Tao Te Ching Chapter 81 (excerpt)

“The way of heaven is to benefit and not to harm.

The way of the True Reason is to assist without striving in the unfolding of the story of the earth.”

Benefit and not harm, assist without striving. That’s a good approach to life…

Check out my new work blog…

Well, I’ve started a blog for a company I work for names AJ Grants and Development… The blog is about, well, grants and business development.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT (ajgrants.wordpress.com)

Over the past several years I’ve tried to rebuild a career that I almost gave up on. During this time, I’ve learned by trial and error (usually by error) how to be a professional.

I’ve also learned how not to be a professional. One thing I learned is to keep my personal life, and my personal problems, completely separate from my professional life.

This may seem obvious to most people, but it wasn’t to me. I tried to turn some things that are very personal to me into part of my professional life. I burned myself and several people around me doing that.

Now, I’m not going to go into much detail, partially because I’ve learned that things like blogs can become part of my professional life. And I’ve tried to keep most of this blog public-personal… a new category (to me) of life.

I ask myself this – “what do I want EVERYONE to know” or more importantly “what do I NOT want everyone to know”… and that’s what I write, or don’t write, respectively, on this blog.

Slowly but surely I am rebuilding bridges that I’ve burned in my youth… and eventually, sooner than later, I’ll get to the ones I burned in my not-so-youth.

Until then, I just press onwards, and do my best to be professional, personable, and empathetic… things I haven’t always cared about.

I don’t know the point of this blog, except to document another day in the journey. After all, its the journey, not the destination.

The Angry Son

A new writing project I’m working on, not yet daily, but soon to be daily. I have started this as a memoir, not that I’m old enough, but I have been through the gates of hell and back.

I am not an angry person, to the world. But the title comes from the way I’ve treated myself over the years. I tended towards self-violence, and not in a small way. I tried to destroy myself slowly, methodically, under the guise of ‘having fun.’

Now, I’ve become much more calm, passive, and kind to myself. I’ve learned the folly of my ways… learned to care about the day, and about how I can help others. And how can I do that if I am partially unconscious all the time?

So, I’m just making the announcement here. Although I won’t direct you to the source just yet, I’m sure the fruits of this work will end up here in some form or another, off and on.

The project also starts at the same time as a new writing contract, and another new business effort, so if I seem to be absent from my blog, that may get worse before it gets better. But I’ll still come around here several times a week.

I think I’m going to start updating specific days of the week, starting today I’ll try to at least update once a week, on Tuesdays. I may add another day, probably will, but we’ll just see how that works for now.

Facebook/Twitter/WordPress

Trying to get twitter to update facebook and blog… had 2 of 3… now back to none. Will get there.

Today’s influence

Proverbs 3:5-8

⁵ Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

⁶ in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight. ^[a]

⁷ Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.

⁸ This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter14

14

Look, and it can’t be seen.
Listen, and it can’t be heard.
Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright.
Below, it isn’t dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can’t know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

Proverbs is my favorite book in the Bible, as I’ve mentioned before. Wisdom is one of the main characters, and it serves as a sort of manifestation of what we already know we know, deep down, or  from things that are accessible all around us that are eternal.

I have learned that the picture of reality is much too large for me to see. Its kind of like looking at part of a photograph… if I can’t see it all, I may miss the subject matter,  or the context, or the overall meaning.

My reality is built around a partial understanding, which is never safe, if I lean on it completely. But if I look for The Way, and don’t try to understand it with my mind, then I can walk without stumbling. \

Romans 12:2 says:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I believe that I am a spiritual being in a physical world. What I see  around me just isn’t the whole picture. I’m not sure there are other-wordly beings, angels and demons, or whatnot. I’m not sure what’s in this other part of what’s happening.

All I know is that there is more going on than I can see. The Big Picture, the Universal Energy, that drives us, God, The Way, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t wear a watch and doesn’t think like I do.

So, I don’t want to trust on my on heart and mind to get me through BASED ON WHAT I SEE. Now that’s not to say I don’t trust my heart and mind. I do. I believe I am capable of picking up the energy of God, walking along The Way, and becoming a more spiritual person every day.

And that is the goal, or mine at least; to strive, daily, to clear my head a little more, to become a little less attached to the physical world around me, to be more open to the quiet wind blowing through my heart and mind, giving me instruction while I am still and quiet.

Psalms 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God

And that about sums it up…

Loving life

That’s all. Its a good day. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. The air is crisp. I am feeling fresh and clean. And you are more beautiful than ever. All of you.

Love
Allen

You’ve got to get up to get down…

Anyone remember this one? Am I dating myself here?

“I came to get down.”

Today I certainly did. Work has been slow and steady but today I am picking up the pace out of necessity. I’ve got another contract breathing down my neck.

