#136. The Old Creation Story & the New Creation Story

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #136 is the first of three collections of thoughts and reflections based on the only book I know which deals explicitly with what the Christian Church looks like in the Big History perspectives of the New Cosmology.

The book is The Holy Web: Church and the New Universe Story by Cletus Wessels (Orbis Books, 2000). The author is a Dominican priest, pastor and theologian in the Midwestern United States.

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He begins the Preface by noting that Christianity emerged in the context of a patriarchal society and a religious culture founded on the bible story of creation. Both of these perspectives need to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science’s creation story and the rise of feminism.

His hope to help readers to a new and positive way of looking at the church. I think he is probably more clerical than he realizes.

Wessels seems to see feminism as replacing patriarchy, but doesn't address the issue that patriarchy isn't going to be given up voluntarily unless an alternative to the patriarchal form of masculinity is available.

He says that a non-patriarchal and non-hierarchical Christian church would be unrecognizable; the question is whether Christianity can adjust to such a new worldview. It can, surely; but just as surely it seems unlikely to, anytime in the near future.

He also seems to think that modern science, evolution and concepts like Field Theory, Chaos Theory and dissipative structures might can improve peoples' views of the church. But if the now dead liturgical renewal couldn’t improve peoples’ views of the church, it's difficult to see how science ideas can.

Despite my reservations, I want to emphasize that the vision of this book that makes it especially stimulating.

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Part One says, “We need a new story and we have one.” And, as Wessels notes in the first chapter, that the winds of change threaten to destroy the ancient churches.

Everything is different now. The known age of the world, the speed of travel and communication, our perceptions of psyche, somos and kosmos, the presence of Protestant churches and the non-Christian religions, the experience of women, and the no-longer-effective hierarchical authority-- all provide an opportunity for transformation.

If, as Karl Rahner says, “the Mystery is always and everywhere making itself known to us,” I ask what is the Mystery making known about itself in this collapse of the ancient churches?

Personally, I think they don’t need to survive now: the spiritualities which those churches preserved have now become the property of all the world.

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Wessels says "Paradigm shifts are intuitive. A pattern leaps out: you see it, or you don’t. And when things don’t work, they change."

      

Transformation results in a new story, new symbols and new guiding wisdom. As I see it, in our contemporary situation the story is cosmic evolution; the rite is the basic rituals of native peoples; and wisdom is asking for the help from the cosmic forces, earth-energies, plant spirits and animal powers.

The paradigm shift ultimately is about the place and role of the individual person in the universe. The New Story says to each one of us: "Don’t be afraid. You count. Your life is not trivial. The universe needs you."

This is precisely what spirituality is about. It includes instruction: “Since the world needs you, you therefore need to relate, to listen, to be sensitive, to be-friend the earth.”

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The second chapter presents a summary of The New Creation Story.

We live in an expanding universe, 15 billion years old, and on a 5 billion year old planet where life emerged early and consciousness emerged only recently. Matter is alive in a dance of waves and particles. The realization of this scientific evolutionary view of the world is the greatest religious, humanistic, cultural and spiritual event of many centuries.

The Christian doctrine of the Fall isn’t part of this New Story! Only a new understanding of consciousness itself will permit the “alteration of consciousness” to be understood as “salvific.” Altered awareness is the most fundamental personal transformation possible; it is an “ontological” change.

The old story puts “man” in charge, and justifies the simple and ubiquitous view, “Work to get stuff.” Accumulating stuff is a kind of protection against the world. “They made clothes,” says Genesis of Adam & Eve. Not to cover their nakedness, out of shame, but to protect themselves, because of fear.

Stuff is obtained at the expense of the earth. The New Story sees humanity as a late-comer to and as dependent on the earth, part of the community of species, and participators in the co-creative process.

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A big question is: "If we don’t want stuff, what do we want?" And the answer is "Meaning"-- “communion with Mystery” and to be in harmony with the seasons. As Berry says, We need to go back to our genetic roots, to recover the sacramental worldview.

But this involved a major change in thinking. We need to reevaluate what we once considered evil: chaos, darkness, the shadow side of things.

Such things need to be seen now as a normal part of the cosmic evolutionary process. We also need to see, therefore, that a salving/redemptive activity is an aspect of the universe’s functioning-- that the passover mystery is built right into the cosmos.

The cosmos itself is paschal. “The universe has an inner self-organizing and self-healing power that enables it to bring order out of chaos” so that the redemptive power of God is built into the very substance of the world. And this is what is highlighted in the story of Jesus.

