I stepped away from it all today. My girlfriend and I packed the mountain bikes in the truck and went in search of a mountain. Luckily we had a pretty good idea where one was. Good thing mountains aren’t always moving all over the place of their own accord, how would anyone take a hike?
Any way, it was really good to get out of the city and into nature. I needed it, she needed it. I realized while we were out, no matter how much I go into my self during meditation there is a need to get away from the things we find ourselves attached to in this life.
Even if those things are our homes, our families, our possessions, or our jobs. Even when it is something you love more dearly than anything, space can sometimes be just the thing needed to find your true home all over again.
This idea I had today actually goes, in some ways, against what Lao Tzu said.
“Without going out the door, know the world.
Without peering out the window, see the Heavenly Tao.
The further one goes
The less one knows.”
TTC 47 (Lin)
I am not saying Lao Tzu is wrong in saying we do not need to go anywhere to know the world, we must only look within, and thinking that we can find out anything about the world or ourselves by going out into the world is missing that we contain the world, the world does not contain us.
However, I do believe the act of getting away from what we know is a healthy way of untethering our invisible binds we have to the things in our lives.
Mentally, emotionally, we are always creating attachments to things in our lives that we hold dear. When we separate ourselves from those things the anxiety produced by the tethers of these physical things begins to dissipate and the longer we can remain away from them the less they weigh on our psyche.
Now maybe, if I was in a place of complete non attachment I would not have any need to get away from my physical home to now that my real home is always in my heart and I can abide there any time I’d like. As is, I am still with deep and powerful attachments and fears of loss in this physical world that need to be massaged and worked out like a crick in the neck.
It was so great to get away and ride up and down a mountain on my sweet ass Walmart mountain bike that was barely holding together, which increased the sense of danger and made it more fun. I got to meditate on top of a mountain next to a sign proclaiming “This is the home of jumping spiders,” I was like,
“Pfft, I am like a child, no insect or bug shall sting me. No rhino or tiger will hurt me.”
Which, thank God nothing got me. And while I was meditating I received a small dose of the peace I had so desperately been seeking the past few days and although it wasn’t a lot, it was enough.
I realized in my meditation that we always get everything we want. Are lives are filled with the things we wanted. It is why so many of us are unhappy. It is not that we don’t get what we want its that very rarely we want the things in life that we actually need.
To actually want what you need and need what you want is called perfect harmony. This is why gratitude lists exist. This is why every spiritual teacher, and every teacher teaching anything about manifesting, tries to first impress on the person the understanding that you already have exactly what you want in your life it is because you do not realize it yet that you can not materialize the other things you think you want.
Great need must be matched with a great want, when these to things are in harmony nothing is unreachable.
It is a teaching in the Program as well, “people who need to get sober rarely do, only those that really want to get sober, get sober.”
So, maybe I am not a Sage as of yet. Maybe, I need some more time to come to full understanding of the peace that lives with in all of us and find the unattached desire in my heart. Maybe, I still have a long way to go.
I am ok with that. I am ok with right now.
“Therefore the sage
Knows without going
Names without seeing
Achieves without striving.”
TTC 47 (Lin)
Happy Day
Seeking Purpose Today 