Acknowledging Your Idol Along the Way

Did you know that the word evil  is live spelled backwards? So it turns out that for us spiritual path travelers the concepts of evil and sin make little sense. Everyone who has ever had a glimpse of the Tao know that this Force bends backwards to make you fall in love with life and your soul siblings, so to consciously do something evil means that you pretty much deliberately walk in the opposite direction of the Tao. You can try, but you will soon find a lot of broken China on the floor.

Mistakes are different from 'sin' and 'evil'. You knock down a precious vase, but then the Tao shows you that it is much less of a big deal than you think and the next day you are again encouraged by Her to put your best foot forward. More than that, the Tao will show you why those 'accidents' happened in the first place and what kind of homework you still have to do to avoid mistakes like that in the future.

A Tao traveler surely has demons -  interferences along the Way - and they hurt when they pop up because they temporarily shut you off the Way's energy source. Perhaps we have even more demons than the Agnostic next door because we want to go somewhere. We want to be enlightened, we want to be holy and full of love and peace. So we mind when we find that we are different from the image we aspire to be. Well, a demon pops up to remind you that you haven't quite managed to bring the whole 'I' along. This puzzle was written many thousand years ago, yet it is still a perfect description of the war inside:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate. Though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not; the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing - which I do not want  - that is what I do.
(Apostle Paul)

You want to end this war inside? Well, accept the desire you have, the longing, the lust, the greed, the fear. Face it, accept it and you have a shot at transcending it. Fight it and it will never go away. You can only end a shadow boxing match when you stop moving your hands. So coping with your shadow is very simple really: accept who you are and then put your best foot forward. And if you meet an idol along the way, nod in its direction and then go your merry Way.