My Sunday Thought for November 29, 2015: Your Path

How do you a thing into one piece?

What is the Way?  Ordinary mind is the Way.  If you try to direct yourself toward it, you go away from it.  Thus it is with Zen, thus it is with life.

You must free your mind to let your body create.

This Sunday Thought is just that - a thought.  Like most thoughts I have, I need to consider it makes little sense to anyone but me.  I have been admonished by several readers for stating things too confusing for young people to understand.  Personally, I think if we hadn't "grown up" we'd be able to understand so much more.  Most of us, it seems, would certainly be happier.

I get messages from people talking about their struggle to find their particular path in life.  They seem amazed when I laugh and inform them they are searching for something they already have.  They want to find love, not realizing simply initiating the search was proof they already have.  They want to be happy, not knowing they already are.  They want to find God, not realizing God is already with them.  

The minute we took our first breath we were already placed upon our path.  With life we were endowed with all we would ever need to make the most of it.  We spend most of our time trying to find what we haven't lost, and not nearly enough time recognizing we already have it.  Our minds are filled with greed, ambition, jealousy, basically the seven deadly sins.  We need to free our minds to allow ourselves to create.  Consider the adage, "Only the blind man truly sees."  

Your path, the Way, is not something you can know or not know - it just is.  It is confusing for many to be told, the Way that can be described is not the eternal Way.  How do you describe the indescribable? 

  

What we see is only our perception of what we know, and what we know is so very insignificant to what is.  

Take a moment this weekend to empty your mind of all the elephant shit that clutters it, and consider the path you are on.  Empty your mind of all the greed, ambition, jealousy, and such.  For a moment in time, allow yourself to just be.  You might learn something.  You might not.  

It is what it is.

How do you cut a thing into one piece?  Consider a terrorist that would cut a child a five year old child in half for not renouncing her faith.  Who is stronger, the terrorist with the sword or the child's with her faith?  The terrorist knows how to cut something in two, yet is lost as to how to cut something into one.  Are we only that which we perceive, or are we more?

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so.

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion and debate in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years as a military intelligence analyst, planner, and briefer, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.

Frank Anthony Villari (aka, Pastor Tony)

Pastor Tony is founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance and author/editor of the Congregation's official blog site, "The Path."