Embracing Life Wholeheartedly

 When you walk a the spiritual path for a while, you  will be encouraged over and over again to open up to life. Suddenly every event and every encounter that is coming your way is perceived as a present, no matter what. So you realize over time that as long as you align yourself with the flow of life, the outcome will be good for everyone involved in the end.  You learn to say yes to life.  You naturally let go of your worries and fears as the Tao helps you transcending your own narrow agenda. It is the people you encounter and the events you face that help you understand who you truly are. Let the Tao mold you; we think you will like the way you turn out.

We all have a split mind.  We welcome friends, colleagues and family half-hearted, and most of the time we hide an agenda behind our smiles. Accept this split mind, what else can you do? You can't wish your agenda away. Repressing your desires is like trying to push a basket ball under water. They will pop up with a splash. What you can do instead is to embrace all people that come your way and learn over and over again that everybody has a present in hand for you. If you truly open up to them you have a priceless opportunity to let them help you transcend your agenda. True love will wash away all the schemes of your mind.

The Tao is the road towards wholeness. We spiritual folks tend to be one dimensional when it comes to our passions. We accept the good stuff, the love, the holiness. Yet we struggle when it comes to the - what we perceive to be -  not-so-holy desires. Yet the Tao doesn't seem to care about our value judgements. Whether we like it or not, temptations are coming our way. So let's deal with them as best as we can.  Whatever we resist persists. So let's embrace life and let the light that comes our way shine away the darkness we encounter. The Tao will only bring  challenges that we can master and the bigger the challenge, the higher our potential for spiritual transformation.

Walking the Tao is actually the way towards becoming whole.  You let go of your judgments, your agenda and your attempts to control anything. Experience everything as it is.  Let the people and events that come your way bring sunshine as well as thunderstorms. Like plants you require both to grow. The psychologist C. G. Jung once said before he wanted to be whole before he wanted to be holy. Yes, this is a step in the right direction. What the Tao has taught is is that wholeness and holiness are two sides of the same divine coin.


By Christian and Su Zhen

The Holy Number Four

I don't claim to know much about numerology, but since I have received so many messages in form of licence plate numbers, clock times and calendar dates, I cannot help forming my own spiritual impressions about numbers. I also learned about the letter four in Arthur I. Miller's book, The Odd Couple: Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli and Mystic Numbers, in which they claimed that 4 was the true symbol of God and not the Holy Trinity as Christianity postulates. Well, if you use their claim for a moment, this is the algebra I came up with.

Four and the Christian Interpretation
Four is the sum of One and Three. The Holy Trinity (God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit) is your pathway to God, but the Kingdom is incomplete without you. One is the symbol of a Son or Daughter of God as the straight line connects heaven and earth. As you find enlightenment and become a 1, the Kingdom is complete again, i.e. 4=1+3.

Four and the Four Yogas of Enlightenment
Four is the sum of 2 and 2. Some claim that 2 is a symbol of ambiguity, but this only means that you are afraid of the choices you have to face. If you happen to choose love all the time there is nothing to be afraid of. For me 2 symbolizes the twin love of Krishna, the real love between soul partners (symbolized by Radha) and vis-a-vis God (symbolized by Mira). Did you know that if you write the mirror image of 2 next to a 2 you are left with a heart that is standing on the ground. The heart is a symbol of God realized by bakhti yoga (the yoga of love) and tandra sex.

In addition to the yoga of love, you also have the three yogas of wisdom (jnana), medidation (or energy), as well as work (tao). Four also happens to be the sum of 0 and 4. And all of these paths are about eliminating the the ego, the little I and letting the empty space fill up with God's presence. As you reflect, the ego disappears (jnana), as you meditate the chokras open up until you radiate with divine energy, and as you submit to life (and follow the tao), you dissolve the self that way too: 4=0+4.

The Spiritual Literature Leads You Astray

C. G. Jung's shadow work was his biggest contribution to our spiritual community in my opinion: if you like to live up to the potential of your so-called True Self, then all you will do is to negate your real self and blow your shadow up in proportion to your attempts to 'Become the Better You'. Own the negative stuff that exists in you instead and make something creative out of it. After all, you were born to do it.

Let me give you an example of a spiritual writer who struggled for years for enlightenment and spent an equal amount of his time in sexual chat rooms as he did with his holy literature - an apparent contradiction to himself and all the readers - if they knew about it. No matter how hard he tried, not matter how much he beat himself up to be his holier self, his sexual fantasies followed him wherever he went. After a lot of soul searching he realized that his sexual fantasies actually had a message for him: he was lacking assertion and aggressiveness in his day to day interactions. Once he let go of some of his Christian ideals, the shadow become smaller - still present, but suddenly manageable.

There is no alternative, own your impurities, make something creative out of them and move on. If afterwards you realize that being a light worker is your mission, enjoy and let humanity enjoy your true True Self.