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A good definition of church is “the community of those who-- because of their attention to the Jesus story-- see that the cosmos itself is redemptive." I think, How important it is, then, to celebrate the passover process! Via the seder. Via pesanky. Via the Easter breakfast.

      

We celebrate one of the most fundamental principles of the cosmic process when at the Seder a young child asks, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

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Cosmic evolution is theophany. In the history of humanity, fire is one of the most profound images of the Mystery’s presence in matter; and sitting together around a fire is one of the most profound images of the Mystery’s presence in our communal lives.

Wessels presents a wonderful summary of humanness as it emerged during the Paleolithic Age: hunting, tool-using and tool-making, clothing, fire, language, burials, art, story, spirituality and community.

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Wessels notes that the Neolithic and Civilization periods involve what every young person has to deal with today: God, sex and money; i.e., earning a living, relating to others, and making sense of it all.

Here, the adolescent nature of patriarchy is clear, and so then is the contemporary need to go beyond the adolescent hero.

Adolescence is defined as the beginnings of self-consciousness: when it is just starting to experience itself, consciousness names that experience “isolation” and “alienation.”

It understands itself in terms of its need for power-over all, since everything threatens.

Adolescence implies lack of reflection (or, better, just the beginnings of it), and includes undisciplined drives for novelty, excitement and self-gratification. The result of this perspective is the economic world view of patriarchs who see our great need to be the acquisition of stuff for protection.

An interesting thing here is the idea that adolescent (patriarchal) males think of themselves as adults. They see their situation (adolescence or patriarchal culture) as the human norm! Even feminists seem to do this.

How important, then, Allen Chinen's insight that we need to go beyond the hero!

      

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In contrast to those adolescent and patriarchal princes who try to make everything go their way, authentic adults do not need to dominate others.

They can relate via reverence, respect and friendship.

Not competition but communal commitment is their mode of operation.

Authentic adults accept responsibility. I see that “Quaker reverence "for that of God in everyone” is especially important.

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The evolutionary process on earth is now in the hands of humans. We need to learn to listen to the earth. Some of us are especially called to listen, to be especially sensitive to the earth/cosmos itself as shamanic hearers.

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#74. Modern, Pre-modern, Post-modern

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This is the first of several posts dealing with ideas about the integration of science and religion that I've found in the two important books-- Ken Wilber's The Marriage of Sense and Soul and Michael Dowd's Thank God for Evolution.

I introduced them in the previous post; if you missed that one (#73), you might want to look at it before reading this post. I'll be sharing some thoughts about Michael Dowd's book in the near future. My focus here is some ideas from Wilber's book that I found especially helpful in understanding what's needed for "Integrating Science and Religion"-- the subtitle of Wilber's Marriage of Sense and Soul.

As I mentioned in that previous post, I'd been irrationally prejudiced against Wilber and was happily surprised to learn how much good sense he made once I finally got around to reading his work. He's saying some important things.

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One of the most valuable things about Wilber's book concerning the integration of science and religion is his explanation of the differences between the various stages of cultural development in the history of Western society.

The stages are usually named "modern," "pre-modern" and "post-modern." But these terms aren't especially helpful, at least initially, because the central word, "modern," has two very different meanings.

In everyday life "modern" means "contemporary." But in the context of Western culture's historical development, the word "modern" refers to an attitude or cultural perspective about the nature of reality and humanity's place in it that is already about 400 years old.

"Modern" in this context refers to a specific worldview-- a cosmology, as we've come to call a culture's worldview. And to distinguish it from "contemporary," this worldview is usually referred to by the much less familiar name: "modernity."

So our modern world is already post-modern, in the sense that there have been several centuries of reactions to the worldview called "modernity." It's confusing.

But it's well worth the effort to get these terms clear, because only with this developmental view of Western culture-- only with an understanding of what's meant by the three cultural worldviews of pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity-- can we make good sense of what's needed for the integration of science and religion in our day.

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The worldview called "modernity" dates from the beginnings of science, roughly 1600 CE. In contrast, almost all of the world's religions date from much earlier. For this reason, those religious traditions belong to that cultural stage called "pre-modernity."

In his Marriage of Sense and Soul Ken Wilber spells out well the specific characteristic of the pre-modernity stage of Western culture. It's the understanding that reality is made up of levels.

That sounds strange at first, but Wilber notes that a hierarchical or multi-leveled view of the world has been held in one form or another since humanity's earliest times. Its classical name is the "Great Chain of Being." It's also referred to by the somewhat more helpful name, "Great Ladder of Beings" or the "Ladder of Nature." By whatever name, it's the key to understanding what's meant by pre-modern, modern and post-modern.

