Uncomfortable With Certainty
Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 9:47AM A friend asked me what I saw myself doing in five years. That's the kind of question to which I usually don't have an answer. Planning long term, longer term has never been my forte. Perhaps this has something to do with the many sudden moves I experienced as child. My response to the question was that I'll probably continue to follow my nose.
Here are words from Parabola magazine's emailed newsletter of June 24 that serve to reassure me about my MO:
Another way of putting it would be (without knowing Chinese) to
propose this new translation of the first line of the Tao Te Ching:
A way that is entirely laid out, no, it is not the way. I told you
that I have encountered in my life a true teaching. One of the signs
of its truth, for me, is that it never proposes an entirely
prescribed path. No, at every step the entire dilemma is revisited.
For me, nothing is resolved once and for all. And what I have always
loved in you is your refusal of a prearranged path, and that is
important to me because alone one can't sustain such a position. We
must be a number of people to help each other, to awaken one
another.
Rene Daumal from a letter to Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, November
1941 from PARABOLA, Fall 2009: The Path.
Rene Daumal, Tao De Ching
Reader Comments (5)
Even further: What do we know in the morning about the whole new day? About it's weather (just a thunder...) --- despite there is weather forecast, about the new acquaintances offered and lessons taught --- despite there is an agenda assisting to structure our day? How much grace is in receiving "just" the now... and recognizing our interconnectedness.
Does MO stands for modus operandi?
Thank you.
Yes, I meant modus operandi. Thank you for commenting once more.
Some fears with us are pointing to our projection how future might be. However, the future may turn out well different from what we think it will be, there is plenty of the incertain, of malleable/forgeable.
In the present moment, there is no past, and there is no future; what we may access here is the growth in the tiny now .
Lev
How close they are connected with each other, already close in their sound:
intention
and
in-tension
What does us bring closer to comfort? Recognition, for example, often there are two entities (or even more) to build one whole.
Neither is it comfortable to live such restrained that life becomes just externally pre-determined and hence predictable---Like the certainty to know very much too soon all the inhabitants of an island, and their then imposing style of framed life on us. This may feel like being drowned and submerged by a crowd. Nor is it comfortable to live completly free, unrelated to anyone else, like in insulation.
What do we experience if we turn to the second side of the medal? Do we solely nurture curiosity if we learn about the outer-around-us? What in turn do we (may) access and learn about ourselves, on our inner journey, experiencing the new? By genuinely allowing to open and to receive?
What is the meaningfulness of the "me"---not in bellingent frontal opposition, however in heartily open complementary to "us"? Eventually, to the ensemble previously described as Indra's net, metaphorically speaking about & showing us the multiple interconnectedness of us forming a single multi-facetal consciousness?
Very likely, we do need both sides. We do need certainty like there is bread in our shelf, hence we're lucky to start the day with food. (A sig of release for whose wo may afford it, in money, in time, in company.) And we need landmarks and other references to orient the pathway of our journey.