This concept of having an anchor of gold, or Light, within me, is so helpful. It grants my core/torso solidity, my shoulders uprightness, and my brain a strong backbone to sit upon.
This morning I found this image (right), which I like too, as it denotes a chain connecting one upwards. It’s also a good representation of the line, ‘The solid must be the root of Light’ from yesterday’s Tao Te Ching reading.
I am happy to work with this image and physical visualisation for a while. I feel it’s valuable to me, especially as I go in to quite stormy case work in the week ahead, and demanding trainings thereafter.
Let’s read.
-27- A skilful traveller leaves no track. A skilful speaker makes no slip. A skilful reckoner needs no counting rod. A skilfully made door requires no bolts, yet it cannot be opened. A skilful binding has no cords or knots, yet it cannot be untied. Therefore, the True Person is skilful in assisting people, and abandons nobody; Is skilful in assisting things, and abandons nothing. This is called “Following the Inner Light.” Therefore, the skilful person is the teacher of the person without skill. The person without skill is the material for the skilful person. If you do not respect the teacher, if you do not care for the material, you are on the road to confusion and your cleverness will not save you. This is an essential principle. (Tao Te Ching, chap 27)
My takeaway from this chapter is this:
By following the Inner Light, we can pass on assistance wherever needed.
What is this Inner Light?
Promptings. When you really commit to STO, you will constantly be guided to the next place or ‘site’ of service (SOS). The Inner Light is the wellspring of inner guidance that acts as a torch or headlamp casting light where darkness occurs, and therefore bringing illumination, or ‘enlightenment’. Every human being is invited to become a channel for Light, and to shine that Light into dark corners. It’s oh-so-easy to get distracted and caught up in the darkness, or attached to one’s manifestations of Light. Do you see? If the execution of the bringing of Light becomes the point of a person’s focus, rather than the heeding of the next prompting, we fall behind on the day’s schedule (and people and things get abandoned, as Lao Tzu indicates above).
Interesting. Are you saying that each day starts with a ‘SOS’ (site of service) schedule for us, as if we were an Amazon delivery driver, or an agency domiciliary care worker, with a bunch of addresses to attend to..?
It is easy to trivialise this work, or make of it a ‘game’ or worse, an ordeal to be overcome at speed. Inner promptings to serve, to assist, to teach are beautifully precious. Do not put yourself on ‘the road to confusion’ – for ‘your cleverness will not save you.’ Have respect for the Teacher – the teacher in you, and the teacher which is you.
Duly noted, dear voice of my learning. I sense the promptings in me as flighty, colourful butterflies that dodge my gaze, and certainly my touch. How can I heed these inner promptings better?
***Med 15mins***
‘Sense or hear the pain in others – including your loved ones; dialogue with that pain directly, unflinchingly.’
{crying} It hurts. I don’t know if I can… I’ve become less able to get close to the pain of others, especially my loved ones… The thought of my father in emotional pain or anguish reduces me to tears. I can’t ‘go near it’.
Yes you can, dear soul. Oh yes you can. You just need a new approach.
:-(( Well, you better teach me. Please.
It’s to do with letting Mercy flow through you. This, as opposed to going in and trying to fix, or make well, or mend, or reassure, or generally do anything Mind-led, problem-solving, ‘sympathetic’. If you can be present to others in a Heart-centred, parasympathetic state, you can be a channel for Mercy. That is what pain is a cry for. Mercy.
I really barely have a full sense of Mercy… Explain.
Mercy is the ‘deliverance from evil’ described in the Lord’s prayer.
Oh Lord. Help me understand this. :-(((====
‘Deliverance from evil’ merely means the restoration of the normal state, which is one of neutrality or love. Love is balanced: it neither takes or receives, but flows in infinity. Evil is the unbalanced state of excess or insufficiency where Scarcity reigns and resources are fought over. Mercy introduces, or re-introduces, the knowledge of abundance, of enough, of sufficiency. ‘God is sufficient unto me’ is to say: in the divine realm, there is no lack.
To sit next to another soul in pure confidence of the divine realm of ‘sufficiency’ is to be a channel of Mercy.
This is truly beautiful. I guess being well and truly anchored internally is an important foundation for this service. I am so keen to learn how to be present to people who are in pain without losing my bearings, or becoming untethered, or burning out.
Trust in the sufficiency wholly.
May we all learn and comprehend this divine sufficiency. May we be able to be present to each others’ pain and speak to it directly and without flinching. May we dialogue with each others’ in a calm, parasympathetic state. Let us all learn this gentle conversational art. Let us learn to hear and speak with and listen to the pain in each other, that we may be a channel for Mercy. May the inner promptings within us all act as our guides to Sites of Service. May we all learn to hear the voice within us which points to our next appointed place. May we step forward with complete trust in divine sufficiency, and convey that confidence to the next person. May our empathic traits not cause us to resonate with the pain of another, but rather to sense the pain of another and to approach that other in a state of pure, perfect peace. And in this way, may all people and all things receive the assistance they seek.
I am heeding inner promptings