The main point is simple enough: when we look at all the different things that exist, we readily recognize that they fall into various categories. 

There are levels or gradations to the kinds of things we see in our world. Some cultures have dozens of levels to their Ladder of Beings; the minimum our minds seem to be able to handle is three.

In the previous post I mentioned the old game Twenty Questions. With its familiar "animal, vegetable or mineral" categorization of things, it's a good example of a simplified "Ladder of Beings."

Another example is the phrase "matter, life and mind" which I've used frequently in these posts. Wilber usually refers to the three basic levels of the Great Ladder as "matter, mind and spirit." Still another common variation is "body, soul and spirit."

Wilber points out that every human society-- from the earliest shamanic culture of Paleolithic times up until the beginning of modern science in the 16th century-- had some version of the Great Chain to express their understanding of "our place in the grand scheme of things."

Wilber says the best expression of the Great Chain of Being in pre-modern Western culture is that of the Franciscan Saint Bonaventure and the 12th-century monastic writer, Hugh of St. Victor. Here are some Great Chain illustrations: the shamanic three-layered cosmos, a Medieval version, and Great Chains from 1579 and 1617.

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What marks the change from the worldview of pre-modernity to that of the modern ("modernity") worldview is the loss of this multi-layered Great Chain perspective.

The religious attitudes of pre-modernity cultures tended not only to emphasize the distinction between the lower and upper levels, but to give all their attention to the higher levels. But the great successes of science-- beginning in the 16th century with the astronomy-related measurements made by Galileo and Kepler-- turned the Western world's attention away from those highest levels.

The coming of science resulted, for Western people, in the collapse of the Great Chain of Being. So "modernity" means a worldview where only matter, the bottom rung of the Great Chain, is considered real.

The 400-year-old "modern" worldview simply doesn't take into account what was meant in the pre-modern perspectives by words like "mind," "soul" and "spirit."

This explains why we have such difficulty in understanding these major stages of Western culture's development; we're trying to understand something that modernity says doesn't exist.

It also explains why, from its start, modern science has been in conflict with the traditional pre-modernity perspectives of the world's great religious traditions.

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These are over-simplifications, of course, but the primary point, I hope, is clear enough. The worldviews of pre-modernity focused on the spiritual realm, the upper levels of the Great Chain or Ladder, while modernity's worldview considers only the bottom rung to be real.

For many of us, it's difficult to understand just why so many people in the Western world would accept such a claim about the nature of reality.

It's also difficult to understand how early science, in denying reality to all but the lowest rung of the classical Great Chain, tended to overlook the fact that science itself operates by way of those mental activities (such as reasoning and math) which are part of the higher levels of the classic Great Chain of Being.

But in another sense, it's easy to see why science made such a claim. 

Science has been so successful! In its ability to bring about great gains-- in industry, agriculture and medicine, for example-- science, and the technology based on it, went far beyond anything the pre-modern religious worldviews ever came up with.

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I'll share some thoughts about the positive aspects of modernity in a future post; they are no less significant than its negative aspects. Wilber is especially good at presenting a balanced view of the gains as well as the losses resulting from the perspectives of modernity.

But it's the collapse of the Great Chain-- the loss of all but the bottom rung of the Ladder-- that I want to give my attention to in this post. Wilber calls the negative aspects of the worldview resulting from scientific materialism "flatland."

It's a boring world, that "flatland." Without mind and soul and spirit, persons are reduced to things, and there's no wonder and awe, no surprise, no meaning to our lives.

To a great extent, Western people accepted that flatland worldview. The idea that only the old Great Chain's bottom rung is real became, as Wilber says, the "official philosophy" of Western culture.

Wilber calls this shift in cultural perspective the disaster of modernity and some scholars refer to it as the "disenchantment of the world."

But it's important to keep in mind that the "flatland" disaster was not the last word in Western culture's historical development.

The third phase of the Western world's cultural history, "post-modernity," resulted from the collapse of the Great Chain. Many Western people reacted against the shift from spirit to matter and to the boredom and meaninglessness of modernity's "flatland" worldview.

But they weren't sure just how to respond or what to put in its place. Over the last several centuries, there have been three major, and quite different, social and cultural responses to the collapse of the Great Chain.

If you're like me, some of the names of these major social-cultural movements are probably familiar: Romanticism, Idealism, and 

Deconstructionism. But you may also be like me in being more than a little hazy about what those words mean.

Personally, I was more than "just a little bit hazy." I simply didn't know what they had to do with the integration of science and religion.

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I'm grateful to Wilber for my newly-acquired understanding of these three major post-modern cultural developments and of how important they are for the integration of science and religion. I'm planning to share my understanding of these three post-modern movements in the next post.

