Cultivating the Grace of Awakening, Part Two...

                                                              Each heart should be a small garden.
                                                              It should be cleared of weeds and
                                                              be full of wonderful plants and flowers.
                                                                      -- St. Alexandra Fedorovna

                                    Tao, Way, Path that We Must Walk to Thrive...

​The Tao has any number of that which might be described as core teachings, and being a prime example of wisdom literature, these core teachings cross every philosophical and religious divide with such pithy guidance as, Embrace simplicity. Put others first. Desire little. (19 tr. John H. McDonald) No wonder then that the American philosophers Emerson and Thoreau and poet Walt Whitman deeply admired the great sage from ancient China... And on into the '60's and '70's and the Tao Te Ching criss-crossed America with the young hippie generation as they hitch-hiked the highways and byways of the country, carrying the Tao in backpacks and pockets... 

​If there is one theme of the Tao that connects with Quantum Physics it would be that of the awareness of the unitive consciousness (more on this later), suffice to say now that everything flows... now a particle of possibility, and now a wave... both determined by the observing mind... behind / within every manifestation of both being-ness and matter, there is only the Unitive Consciousness... Flow would be the key word and concept: energy moves... minds meld... both awaken into possibilities... and both flow... Tao is Grandmother to God...

​Intention and action introduce the Unitive Consciousness into one's life...

​We cultivate our intention by practices common to every religion: we pray, we learn silent-mind, we surrender, and we adore: from this daily practice flows action: we put every other first (until we realize there are no others), we serve, we feed, and we love... This is meant to become a life-style! This is meant to become the uniform with which we dress every day! This is meant to become the energy with which we flow throughout our daily lives! All of this supports and encourages the slow-motion process of changing our minds!

​We pray: we pray because we doubt everything: we doubt the Tao, we doubt any so-called "Unitive Consciousness", just as we doubt any sort of "God"... and it is just as likely that we pray because we just had the best orgasm of our lives! It's all good... precisely because we have to start somewhere, right? And so a collection of prayers (used prayers are for sale in every bookstore) is real good: Whispers from Eternity by Paramahansa Yogananda has traveled with me for years (I first read it in a public library in California when I was in High School)... Celtic Daily Prayer by the Northumbrian Community and the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer can assist in establishing a certain rhythm to your daily prayer: especially as a spring-board for writing your own Prayer Book...

​One really can't jump into silent-mind without first the clearing of weeds, so that our garden is made ready for cultivation... Now, as to the clearing of weeds, you gotta realize that your old mind just won't due! If transformation is the purpose of cultivating the grace of awakening, then well, let's just Name It: we have to learn how to put on the mind of Christ... But that, after all, is the "rub", is it not? The hardest thing that we all have to do is this: it isn't putting on the mind of Christ, rather, it is the acceptance of our humanity: the very Real Reality that Christ came to embrace: not save, surely... not redeem or forgive... but to embrace, to cherish, to adore, and to love: this is the task of the spiritual life, of the Gospel, of the Tao: to remember, to remember Sweet Human, just how sacred that you are... It is only in this, that we enter the Mind of Christ...

​(To be continued...)