crowding every other thing out. Think how much space will be cleared when you let go of this self-identification with the body. It will be the transformation of a dank, dusty old closet to a bright, hopeful, sunny space.

Who would not want this?

An arum lily lifts its trumpet to its source, the sun

There is an inner beauty

You stand in your own way when you are slave to your bodily concerns. There is an inner beauty that transcends bodily beauty, as all baser metals give way to gold. Seek that beauty that is within. Enable it. Be its slave.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow

They toil not, neither do they spin

Luke, 12:27

Neither make yourself a slave of your shelter, always improving, or decorating, or berating, or lamenting the lack of one more thing. Give thanks for the shelter you have. May all beings be as well provided.

A lot of your evils: avarice, greed, desire for power, unbridled appetites, are the result of excessive zeal in procuring for yourselves. What if enough of you, as a species, were to renounce all self-procurement, let it go, know that there is enough food on the earth for everyone, that all the world is provided for?

Loose your hold

In your calm at knowing that all needs would always be beautifully answered, you would relax and loose your hold on the source of all supply. When you let go of your several strangleholds on this flow of energy, once it had shrugged you off like a snake easily slithering away, it would be free to increase the energy flow many-fold, and shower blessings upon your collective Self.

May all your processes be gentle

GIVING THANKS/YOU NEED NOT WORRY

Giving thanks and not worrying are two sides of the same coin. These are two branches of the same tree. You give thanks because you do not need to worry, and you do not need to worry because you give thanks.

The mind looks for causality. Which one came first? Which state caused the other? Neither. There is no time. It is an illusion the mind clings to. These two ideas are joined, just one part of a larger Idea.

In general, you are thankful for far too little. This doesn’t make you a bad person, just one who is missing an opportunity. If you want more, consciously give thanks.

Gratitude increases flow

You might like your sofa because it is comfortable, useful, and you have spent many peaceful, productive hours on it. You think of all the people who have slept on it. You are happy that you were able to offer them comfort and hospitality. By paying attention to how happy this makes you feel, you create a positive feeling space around the whole idea of your home and shelter, your heart’s charity’s hearth’s fire. This encourages more of the same kind of good to come.

Do you eat something that you like? Do you feel your body welcoming this food? Give thanks. Thank all those who participated in providing this meal, who grew the food, who prepared and served it. Giving thanks for what our bodies consume completely changes the energy of the food, and its power to do good to you. May all beings be as well provided for.

Is it easier to reward one who is always praising and giving thanks for what she has, or one who finds fault in everything and is unhappy?

Look for the situation that has natural flow. Giving thanks creates, widens and deepens a channel for all good to flow, to you and to all.

Giving thanks enables good

SIDEWAYS THINKING

Another name for sideways thinking is removing focus. Maybe there is a situation that has been occupying you for a long time; you can’t see a way forward. You would like some direction on it because you’re tired of spinning your wheels. Chances are, it’s very hard for you to stop spinning your wheels because it is now your habit to be preoccupied by this situation.

More focus is the last thing you need here. In fact, you need the opposite. You need a way of removing focus. This is where sideways thinking comes in.

You want to ask a question of this situation. How can I help? What can I say? Should I remove myself? How? What should I do next? How shall I proceed?

Frame the exact question you want to ask of that situation. Pose that question.

At the same time, visualize your situation as a can of colored smoke. When you pose the exact question you want to ask of the situation, you open the can.

You know that it is going to take some time for that smoke to get out and give you the full message that you want. Would you settle for less than a complete and satisfying answer, because you forced the answer with your impatience? Would you take a cake from the oven half-baked? Would you pick a flower that was still in the bud?

No one would do this.

Knowing this, it is easy for you to decide to go and do something else for a while, letting the smoke exit the can in all its wantonness and glory. You will know when it is time to come back. You will know your answer when it comes. But for now, you know how to distract yourself.