In this post I want to include some thoughts about just what's meant by the higher rungs of the Great Chain.

It's precisely because the worldview of modernity doesn't take into account what was meant by words like "mind," "soul" and "spirit" that we have great difficulty in understanding the three main stages of Western cultural development.

And it is, of course, why modern science has been in conflict with traditional Great Chain of Being perspectives of the world religions from the start.

Wilber says that the integration of science and religion ultimately comes down to two things: whether science can accept the higher rungs of the Great Chain and religion can accept the lower rungs.

And, as he puts it, "the discussion has to be in terms acceptable to both."

So it's important to be clear about just what the higher levels of the Great Chain mean in order to understand well the various post-modern responses to their loss.

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It's an indication of how thoroughly Western society believed in the modernity worldview that in our day words like "mind," "soul" and "spirit" are probably the most ambiguous words in the English language. 

The very existence of what they are referring to has been denied, so we need to work hard to understand them.

For a start, we can say that among other things words like "soul" and "spirit" refer to our powerful desire to know and understand ourselves and the world we live in. They also include the drives we experience within ourselves to improve our situation: to make our world better. So words like "quest" and "invention" and "creativity" are part of the upper end of the Great Chain perspectives.

In more personal language, we can say that the Great Chain perspective of "matter, mind and spirit" refers to the fact that we are (or have) a physical body, that we are (or have) self-awareness, and that we are (or have) a concern for an ultimate (big picture) understanding of the facts of our existence.

In terms of our inner psychological experience, we might describe the three basic levels of the Great Chain by saying that "matter" refers to physical things outside us, "mind" refers to what we experience within ourselves, and "spirit" refers to the perspectives we have about how those inner and outer experiences go together.

If it didn't refer to sex, a phrase like the "facts of life" would be a great way to describe what the traditional religions meant by "spirit" or the "realm of spirit." Nowadays, "spiritual" has such negative connotations that, in the healing professions of psychiatry and psychology, a phrase like the "realm of the transpersonal" is often used instead.

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Religiously-oriented people tend to jump in here with a comment like, "You're talking about God." I'd say, "OK. But we're trying to get some clear ideas about just what we mean when we say that."

In the flatland worldview of modernity, the word "God" refers to an object or thing, just as "human person" does.

In contrast, in the quotation which Michael Dowd uses in the chapter on revelation in his Thank God for Evolution, and which I used at the beginning of the previous post, Thomas Berry refers to the creative source of the world as "that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being."

"Mystery," for me, seems an especially good way to say what "spirit" or the "realm of spirit" mean in the pre-modern religious traditions of the world. Our pre-modern ancestors definitely were not talking about an object or thing when they used terms like "God" and "holy spirit of God."

A good example of that pre-modern understanding is how frequently the word "mystery" shows up in the 3,000-year-old Tao Te Ching, which I shared my version of in several recent posts (#68-72). An anonymous reader, commenting on #72 says, "This post 'explains' God." That's right on target. The ancient Tao Te texts do indeed help us to understand what we're struggling to talk about when we use words like "God" and "spirit."

We struggle to be clear about what we mean by the higher rungs of the Great Chain precisely because their very existence is what the worldview of "modernity" stopped paying attention to.

And that loss is what the various "post-modernity" perspectives are responses to.

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It's not only because the modern world is already post-modern that all of this seems so confusing. Many of the Earth's peoples, especially those in what used to be called "second or third world countries," still live to a great extent in pre-modern cultures. So globally, our contemporary world is not only modern and post-modern but also pre-modern as well. No wonder it seems so utterly confused!

We need a new evolutionary Great Chain, a new Ladder of Beings, that both traditional religions as they mature and modern science as it grows up can live with.

We're ready for a New Cosmology! People like Michael Dowd and Ken Wilber, and many others I've mentioned in this blog over the last few years, can help us as we grow up.

sam@macspeno.com

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#69. Sam's Tao Te, 1-27

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In Michael Dowd's extraordinarily comprehensive book on the new cosmology, Thank God for Evolution, he notes that people everywhere-- "if they are to function as individuals and cohere as a group"-- have always needed to answer "the big picture questions."

Those questions include "What is our relationship to other life forms and the powers of the Universe?" and "How are we to live in accordance with those powers?"

Although the Tao Te Ching is three thousand years old, it offers responses to those questions which fit remarkably well with the contemporary convergence of science and religion. I think of it as A Manual for the New Cosmology.

If you are new to this blog and/or to the Tao Te, you might like to see my introduction in post #68 before reading this post. What follows is a version of the first third of the ancient text.

