Synchronicities

When I wrote a poem then started reading the Tao Te Ching

For the past couple of weeks I have been gradually deciding what to resume, post accident, and what to leave behind. It started with deleting most of my photos and videos from my i cloud. I had 22,000 (approx) photos, and 1500 videos. What this huge store of minutely documented history of my life was doing was weighing me down.

Do I really want to be reminded of everything over the past 15 or so years?

The simple answer is no. I have memories and feelings. I don’t need visual accuracy.

In the end it was easy, I scrolled though and saved roughly 200 photos of people, then deleted everything else. There were many photos of nature and landscapes. They all went. Sometimes, I am so busy trying to capture the picture that I forget to experience what I am taking. The pictures had to go.

I found an old sony semi auto/slr camera that takes excellent close-ups. In my new found approach to the slow life, I have taken it out of its home and charged it. Now I’ve left it sitting on the glass cabinet. Over the next few weeks it might accompany me on a walk out in nature.

There’s no rush.

A smooth road of recovery so far. Some days I’ve been feeling the need to start filling up my day with activities and plans and general busy-ness again. But I know that this is not good for my soul right now, and the lingering feeling that I might be letting people down by not showing up is disappearing. I am sending all my energy into restoring function to my right arm and left hand. A side effect of my accident is that I have been sleeping better than I have in years. Maybe it’s something to do with no longer caring about putting myself out there for validation. Validation, that is, through my offerings in the local community of Cacao, Meditation and Yoga. I am testing this theory by dropping all the extras I had formed habits around, like Cacao. Do I really have a relationship with Cacao? I’ll find out by sitting quietly and sipping with no expectation, no questions, no petitions. Likewise with all my studies of Indian traditions. Do I really have embodied experiences or am I willing myself into believing I do? I’m giving myself a break by not reading anything spiritual or philosophical for this week.

So while I have been chewing all this over, my nighttime vivid dreams have returned.

A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that sometimes reoccurs. I dreamt that I couldn’t open my eyes in my dream and I was battling hard to open them. I kept fighting and struggling to open them, inside the dream, but I couldn’t. Then, a thought came to me that I didn’t need to open my eyes because everything I needed to see was behind closed eyes. I woke up then and was happy. So happy that later I wrote this poem:

I See Without Looking

In a dream, when my eyes won’t open,

And I strain to move the stuck lids apart,

They flutter and struggle, but remain shut,

And when I give up,

I remember that I do not need to open them to see,

And that behind my eyes is what is waiting.

I can search without seeking

The inner acknowledgement,

That I am present and opening to where I might go.

I can hear without listening,

The larks, the woodpecker and the cuckoo.

The wind rustling treetops.

Waves dropping over pebbles.

It’s all there.

I can touch without taking but the feel of soft moss on the side of a tree,

The grasses, spiny and hairy in my hand,

And the smooth cool of a sea softened rock

My heart, my sense of right and wrong

To do and to not do

A simple compass pointing yes or no

And how easy it’s been to forget to turn inwards and know all this.

After I wrote this I remembered to look up the elements in relation to Indian philosophy:

Cakshu (Vision/Eyes): Perceives form and color. Corresponds to the element of fire (tejas).

Shrotra (Hearing/Ears): Perceives sound. Corresponds to the element of space/ether (akasha).

Ghrana (Smell/Nose): Perceives scent. Corresponds to the element of earth (prithvi).

Rasana (Taste/Tongue): Perceives flavor. Corresponds to the element of water (jala).

Tvak (Touch/Skin): Perceives texture, pressure, and temperature. Corresponds to the element of air (vayu)

(wikipedia)

And then just yesterday a fellow substacker landed an email in my mail box that explored how the Tao Te Ching can point our life away from the growth of constantly adding things to our lives, but the growth that comes from letting things go.

What a relief it was to read those words. What a weight those words can shift.

I found Ursula Le Guin’s 1997 translation of verse 14 of the Tao Te Ching:

"Look at it: nothing to see. / Listen to it: nothing to hear. / Reach for it: nothing to hold."

What I had been fumbling around to put into words in my poem, so pared down into these sparing lines that eloquently summarise the going inward, the letting go, the moving on, the stripping back to zero of everything to see what is under all the conditioning, all the life, all the loving and hating and all the happiness and the sad, the boring, the longing and aching.

What is under there?

It’s you.