Be responsible for yourself and the things of the world that belong to you. Take care of yourself and your part of the world. Do not leave things and messes for others to have to deal with. Use your energy every day to keep yourself and your world neat and clean. In this manner be part of the solution, part of the positive energy that seeks balance, part of the tao, nature known and accepted, everyone and everything doing its part naturally. The human part involves thoughtfulness, kindness, and compassion. The human part is to remain conscious and aware of how you are affecting everything and everyone else. Get in right alignment using the skills, abilities and knowledge that only humans possess. Keep things alive and flourishing with heart-centered awareness. That’s taking responsibility for the self, within and without. Do your part to keep the world on the right track. It can be as simple as keeping love in your heart.
You will withstand the forces of time and turmoil in full awareness because you know that all things turn, as the seasons turn, as the day turns to night, as youth turns to old age. There is wisdom to be gathered, knowledge to acquire, experiences to be had no matter the circumstances. All things and all times have value. Harbor not fear and resentment but only the seeds of love and compassion for self and others as these times slowly turn, as new light brings new life. Such is nature, always changing, always making new plans for what comes next. Remember, you can always dream a new dream!
When it is time to change pay attention to nature. Nature is what it is in the moment. It rains or it doesn’t. The sun shines or it is cloudy. The wind blows or it is calm. The creatures of nature accept what is and react to it as it happens, one day, one moment, one natural event at a time; without worry they go with the flow. Humans on the other hand rarely notice nature except when it affects them badly or beautifully. Otherwise, to them, nature just exists out there.
But humans are far more affected by nature than they know and to get into synch with it, with what is, would save them a lot of heartache. Nature is, within and without, the true barometer of all that is. Pay attention to it, get in the flow of it, neither too much not too little of anything, just be in the moment. Pay attention, the signs of progress and change will come to guide you, one day and one step at a time, taking you where it says it is time to go. Nature knows.
So often we focus on the will of the High Self, or if you will the God/Goddess in us, and where we are in relation to it. “Am I in the right alignment?” is the frequent question. This would suggest that the ego, or consciousness, is seeking to be the willing servant to what is truly right.
Diamond Self… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Though not disputing the validity of this charge, we need also to focus on the opposite, the importance and dependence of the Self upon the ego. If the Self is our true wholeness, the eternal within us, represented as a diamond, then the ego is one facet of that diamond. This ego facet of the Self acts in this world through thought, decision, and action.
The Self absolutely needs the ego to take life forward in this human dream we call our earthly existence. The Self beckons us to advance life in novel and creative directions, to evolve the growing experience of the greater Self as it continues to journey in infinity. The ego is its arm in the time/space continuum. The ego matters. If the Self is the active side of infinity, the ego is its active side in human life.
A recent dream, told to me by a creative artist, illustrates this point. I paraphrase his telling of the dream: He was walking along through a glass tunnel, an aquarium type setting, clutching a big fish to his chest. He could see the open sea beyond the glass. The fish was dry. He noticed some water on the ground and a pail. He put the fish down to go and scoop up some of the water into the pail when the fish somehow escaped into the open sea. He immediately entered the vast ocean in pursuit of the fish. At one point the fish hesitated, turned and looked at him, and he was able to grab it, leave the ocean and get back into the tunnel. Once there he put the fish into the pail.
The most important feature of this dream is that the fish allowed itself to be caught. A fish is quite at home in the vast ocean, yet it allowed itself to literally be taken out of its element. The ocean is the beginning matrix of all life, the most powerful symbol of the collective unconscious, infinity itself. The fish is frequently associated with Christ, a powerful symbol of the Self. Clearly, the Self in this dream allows itself to be “captured” in the pail of this world, taken out of its infinite freedom to live in the hands of the dreamer. The Self depends upon and seeks out the dreamer to have the experience of life in this world.
Of course, the ego must decide how to truly fulfill life and the greater needs of the Self. What kind of life is it to stick the Self in the mere confines of a pail? I think the Self is challenging the dreamer to reflect on this use of vital life energy and creative potential.
The truth is though, the ego is free to chart its own course, but if that course is out of balance, or too estranged from the deeper Self, there will be a rupture in the Tao, in the harmonious flow of life energy from the depths of the unconscious, from the depths of infinity.
