Wisdom in us as Old as Time

So what I am seeing is the need for the ability to adapt when times change.  It is no good simply floating on the tide.  There needs to be awareness of where the tide is going, and what is happening.  If there is a waterfall ahead that others are falling over, then it is best to attempt swimming to the side.

I feel this is still about the essence of standing up to the plate.  For some reason this leads me to have the feeling about boxing, and how so many people love the fight.  There may be the obvious connection that many people during the fight are able to express some of their own tension and aggression.  But I think people are also fascinated by performance – what will this person do if they get knocked down?  How will they handle that?  What qualities will they bring to deal with it?  This relates so much to the way we handle our life.  What do we do if we get knocked down? See The Plate – Round Four

There are so many strategies we can use in doing this.  Throughout the world, and in different cultures, there are people who developed real refinement in the strategies they use to deal with conflict.  Some of these refinements we find in the eastern forms of martial arts. It isn’t the actions we need to take notice of.  Not by jumping and leaping, not the sword fighting, it is what lies behind that.  Those people have stood up to the plate.  What have they stood up with?

Sometimes it isn’t about feeling you are going to smash your opponent into the ground.  It isn’t about that.  It is about standing with all that you are available for the moment, without presupposition, without feeling that you know what your opponent or the life situation is going to confront you with.  It isn’t that you are denying your past experience, but you are holding it gently, watching what the situation requires of you.  Neither is it that you underestimate your opponent, you don’t think that you are far superior or magnificent in order to boost your confidence.  You don’t need to use any of that sort of crap.  You are simply standing before the situation observing what is necessary and ready to respond fully.

We can always learn from observing another person, even if what you learn is not to swim in the same water as they have swum, in which they lost a leg.

The observation can be quite subtle and yet very direct, by drawing out the secrets of the giants of past and present.  We have seen in our own times some of the models used in our culture fail.  The business of ever increasing profits, can now be seen often to lead directly to ever increasing losses.  So this is not necessarily a model to follow.

A Meeting

Ashung Jay.  (As near as it can be pronounced through your lips.) That is my name.  I am living here in this man.  I am an old part of his being that he is only just coming into contact with.  This is because he is learning to bow low enough.  I am living within this man from an earlier period of history.  I am giving him my essence, my life essence.  He can draw upon it.

The way of life is strange.  A person’s life develops many connections.  Sometimes in unlikely ways you may love somebody who is of lesser class, or scorned.  Yet that person may link you with aspects of life that are important to know about, and you will be the lesser if you did not understand them, and have sympathy with them.  

What I teach is that within each situation there are various factors.  There is an area of strength, and there is an area of weakness.  There is a male area and a female area.  If you understand these things there is no need to fear the situation, because you can move within it and shift as is necessary.  You can be weak, or you can be strong.  You can withdraw or you can advance.  You can use the momentum of what is opposing you, or you can stand up and direct it.

Let us see if we can translate this.  In each life situation there is a changing point.  There is change, and within that change, if you understand it, there is possibility – there is possibility.  There is not something defined, but there is possibility.  Within the strength there is weakness.  Within the weakness there is strength.

I wish to learn of your wisdom.  Help me understand.

Changing Points of Tension

In today’s words, in any system there are needs.  There are changing points of tension, and in the needs and the tension there are possibilities for change.

What if I could apply that to my life now, perhaps you can help me understand it.

Shing Jaow.  In your life there is a point of conflict.  It is between what you presently exist and live in and what your desire is.  Within that point of tension you could be overthrown.  That is your weakness.  You could be cast down at that point.  Or at that point, if you swing carefully, there can be a transition, a new phase, a new rearrangement of the points of tension and weakness. That is the use of wisdom/insight/strength.

All life is like that.  There are never situations in which points of change do not occur.

How can someone assess their present position?  How can someone learn to assess their present position, and discover where the point of change is?  How can they discover if it is in being strong, or weak, or yielding, in waiting or pushing ahead?  How can they see if they should be giving way, standing still, or moving ahead?

I give this to you.  It is for you to understand.  Everything rests upon a pivot.  Everything is finely balanced, otherwise the universe would not exist.  But it is a pivot of change, of constant change and nothing ever stands still.  Nothing is ever formalised.  It is ever shifting.

How do we find, or where do we find, our point of balance in all that?

You need to listen!  You need to listen.  And in listening not rush to put in your own commentary or point of view.  You need to listen.  You can never completely know what confronts you because it is never static.  It is a constant dynamic flux. But you can see its direction of movement and dance with it if you listen and watch.

Life – The Universe is in Constant Change

Judaism in some of its forms, and Christianity, give rise to the sense of a stable and fixed reality.  The Mosaic laws express something of that.  They are apparently indicating divine laws that are cast in stone, and we have created a God, and a view of the universe, like that.  Static. But it doesn’t fit the facts that we can observe all around us.  It doesn’t fit life experience.  Other cultures saw this continuum, this flux, this ever shifting state that yet has within it a condition of stability.  Despite its movement it yet expresses in certain slowly shifting ways.  Nevertheless in many ways we are still feathers blowing in the wind.  It is also love, reaching out against all odds, and that may at any moment be torn apart, yet continues in its expression of love.  It does this again and again until it creates a new way, a new life.  Against all possible odds creation takes place.

There is wisdom in us as old as time.  To survive the future we need to reach beyond the barriers that we have developed in ourselves and in our society through the ages.  These barriers that we have gradually developed in our way of life, show in how society and sometimes our religion express and create dogma. Over many generations some things have become almost rigid. Because of events in the past they have been necessary.  But at a deep level of our being they do not exist in that rigid way and are transcended.  In the love a man has for a woman, and a woman has for a man, they do not exist rigidly as moral laws of God.  They are not there in the depths.  Love overrides so much that in our society is taken as gospel in today’s world.