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When you transfer the management of your base instincts to being embraced by integration, can you not part from that? When you focus on the energy of your spirit until it becomes gentle, can you be like an infant? When you eliminate the need to carefully examine every mystery you come upon, can you give up looking for flaws? When you love people as though you were administering to them, can you not expect to understand them? When you let your spiritual gateway open and close, can you act with femininity? When you see clearly in every direction you might travel, can you still realize you know very little? Encourage the growth of life and nourish it. Encourage life, but realize you'll never possess it. It increases, and yet you won't regulate it. This is known as mysterious De.   Commentary: 10 ~ Integration -When you transfer the management of your base instincts to being embraced by integration, can you not part from that? Just what are these base instincts The Laozi is referring to? Well, the basest instincts we all have are the ones that provide for our survival - like having food, clothing and shelter. Very often people want to have much more than they need. They might have huge homes with more rooms than they can use, closets full of clothes they rarely wear, and eat much more than their bodies need. There are times we all feel good when we share some of those things with others - because we feel a basic integration with others. Would it be possible to feel that way all the time? -When you focus on the energy of your spirit until it becomes gentle, can you be like an infant? Our energy becomes scattered and distracted at times - we seem to be pulled in so many different directions. That can cause many uncomfortable emotions to arise, like jealousy, anger, and frustration. If you look at an infant, you can’t help but notice how gentle it is. It seems to take every new thing it comes across as a wonderful experience to explore. The infant’s energy is focused on whatever is happening to it at that moment. As we get older, with more responsibilities and tasks to accomplish, we can lose that sense of gentleness. Would it be possible to accomplish all we have to do while retaining that childish gentleness? -When you eliminate the need to carefully examine every mystery you come upon, can you give up looking for flaws? Our scientific and analytical minds try to solve all the mysteries of life. If there's something we don't understand, we examine it very carefully in an effort to bring it into our scope of understanding. In this way, we tend to find more flaws than solutions, which can lead to frustration. By realizing that there's no need to examine everything in minute detail, would it be possible to give up on looking for flaws in ourselves and others? -When you love people as though you were administering to them, can you not expect to understand them? There seems to be a criteria in our minds that determines who we'll love and who we won't love. We strive to understand other's motivations in order to feel that we can safely give them our love. The Laozi speaks about a type of "Unconditional Love", wherein a person just exudes love as though she were serving others. There's no need for reciprocation, as love comes as naturally as the sun appears in the sky. Would it be possible to not need to understand anything about another person in order to to just let love shine from within us? -When you let your spiritual gateway open and close, can you act with femininity? We all build walls of protection around ourselves, as though we have to build a very strong fortification that won't let in any discomfort. The spiritual gateway is like a doorway in our walls. There are times when we allow it to open, and other times when it slams shut. If we don’t build such a strong and rigid door, but remain a bit more flexible, might we find that we’ve been trying to keep out things that would actually bring us happiness? -When you see clearly in every direction you might travel, can you still realize you know very little? New insights keep opening up to us all the time. Occasionally we have moments when we have the sense we know what's going to happen, or know which path to take without understanding where these insights come from. The more these kinds of things happen to us, we might get tempted to think we have special abilities that place us above the rest of the people, and feel a compulsion to tell others which paths they should take themselves. If, on the other hand, we treat these insights as merely a natural progression that occurs, we won't get caught up in thinking we've hit upon something that sets us apart as being more special than anyone else. Would it be possible to have these insights and at the same time realize they don't prove we have any special kind of knowledge? -Encourage the growth of life and nourish it. -Encourage life, but realize you'll never possess it. -It increases, and yet you won't regulate it. The Laozi suggests that we can encourage our own growth and the growth of others. We may even nourish others along the way, but that's no reason to think that we actually possess them. Others may progress due to our encouragement and nourishing, but we have to know when to let them fly freely on their own without our intervention. We can do ourselves a favor as well by allowing our spirits to soar without trying to restrict that growth. -This is known as mysterious De. The Chinese word De is hard to translate into one English word, although it has been translated as “virtue.” However, the English word “virtue” brings to mind a sense of morality which isn’t what The Laozi is referring to. I see De as the quality and abilities each person and thing on this earth has that makes them who and what they are - “the virtue of what they are.” Integration occurs naturally when we don’t get bogged down with thinking about how things should be, but find enjoyment in letting them be what they are. It’s a mystery because we can’t understand how that works, but we’ve all seen it happen. Alternate translation: When you’ve already got enough and share the extras that come your way with others, can you stick to it? When you feel comfortable and unstressed, can you be like a little kid? When you accept each moment for what it is, can you stop looking for problems with what’s happening? When you share your love with others, can you do that without judging them? When you tear down your walls, can you stop building new ones? When you think you know what’s really going on, can you accept that you might not? Life is good. Have fun with it. But don’t try to control it - your life or the lives of others. That’s how everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. Dao Is Open Site Map | BY: Nina | Guodian Laozi | DDJ Concordance | Comparisons | Who was Laozi | | Return Home | Laozi's Dao De Jing | Your Dao De Jing | Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) | Links | Meditation | Dao (Tao) is Open Forum | Book List | Other Stuff | |
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