Putting a value on status
will create contentiousness.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
By not displaying what is desirable, you will
cause the people’s hearts to remain undisturbed.The sage governs
by emptying minds and hearts
by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.Practice not doing …
When action is pure and selfless,
everything settles into its own perfect place.~ Wayne Dyer version
The main message of this verse – to be content with what you have – has been a powerful message to focus on over the last few days.
I can very much relate to when Wayne Dyer speaks of our “ego’s fixation on getting more”. Whether it’s money, knowledge, status, power, control, belongings, there is a constant drive I feel to pursue “more” in life. I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t the case.
Being content with what I have now seemed to be saying I want it to stay that way – like giving up on my goals and dreams. I’ve particularly fought this one in relation to the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) and electrosensitivity I’ve lived with for close to 25 years. But I realise now that’s not the case. I realised it some time ago, but knowing and living something are two very different things. With regard to the illness, I wrote a blog some time ago about the 3 Myths of Acceptance that deals in depth with this topic.
So how has living the 4th Verse of the Tao impacted my life & what have I seen for myself?
1. I have so much to be content with & appreciate
Despite how it sometimes feels, despite my current bank balance, despite my health challenges and all the things I worry, stress and whinge about on a regular basis, I have a very good life!
This fact has been driven home even more in these last few days while on holidays at the beach.
In the last 2 days I have swum in the ocean twice with my 12 year old daughter. This is almost a record for me in recent years, as I have grown decidedly reluctant in my later years to get in the cold ocean water unless it’s almost 40 degrees Celsius.
But in “living contentment” I have made the decision to embrace this precious time with my daughter in a way that I haven’t done for some time.
Rather than taking a book or journal with us when we’ve headed over to the beach, I have chosen not to busy my mind with “getting more” education or writing done to the detriment of living in the moment.
Instead, prior to getting in the water myself, I have delighted in watching my joyous, energetic, excited kid run into the waves in her beautifully uninhibited way. I’ve watched her catch waves on her boogie board and squeal with delight as she rides them into the shore and lays marooned on the beach as the waves disappear back into the ocean – her long, lanky limbs floundering like a fish suddenly finding itself on land.
I’ve soaked up every moment.
Maybe moreso this year as she is about to start high school and enter six years of intense growth, hormones and mental challenges. I know this. I remember those years. And although life has changed in the last 30 years, I still know how intense the teen years are, and how it’s inevitable that she will drift away from wanting to spend time with her Mum and toward wanting to hang out with friends and … eventually … boyfriends! 🙂
So yesterday and today when she urged me to come and join her in the water, I took advantage of my opportunity to share these precious moments with my child. I took many mental pictures as we laughed and swam together. Photos don’t capture that stuff, but I’ve found that being fully present in any given moment can be used like the shutter of a camera to capture mental pictures to draw on in years to come.
2. Learning to “practise not doing …” or not doing as much
While doing yoga on the beach yesterday morning I was forced to limit my routine because of a very sore left foot. I was having trouble flexing the foot, so that meant certain more strenuous exercises were not possible.
(Now, I speak of my ‘yoga routine’ as if I have one! A routine I mean! Yes, I’ve been a yoga student for 17 years now, and during the year I usually manage a regular weekly class. But something I’ve never maintained for longer than a few months (at best!) is a daily yoga practice.
Today was the first proper yoga session I’ve done since my last organised class in early December, despite my incredibly good intentions to keep practising over summer.
This morning I saw that in practising not doing certain poses, I was able to focus more on the basic, core poses, stretches and asanas (flows). And because my body is very stiff and unstretched at the moment, this was perfect. And I felt wonderful after it!
The message I got in all this is that I often don’t do yoga on a daily basis because I believe I don’t have the time to do a “proper” session (I used that word above before I realised what I was writing!). Once again I’ve got myself caught up in not doing something that’s beneficial for me because of my story that if I can’t do it “properly” I may as well not do it at all.
Note 1: on that above comment: One of my mottos in life is “if you’re going to do something, you may as well do it properly or not do it at all” (did anyone hear that perfectionist in the room?!)
Note 2: I do stand by the above motto to a large extent because it can be useful and productive, BUT it’s also restricting and self-defeating when I apply it to things like yoga, meditation, exercise and even drinking adequate amounts of water!
