Lent: Day 8: Observe Endings As They Turn Into Beginnings

I am listening to Wayne Dyer's Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao in my truck right now.  Dyer was my first introduction to the "positive thought" movement back in 2000.  I listened to Manifest Your Destiny over and over.  The ideas in that book were right up my alley and I haven't turned back.


I don't know much about the Tao Te Ching.  I'd heard of it and knew it was "ancient Chinese wisdom writings", and figured I'd let Wayne tell me all about it.  The first disk kinda just rolled over me.  My head wasn't really in the space to listen and I found myself bored and rebelling, wondering why I hadn't gotten a juicy fiction to keep me company as I drive.  I kept playing it, however, and this morning listened to the 16th essay (out of 81!)  It really struck home and I replayed it, excited that I was finally getting into the messages.  Here is one translation:

                            Tao Te Ching: Verse 16

Become totally empty.

Let your heart be at peace.

Amidst the rush of worldly comings and goings,

observe how endings become beginnings.

Things flourish, each by each,

only to return to the source…

To what is and what is to be.

To return to the root is to find peace.

To find peace is to fulfill one’s destiny.

To fulfill one’s destiny is to be constant.

To know the constant is called insight.

Not knowing this cycle

leads to eternal disaster.

Knowing the constant gives perspective.

This perspective is impartial.

Impartiality is the highest nobility;

the highest nobility is Divine.

Being Divine, you will be at one with the Tao.

Being at one with the Tao is eternal.

This way is everlasting,

not endangered by physical death.

Lao-tzu

View endings, however painful, as beginnings.  I know you've all probably heard this before, a million times, but for some reason it really struck home today.  I acknowledge my feelings of grief, pain, uncomfortableness, but strive to do this from outside of myself as a compassionate observer.  I know that I don't know the future.  I know that putting too much energy into what I "know" is "what I want" will hinder me from a much bigger possibility of good in my life.  Today I was advised to go ahead and dream about what I want, and then let it go, giving it up to God in gratitude.  

I've been doing that with my current money situation.  The prospect of being single and living on my current income is a daunting one.  I've never had my own bank account or been solely responsible for covering all of my own needs and wants.  Last year I took a minimum wage job over the summer and made the most of it, but the thought of doing another brain-numbingly boring job makes me breathe very shallowly.  So, I've thought about what I want, breathed deeply into it, and let it go.  Again and again.  This week I have received three prospective phone calls about money-making activities coming my way.  Yay!  I smile in gratitude, feeling my heart speed up in nervous anticipation and return those phone calls to get more details.  

Thanks for listening.