Maybe you do this too: When someone mentions a book or a person or some music, I will do a search on that particular subject. Then what I find there may take me to something else. After awhile, I am lost in a beautiful forest of rich and interesting sights.
I was looking for a book on Amazon and one thing led to another. Somehow, I found a book called One: Essential Writings on Nonduality. I ordered a used copy of the book and yesterday it found its way into my mailbox. Inside the book, were words that touched a place in me that was waiting to be discovered. I found those words in a part of the book written by Jerry Wennstrom, an artist who, in 1979, at the age of 29, gave up his art and everything he owned to begin a new life. (Researching him for this post, I just found out about Wennstrom's book, The Inspired Heart - another tree in the forest that I want to check out.) Wennstrom writes:
"...A saying by Lao Tzu goes something like this: First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then our world - in that order. Most of us go about that process quite backward, first jumping into the world and bringing our messy, unresolved issues with us. The attempt to do anything significant in the world before we have been deeply changed ourselves is a way to avoid real change. Good intention counts for very little in the mythic journey. Doing our own work first leads to our true and unique participation it the world we wish to serve.
"We all change together in ways that are not under our control. We cannot know the outcome of the difficult work we are required to do. We simply have to trust the process. What we can unconditionally trust about change is that ultimately beauty creates beauty. However beautifully we can stand alone in what feels like death is how beautifully we stand in the new life. Our courageous stance in the face of death creates integrity in its truest sense. We cannot impersonate true integrity."
A couple of years ago, I began to feel a certain discomfort as I observed myself and others while we participated in activist work. I watched my ego, my attachments, my need to be right. It felt messy. As a result, I have pulled back from activism and began studying my spirituality more earnestly.
Wennstrom's words - in the above quote and in the rest of his writings - offer a truth that I need to hear. I know a truth that I'm ready for by the tears that come along with it. This morning, reading Wennstrom, the tears flowed, washing away some useless beliefs that I have held for a very long time. When those beliefs were erased, I saw beauty and potential that I sensed existed, but had not seen before.
I am very, very thankful that so much wisdom is available to us. What a gift!
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