Carl Jung never tired of telling the story of the Taoist rainmaker, told to him by his dear friend Richard Wilhelm, translator of the I Ching. Here is that story:
“Richard Wilhelm was in a remote Chinese village which was suffering from a most unusually prolonged drought. Everything had been done to put an end to it, and every kind of prayer and charm had been used, but all to no avail. So the elders of the village told Wilhelm that the only thing to do was to send for a rainmaker from a distance. This interested him enormously and he was careful to be present when the rainmaker arrived. He came in a covered cart, a small, wizened old man. He got out of the cart, sniffed the air in distaste, then asked for a cottage on the outskirts of the village. He made the condition that no one should disturb him and that his food should be put outside the door. Nothing was heard from him for three days, then everyone woke up to a downpour of rain. It even snowed, which was unknown at that time of year.”
Sometimes it’s just a matter of sitting still until all is right… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
“Wilhelm was greatly impressed and sought out the rainmaker, who had now come out of his seclusion. Wilhelm asked him in wonder: “So you can make rain?” The old man scoffed at the very idea and said of course he could not. “But there was the most persistent drought until you came,” Wilhelm retorted, “and then—within three days—it rains?” “Oh,” replied the old man, “that was something quite different. You see, I come from a region where everything is in order, it rains when it should and is fine when that is needed, and the people also are in order and in themselves. But that was not the case with the people here, they were all out of Tao and out of themselves. I was at once infected when I arrived, so I had to be quite alone until I was once more in Tao and then naturally it rained!”” *
This story illustrates the mutual dependence of ego and Self. On the one hand, the ego must acknowledge when it is truly out of alignment with the Self. When the flow of life energy is blocked, the rain ceases to fall.
On the other hand, it rests with the ego to voluntarily do the work, in whatever form, facing deep truths, meditating, etc., to restore the balance and bring life back into the right relationship with the Self if life is to once again flow in a nurturing way into this world.
What the world needs now, and what we are indeed on our way to establishing, is the mutual dependence of ego and Self, together in the Tao. May we all become the rainmakers and find the needed balance to restore harmony in this magnificent dream we are all dreaming together.
Making rain,
Chuck
*Story quoted from:Jung, His Life and Work, Barbara Hannah, p.128
The birth of “I,” nature’s seedling of evolutionary advance, finds itself now on the brink of a great correction, the positive outcome of destruction. And what is it that needs reformation in nature’s great experiment, the ego? The answer lies in its reorientation.
Time to return to the Tao… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ego had its traumatic birth as it was cast from the Garden to find its own way. Estranged from the immediate guidance of the great archetypes—instinctual ways of successfully living through millennia—it was forced instead to chart its own course, a mighty tall order indeed for such an inexperienced infant.
Ego, in its infancy, has no choice but to inflate itself: “I can handle this. I am equal to the situation. I can figure out a better way.” These were the attitudes ego had access to, lacking the old automatic connection to all-knowing nature. Ego had to pretend or, with science, definitively believe that it could unlock and direct the mysteries and treasures of nature to better advantage. How better illustrated is the culmination of this ego inflation than the party of little Nero’s we see strutting their stuff in the current political circus? Unfortunately they only mirror the true state of the collective world ego that tends to project its shadow onto those who willingly parade as fools.
We all share in this ego dilemma and this is our advantage: as within, so without. We, each and every one of us, share in this inflated ego dilemma and, therefore, are all equally able to participate in the great ego reformation that will accompany our deeply transforming planet into new life.
So what is needed for this reformation?
We may be the “brains” of the planet, but we certainly have not acted with much intelligence. Our orientation has primarily been narcissistic and dissociated; narcissistic in our tribal self-centeredness and dissociated from the greater body that supports us: Planet Earth.
As the brains of the operation, we must first re-associate with the rest of the greater physical body of earth and accept that we are in and part of that body. The Hindus and the shamans agree: until we die, our subtle energy body—the brain or spirit—is inseparable from the physical body. Though we certainly can journey beyond the body while in this life, it is only in death that we truly do part. Consequently, our intelligence must be focused on the needs of the body, individual and worldly, while we are here. Actions and decisions must be in conformity with the true needs of the body and not separate from it.
This is the essence of Taoism: actions that flow with the natural course of the river. Spirited attempts to change the course of a river for private enterprise violate the needs of the greater whole and represent the actions of an inflated, dissociated ego.
In the river of Tao… as within, so without – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Reconnection to the deepest rivers of the archetypes—the instinctual ways—ready to once again serve the true needs of the greater, full Self, is the new orientation that collective ego is flowing towards, albeit through Mother Earth’s initiation of environmental upheaval. Surrendering to the truth is the only intelligent option, and it is the option survival is moving us towards.
We are all participants in this great ego reformation every day, in every decision we make. This is true democracy. Every life counts, every decision counts. Every right action, however minute, accrues in the world bank of survival and transformation. All donations greatly appreciated.