Plus several requests that I’m looking at, informally.

There’s always a rainbow, just beyond the horizon. But just like anything else, the trick is always in nailing these things down, getting the timing right, and making them PROFITABLE.

Yes, that’s the trick.

Life on the homefront is interesting, to say the least. Maybe I’ll be more detailed on this stuff once things come out in the wash. Just a constant flux, I guess, is the best way to describe things right now.

But fun, exciting… an adventure. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So that’s it… there’s more. There always is. But for now, that’s all I’ve got.

Be careful out there. Its a wild world. Don’t get stepped on or buried.

The Voodoo who do what you don’t dare do people

Magic people… its all magic. Or something like that. I can’t really explain how things happen or why, but every event, person, song, story, and pain fit together like a puzzle. I am often the only missing piece.

Gotta stay in the now.

I’ve been riding my bike to work everyday, and I’ve learned not to look too far ahead of where I am at that moment. There are several points along the way where I simply zone out and I’m only where I am.

That’s a trick I’ve learned to make the ride more enjoyable; more meaningful. More than just one point to the next. The journey becomes part of my day.

And its quite a journey.

I change it up occasionally, a little here and a little there. Just to move around, I guess. Its nice.

Welp, lots going on, but I’m on the move right now. I’ll be in touch.

Catharsis…

Ok, here’s something I’ve put together after a powerful psychological event last summer that caused all kinds of havoc in my mind, followed by a dramatic change in me, followed by a peace of mind that I am honestly surprised to have, especially considering all that’s happening around me.

1. Traumatic Incident: a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury
2. Catharsis: a Greek word meaning “purification”, “cleansing” or “clarification.”
3. Metamorphosis: a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances
4. Integration:the act of combining into an integral whole
5. Healing: the natural process by which the body repairs itself

I stared at myself very hard, inside, after a terrible event last summer. I watched myself regurgitate the past, in bursts, like a bad stomach virus. The pain from the trauma brought out all sorts of things that had seemingly forever burrowed themselves into my psyche.

But like I said, it was more like a process… like a repeating of steps 2-5, several times… also concurrent, like I could be on step 2 for something out of the past, step 4 for something else, and then maybe starting a step 1 for something new.

At the beginning, it was very rapid, but over a few weeks, the introduction of new memories starting slowing down, and the strength of the process started to subside.

But even though there was plenty of going through them all in a small way for each memory or purge, the process was happening once, overall, for the whole event… in other words, going through steps 2-5 many times was really going through step 2 one BIG time.

Catharsis. And it went on, and on, and on…

While it was going on, I started to change, but the changes were like pendulum swings, dramatically one way, then the other, then back again, until I found a happy middle.

That is one way to describe one dimension of the metamorphosis, but there was a whole lot going on inside – really the decision that things needed to change, and the methods that would be used to change them… I assessed all this, and worked out solutions in my head as I saw some changes worked and some didn’t.

The integration sort of emerged… it didn’t just start one day. It became part of the process as I found new behaviors to help me move past the old stuff, and into the future… behaviors that led to more reward and less tiring, exhaustive lesson-learning.

Well, the integration of all these changes basically signified a loss of part of my self, a BIG part of myself. Not that I wanted to keep that part of me, but it was gone, regardless, which meant there was a big tear where that part of me existed before the summer.

This is where I made room for God, at least the way I see Him. This rewarding feeling that I started getting, as I got things right, helped me build my faith. This feeling filled up the hole where I was, and that’s where the healing happened.

And once that part of me received healing, the feeling started drifting over the whole me. I started feeling it in the old stuff that I kept, as well as the new stuff I found. I started leaning on this “doing the right thing, following the right path” mentality, and found it very stable.

The more I do “right” (at least what I see as God’s will), the better I feel about myself and my situation. And even though things may not be great all the time, I am at peace.

This peace that I’m finding isn’t always at the front of my emotions, but it is always there when I go to it. The problem is that I don’t always go to it, use it, bring it closer to me.

That is where I am today. I am learning a more personalized version of “doing the right thing” – following God’s will, daily. And as I do that, the peace that I have to tap in to, if I will, seems to grow.

Like I say, this doesn’t make my life all rosy and cheery all the time. In fact, I’ve begun to learn a healthy respect for the appropriate (or inappropriately appropriate) use of sarcasm, irony, and just being mean. But not in a childish way, or even a mean way in the true sense…

Anyway that’s a rough draft of something I’m working on… for later… this is mostly for me to remember what I have been thinking about, and what I’ve noticed so far. If you liked it, fine. If not, well…

Life

Well, I’ve been so busy with life, I’ve had little time to piddle… here’s a pic, and a post to welcome my little Miss Elizabeth Serenity into the world…

Liz and Daddy... wecome to this beautiful world!