The Tao of Dark Sages - Chapter 11, Part 2

The Tao of Dark Sages
by Scott Bradley

(Mark-tzu) "To know the Tao is easy." What does this mean? That it is easy to know about the Tao, but difficult to harmonize with it. To talk about it is easy, to live it is hard. Talk is easy, silence is hard. But it is in silence that the proof of the Tao is found. The proof of a sage is his or her silence. "The true sage does seek to communicate," wrote Chuang-tzu.

Are you offended, Scott-tzu? Good! You work on what it is in you that can be offended and we will work on what it is in us that is "off". And in the mean time, you are all welcome here, my dear ants.

(Sue-tzu) What fun! Thank you, Scott-tzu, for stirring the pot! Let’s grow together! And now, where were we? Oh yeah, poor Buz. Sorry, Buz. Tell us why you are here.

I’m here because I am seeking to make spiritual progress and think you can help me. Realizing this, I see that there is a problem with "seeking". I know I can’t find what I want by seeking it. What I want is to not want to seek. I’m seeking to not seek. And I don’t know any way to get out of this conundrum.

Does anyone have a answer to this problem?

Stop seeking? Let go of seeking?

When I let go of something, I find that other experiences arise out of the void. If you have let go of seeking, what has arisen for you, Nellie?

Well, I can’t truly say that I’ve completely let go of seeking, but when I "try it on" I feel a sense of contentment and affirmation. The struggle stops. And I feel a welling up of thankfulness and acceptance. It’s like you have said, a great big Yes! fills me.

To what, then, are you saying Yes!?

To everything. To everything in my experience. It’s like a big, wonderful sigh of relief and contentment.

Then are you saying Yes! to whatever it is in you that causes you to seek or just to the state of being one who doesn’t seek?

I’m not sure. I’ll have to give that some thought. But, I think when I say "everything" I mean everything, including that part of me that seeks. And...the seeking itself?

Can we affirm what we see as harmful in ourselves? I don’t see how we can do anything else. Our affirmation of all of our experience means...well, all of our experience. Isn’t Affirmation, with a capital "A", all about not making distinctions between harmful and helpful, right and wrong, and all that lot? Isn’t the harmony of the Tao just this, the cessation of division? A profound unity of the heart?

Now, I want to say something that feels a little content-ful, but nonetheless is worth being said: Affirmation of your self as it is, is perhaps the most important thing you can do to grow spiritually. Say Yes! to this messed-up self that you are. Experience thankfulness for this crazy knot of conflicting desires and hungers that is you. I cannot emphasize enough how liberating this can be. Say Yes! to you.

And Buz, if you are finding it difficult to let go of seeking, might I suggest that you try affirming it? Because there is no difference between letting go and affirming. To affirm is to let go. To let go is to affirm. Accepting your self in totality, what is there left to seek? What else can it mean that you are everything you seek?

If you are what you seek, affirm what you are and seeking dissolves. If you affirm what is part of you it will stop seeming like all of you. Affirmation is the negation of division. Division is the cause of struggle. Seeking is struggle.

If harmony is the goal, let harmony be the means. Don’t stand divided against yourself. Ever.

If you're interested in reading more from this series by Scott Bradley, go here.