Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Great Divide

I know these things to be true:

I am a coward. I am a whore. I am an excuse waiting for a broken promise. I am an atheist who prays to God out of fear.

I am a professional seeker of convenient truth. I am a reader of self help books. I am a denier of self help techniques. I am a theist who won't accept God's choices. I am the tongueless singer, I am the ear-less listener, I am the eyeless observer.

I am an embarrassed Oprah-holic.

About as well intentioned as a jerk like me can be, I try...I actually try to be the kind of man that I espouse as superior. "...he turns his attention to himself and molds his character."

I have been reading Eckhart Tolle's books the Power of Now and A New Earth. It's all an exercise in reflexive perception and awareness. "Be aware of yourself being aware." I do that and I feel inadequate. "Thought causes pain and suffering" I think, therefore I hurt.

But, he's right.

The line, which is an abstraction created by the human mind, is drawn in the air that surrounds my being and thereby manifests the space on either side of the line. And in those spaces we can place the good and the bad, the effective and the ineffective, that which works and that which doesn't.

Which side am I on?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ugliness and beauty define one another. The tao is in Hitler and in Ghandi. Our errors must be, to learn the path of success. The colours of failure are only differentiated against the bright wall of fortune.
We judge another and do unknowing judge ourselves. And in ourselves others are.
Left foot, right foot,left foot, right foot.

Stuart Dummit said...

Is there a more pure truth behind the Tao? One that fuses the yin and the yang, erases the line that allows judgment so that there is only 'the way'? A place where Hitler and Ghandi are both innocent infants, neither good nor bad, but merely unfettered manifestations of the Universe?