I took part in a 30-Day Meditation challenge in November, with the aim of maintaining a daily meditation practice – something I see as valuable to my overall health and something that had eluded me prior to this. Kristoffer Carter (KC) of ThisEpicLife.com ran the challenge for free (you can still access it here), and in his first video he changed my whole story of what a meditation practice should look like.
He said that even as little as 2 minutes of regular, daily meditation is beneficial. It’s the regularity and consistency of the practice that matters most (paraphrasing!). Longer is usually better, but if 2 minutes is all you have, that’s ok. It was like he had set me free from a cage – one I’d created in my own head!
Now I see that if I can embrace a goal of, say, 10 minutes of yoga daily, it will be of way more benefit to me than waiting a month until I can do a “proper” session. Yes, I’d like to do longer. And sometimes I will. But surely, like with the meditation, I can find even 2 minutes a day to go in and out of cat and child poses!
(By the way, I’m currently up to 73 consecutive days of meditation!!! I’d recommend getting the Insight Timer app for your phone or iPad/iPod. It’s been a great way to track my progress and helps me to feel part of a community, while also giving me an incentive not to break my run of consecutive days. You can use it for yoga, exercise and other things too!).
3. Floating in water is the perfect example of “not doing”
While floating in the ocean today I realised that floating in water is a perfect example of “practising not doing”.
Have you ever tried to teach a child to float on their back? Or maybe you remember learning yourself?
The child is “trying” very hard to float, but because they are nervous and not able to trust that they won’t go under the water, they lift their head up when they get scared. As soon as they lift their head, their bottom sinks – and they stop floating.
It’s a similar thing when a child learns to ride a bike. They can be going along beautifully, not realising that the parent has let go of the bike and they are riding alone. But as soon as they realise they’re actually “doing it”, they fall off – mainly because they don’t trust themselves to continue unaided.
So when I’m getting anxious about my circumstances I’m going to remember the feeling of floating in the ocean.
It’s only when I allow my body to totally surrender to the water and the waves that I stop using my energy and allow the water to do the work. In an ocean with an undertow, this comes with some risk because it’s easy to drift out to sea, especially if you have your eyes closed, but when I allow myself to do it, it feels like total surrender. Total letting go and trusting.
It’s a great analogy for life really.
(Oh, and I don’t close my eyes for long because I do not want to drift out to sea! Guess that’s part of the analogy! If you close your eyes and trust, it doesn’t mean you’re going to drift out to unsafe waters!)
Water features a lot in the Tao, so I love that I’ve been given the opportunity to ‘discover’ this floating analogy myself in these idyllic days at the beach.
4. This quote from Anita Moorjani came to mind.
I have this quote on my fridge at home and often stop to read it. It always slows me down. If you’ve never heard of this book, it’s another one that completely changed my view of life and death. A must read in my books!
“When we live completely from the mind… we lose touch with the infinite self, and then we begin to feel lost. This happens when we’re in DOING mode all the time, rather than BEING. The latter means living from the soul and is a state of allowing… I have discovered that to determine whether my actions stem from ‘doing’ or ‘being’, I only need to look at the emotions behind my everyday decisions. Is it fear, or is it passion? If everything I do each day is driven by passion and a zest for living, then I’m ‘being’, but if my actions are a result of fear, then I’m in ‘doing’ mode.”
Anita Moorjani, Dying To Be Me: A Journey From Cancer, To Near Death, to True Healing
There’s many more observations I’ve made over the past few days regarding this verse, especially due to Wayne Dyer’s essay on the topic.
He says the verse is saying “we must replace personal desires with the Tao-centered question “How may I serve?“, so that’s been in my mind too – and I’ve lived it in a number of cases in recent days.
But if I keep writing everything I’ve got from this verse this blog post will go on forever! So I’ll spare you that 🙂
I’ll finish with a Wayne Dyer quote regarding the 3rd verse:
Bring happiness to every encounter in life, instead of expecting external events to produce joy. By staying in harmony on the path of the Tao, all the contentment you could ever dream of will begin to flow into your life – the right people, the means to finance where you’re headed, and the necessary factors will come together. “Stop pushing yourself,” Lao-tzu would say, “and feel gratitude and awe for what is. Your life is controlled by something far bigger and more significant than the petty details of your lofty aspirations”
~ Wayne Dyer, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living The Wisdom of the Tao
Related Posts
My Tao Year 2016: A Journey You Can Join Me On
My Tao Year: 1st Verse – Living The Mystery
My Tao Year: 2nd Verse – Living Paradoxical Unity
My Tao Year: 4th Verse – Living Infinitely