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Tao te Jing, chap­ter 71

If you know
what you don’t know,
you’re doing great.
If you don’t know
what you don’t know,
you’re sick.

The only way
to get rid of that sick­ness
is to be sick of it.

The Mas­ters aren’t sick,
because they got sick of being sick.

Ron Hogan

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“It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself!“
Chris, North­ern Exposure

I think I might spend an issue or 2 on the Tao Te Jing, (TTJ) and see where it leads us. There are mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the text — tra­di­tional ones, and a mod­ern a quite free-form one, devised by Ron Hogan. I’ll be using the Hogan version.

The lead image is from the late, great TV show, “North­ern Expo­sure.” Chris, the intro­spec­tive guy, started talk­ing about a vision he had, which involved “fling­ing a cow” (via a tre­buchet — a war device that “flung” stones at walls.)

Then, some­one pointed out to Chris that “Monty Python” had already “flung” a cow. We finally get to the scene pic­tured, (and here’s the video) when we get to see the end result, and Chris utter­ing the line,

“It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself!”

It’s not what you do, it’s the doing.

This is tricky. I was talk­ing to a phone client (you do know I pro­vide phone / Skype coun­selling / con­sult­ing, right?) who was some­what despair­ing of ever find­ing his life pur­pose. I started push­ing him a bit, and out came a really great idea. Then, he pro­ceeded to tell me why he couldn’t do any­thing about it — not until he raised mil­lions of dol­lars. I pushed ahead, ask­ing him what he could do as a first step.

For some rea­son, he heard that, and we began to dis­cuss con­crete steps. I then sug­gested ho go to a local Zen Cen­tre. He said, “I’ve been there, and know some peo­ple… Hey! Wait a minute! there’s a guy there that did a 2 year course so that he could do what I want to do! I need to talk with him, and get this going!” There was his first step, star­ing him in the face, once he got past his “I can’t-it is.”)

“It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself!”

Or, if we con­vince our­selves we can’t do some­thing, we are right.

The Mas­ters aren’t sick,
because they got sick of being sick.

You get over what isn’t work­ing for you by shift­ing your actual being.. Sim­ple exam­ple. Every time you drink, you get drunk, and get a migraine. So, don’t drink.

“Yes, but, but… I want to drink, with­out the com­pli­ca­tions! I want to have what I want, with­out con­se­quences!” Good luck.

Mas­ters are made, not born

Mas­ters aren’t born that way—they have to work at it. Ulti­mately, it all comes down to get­ting sick and tired of being sick and tired. Or, notic­ing what isn’t work­ing, and try­ing some­thing new, as opposed to sim­ply mak­ing excuses, or look­ing in another direc­tion.

When I work with clients, I often hear lists of “things they are won­der­ful at”:

“I’m so smart, attrac­tive, per­son­able, clever, great at _____(fill in the blank.)”

I don’t want to waste my time argu­ing with them, so I just say, “I’m not inter­ested in what you do well. I want to look at what isn’t work­ing for you. Tell me about that, and let’s look at shift­ing what you are doing.”

Wise clients get this, and we look at “…know­ing what they don’t know.” If they know what they don’t know, they are already 95% of the way home. If, on the other hand, they “…don’t know what they don’t know, things get difficult.

As I end­lessly repeat, there is a test for all where you are at.

You look at a few areas.
1) How well is your pri­mary rela­tion­ship going? Have you ever had a suc­cess­ful, long-term one? If not, what isn’t work­ing? If so, what are you doing to mess the rela­tion­ship up?
2) How well is your per­sonal life going? Are you con­tent? Is your career also your voca­tion, and also your pas­sion?
3) How sure are you that you have all the answers? How impor­tant is it to you to be seen as wise, a Mas­ter, “spe­cial,” some­one who is going to change the world?

In each case, these areas are areas that help us to see what is really going on for us.

1) If you are in a dys­func­tional rela­tion­ship, this is a marker that we have not yet learned to com­mu­ni­cate, to be open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble, and to have a firm foun­da­tion of self-knowing beneath you.
2) If you are depressed, sad, envi­ous, angry, con­fused, bored, then some­thing is miss­ing in your self focus. If you are doing mean­ing­less work (assum­ing you are not using such work to fund the “real” work…) then you do not have a firm sense of our own direc­tion beneath you.
3) If you are stuck try­ing to con­vince oth­ers of how won­der­ful and enlight­ened you are, you aren’t (enlight­ened, that is…) — pure and sim­ple. Peo­ple who crave atten­tion and noto­ri­ety, typ­i­cally, are, as the TTJ say, sick.

Thus, “It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself!”

The mark, the only mark, of Mas­tery, is in the doing of one’s life, qui­etly, directly, and mas­ter­fully. When the “tre­buchet” works, it works with grace and beauty.

Fling your­self with aban­don into “the fling”, with no wish for recog­ni­tion, and you’ll be amazed at the ele­gance. Or,

Tao te Jing 3.

If you toss com­pli­ments around freely,
peo­ple will waste your time
try­ing to impress you.
If you give things too much value,
you’re going to get ripped off.
If you try to please peo­ple,
you’ll just make them pissed.

The Mas­ter leads
by clear­ing the crap
out of people’s heads
and open­ing their hearts.
He low­ers their aspi­ra­tions
and makes them suck in their guts.

He shows you how to for­get
what you know and what you want,
so nobody can push you around.
If you think you’ve got the answers,
he’ll mess with your head.

Stop doing stuff all the time,
and watch what hap­pens. Ron Hogan

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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