Number Sixty Six

Moral judgment is the curse of human consciousness.  The evaluation of right-wrong, good-bad creates the illusion that each soul is on a mission to prove itself worthy.  To be saved.  To be granted entry to some heaven.

Moral judgment is the creation of those who seek to manipulate others.  From parents who declare a child bad in order to control behavior, to churches and governments that preach moral principles to control the flock or citizenry, the concept of morality is an invention of those who seek power.

The only judgment that is useful is this question -- What behavior is in alignment with life purpose?  Does what I am doing support or undermine the reason I came here?  In the end, whatever we do works or doesn't work to help us -- and the souls around us -- find the truth and wisdom we came to seek.

Number Sixty Five

Life purpose is the theme of every play we come here to perform.  In the same way this moment rests atop a thousand turns and choices, in the way it grows from each forgotten hour that taught us how to live, life purpose grows from the struggles and mistakes of past incarnations.  We can't remember them any more than we can remember the many bruises of childhood, of the moment we fist understood the power of the earth to make us fall.  But they are the text, the story that forms a reason to come back again.

In the calm between lives we make two choices -- what we are here to do and what we are here to learn.  A task and a lesson.  They arise from the same karma, the same lost chance, the same unfinished work.  The task may be to teach or protect, or soften the pain of others.  The learning may focus on patience or surmounting fear of letting go of the self.  The lesson and the task intertwine so the protector learns to accept loss, or the builder learns patience as things fall apart.

Life purpose is a direction; we move toward it or away.  Dark emotions -- anger, fear, numbness, boredom, shame -- are signs that we have set the wrong course, away from our purpose.  Sometimes we correct course, sometimes we cannot.  We will get there -- in this life or the ones succeeding.  There is no rush, no failure.  There is all the time in the world.

Number Sixty Four

The sun rises.  Children think of it as a person; they give it two dots for eyes, and a smile.  They understand something -- that consciousness can live in things.  It can animate matter -- any matter.  Consciousness learns from rocks -- from states of deep inactivity.  It learns from moving at the speed of light, from going in circles, from endlessly exploding.

The sun rises.  And in the child's drawing occupies a place in the sky. The child draws lines radiating from the sun, a symbol of heat, of the intention to warm and give life.  The child draws the eyes open -- because the sun is awake.

Number Sixty Three

The objects around us appear to exist in the moment.  But they contain all the elements of the future and the past.  They exist -- at the same time -- in every form they have taken, or will ever take.

Number Sixty Two

Thieves take our knowledge.  They come in the form of pain that makes us forget, that sweeps away the intentions we came with.  So we scream inside, and that sound makes hearing impossible.  The channel through which we listen for truth gets cluttered with anger and complaint.

The thieves show up in every life -- sometimes wearing garments of grief.  Or of fear.  Or of shame.  They come and we forget purpose.  We forget how we intended to love -- this time around.

Let them come.  Let them.  With whatever suffering.  They can take nothing from us -- no truth or knowledge -- if we don't resist the pain.

Number Sixty One

Each Tao has its time, and seekers ready for the path.  And for each seeker there is a time when a Tao is finished.  The discipline that once reaped wisdom lives on the other side of grace.  At some point the narrow corridor of truth leads to knowing death.  While the study of the breath leads to the moment, the study of the breath stopping is the portal of truth.

All around us are souls taking the last breath.  We are afraid of it.  But that is when we know what we are.  Meditate on the breath stopping, or on the place between breaths.  Through that doorway shines the light between lives.

 

Number Sixty

"I love you."  Words carry the idea of love, as if language made truth.  In the idea of love, loss has yet to happen.  In the idea of love, the form, the costume of connection is held up to the mirror -- perfect in every way.  But love lives in the intention, the commitment to reach across vast distances.  Love waits for word when word never comes, writes the letter that has nowhere to go, holds forever what is already gone.