Sideways thinking is letting go

THEY HAVE TO ASK

If everybody practiced this, there would be no unsolicited advice. That would be good. Unsolicited advice robs its recipients of the power of learning something for themselves, which is the only true learning. Those who welcome unsolicited advice are afraid of imagined evils. Let there be no unsolicited advice. Banish it from your repository of tools.

Say only what you are directed to say, what carries no ulterior motive since it seems not to come from you. Cultivate sacred space within yourself, so that you hear more.

They have to ask. Your example is stronger than any words. It is not necessary to editorialize on your example; just do. If you wish your example to be most powerful, know that talk about it chips away its power. Your silent, conscious example is your most powerful tool for good.

Example, the most powerful tool

This is the act of believing in free will. Nothing can exist without free will. If they did not choose it for themselves, it does not count. This means giving up all manipulations of other people. Give up trying to get anyone to do anything, no matter how much it is for his or her own good. They have to choose. (We are talking about grown adults here, not children who still need help navigating the physical world.)

Giving up manipulations is natural when you give up attachment to outcomes. Give up all pushing and pulling. Give up trying to arrange reality.

They have to ask. This works in any situation. Should you give your opinion? They have to ask. Should you offer them help? They have to ask. Would you give them directions? They have to ask. Would you tell them how you would do it? They have to ask. Do they want to know a better way? They have to ask.

Be silent and know. Create sacred space within, so that the answers have a place to come.

Wait until they ask

LESS TALK, MORE DO

It is not necessary to announce, to yourself or others, what you are going to do. The announcing takes time and energy that could be put towards doing.

Action expresses priorities

Gandhi

Neither do you need to make editorial comments to try to pound out a lesson to someone else. Just say what you are inner-directed to say. You never know what that will be. It might be nothing. Sometimes what you say will surprise you. It will have a wisdom that you could never have fashioned. You will never repeat yourself, if you are coming from spirit, being inner directed.

Those who know do not talk

Those who talk do not know

The Tao Te Ching

Forget about teaching other people nuggets of the conventional wisdom: get a degree and make more money, don’t marry someone of a different faith, practice makes perfect, money doesn’t grow on trees. This is futile, friends. Give it up.

The only way to teach, after all, is by loving example. What you instill forcefully into their minds, you deny them the experience of getting for themselves. Your prompting only decreases what they can learn on their own. You are standing in the way of the very thing you want.

The truth abides in silence

LIVE IN THE DAY

Live in the day: pay attention to the day you’re in. Watch the birds, listen to the fountain, hear the hairdryer, decide for five minutes to give up circular thinking, to put down those thoughts, beliefs and worries that you carry around with you all of the time.

Lay down your burden of thinking

Live in the day: pay attention to what your senses bring you instead. Is the sun warm on your back? Enjoy. Do you eat something you like? Give thanks. May all beings be as well fed as you are now. Can you let go of physical tension too, with each out breath? Do that now. You can always do one really intense yoga pose. Or stretch. Whatever. Drop all tension. It does you no good. It is a stone in your shoe that must be let go of immediately. It has no good to bring you.

Let habitual thoughts go

With them will also dissolve emotions, which are feeling-states that you use the world around you to evoke. “I am sad because a couple is splitting up.” “I am worried because someone is sad.”

When your mind is in the present and has let go of tension and habitual thoughts, there is nowhere for it to get fuel for negative feeling-states. You are in the blessed present, noticing all there is to notice, realizing that the peace and beauty, calm and quiet you are now experiencing, by your choice, is a glimmering brocade in the endless fabric of your life. Give thanks. May all beings be as peaceful.

Choosing the joys

Can you see that contemplation of the past and future are the source of all your negative feeling-states? From the past come blame and regret. From the future come anxiety and fear. You could not summon any of these if your mind was always in the present, choosing the joys, gifts and satisfactions you want in your life. Blame, regret, anxiety and fear would be no more.

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