As usual, your feedback is welcomed.

sam@macspeno.com

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Tao Te Ching, Sam's version, sections 1-27

1. Describing the Mystery out of which the universe emerges is impossible. It simply can't be described.

But we can say something about it from the way the world works. We can't understand the Mystery in itself, but to some extent we can see its power and presence operating in the world.

In itself, the Mystery is utterly unknowable. It is what makes knowing possible!

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2. When we label something beautiful, that makes other things ugly; when we label something good, that makes other things bad.

We understand things and their opposites in terms of one another: difficult in contrast to easy, long in contrast to short, high in contrast to low, what comes before in contrast to what comes after.

So persons who are attuned to the cosmic process can accomplish things without being overlyactive and can explain things without being overly verbal.

As things come and go, they let the process happen. While they may "have" things, they don't own them; and while they of course "do" things, they don't look for big results.

When their work is done, they just let it go-- which is what makes it available for everyone, everywhere.

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3. When we fawn on the rich and famous, others are reduced to insignificance; when we prize our possessions too much, others want to have them.

Balanced persons lead others not by creating things for them to be anxious about or by helping them acquire what they need, but by helping them to be less acquisitive and to be able to take care of themselves.

Balanced leaders help people let go of what they think is important and what they hanker for, and help those who think they know it all to be less arrogant.

When those in charge don't force issues, things tend to work out well.

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4. The way the universe works is like a deep well that never runs out. It is full of unlimited possibilities.

We can't see the Mystery from which the universe emerges, but its power is always present. It is the overflowing source of everything.

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5. The Way of the universe doesn't favor what's conventionally considered good over what's conventionally considered evil. Balanced persons don't play favorites either; they welcome everyone without judging who's good and who's not.

The Way of the universe is like a bellows: its very emptiness is what makes it useful. The more we use it, the more results we get; but the more we think about it, the less sense it makes.

So, we need to keep in balance.

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6. The Great Mystery is not any thing, but its inexhaustible power is always present and available to us.

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7. The source of the universe is unlimited in space and time.

It is unlimited temporally because it never started and doesn't end. It is unlimited spatially because it has no needs and so is available to everyone everywhere.

In the same way, balanced persons don't need to be first in anything, so that makes them first in everything. Their own needs aren't prominent, so they can be one with all things. They are not ego-focused, so they are what they are naturally.

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8. Goodness is like water which nourishes everything without effort. It always flows downhill and stays in low places which are disdained by most people. In that way, good is like the Mystery behind the way the universe works.

Therefore, balanced persons live close to earth, keep life simple, are fair and generous in conflicts, don't try to take over when in charge, work at what they like, and are totally involved with their families.

When we are content to live simply and not in competition with others we are respected by all.

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9. A bowl too full spills over, a knife too often sharpened dulls. If we chase after money and security, our hearts tighten up. If we care about what others think of us, we become their prisoners.

The only way to be at peace in our hearts is to do our work, then sit back and relax.

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10. Can we coax our mind from its wanderings and keep attentive to our original unity with everything? Can we let our body become supple as a newborn child's? Can we cleanse our inner vision until we see nothing but the light?

Can we love people and lead them without imposing our will on them? 
Can we deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can we step back from our own mind and thus understand everything?

Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control-- this is the Way we are to be!

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11. We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood together to make a house, but it is the space inside the wooden frame that makes it livable.

We work with-- join, shape, hammer-- things. But it's the no-thing-- the hole, the emptiness, the space-- that we use.

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12. Bright colors can blind the eye. Loud sounds can deafen the ear. Strong flavors can numb the taste. Intense thoughts can weaken the mind. Powerful desires can wither the heart.

So while balanced persons see the world outside themselves, they also trust their inner perceptions. They are willing to let go of superficial views and focus on the deeper realities.

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13. Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow and empty as fear.

Success can be as dangerous as failure, in the same way that our position is shaky when we are going up or down a ladder. It's when we stand with our two feet on the ground that we keep our balance.

Hope can be as hollow as fear because hope and fear both arise from thinking about the small ego-self. When we don't see the small self as The Self, what do we have to fear?

See all the things of the world as your authentic self. Trust in the Way things work. Love the world as your deepest true self. Then you can take care of things.

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14. Even if we look, we can't see it. Even if we listen, we can't hear it. When we try to reach for it, we can't grasp it.

It's not bright above or dark below. It had no parts or names and always fades back into no-thing-ness.

The shape of the no-thing contains all shapes; the image of the no-thing has no image. It's hard to understand, beyond all ideas and thoughts.

If we go towards it, we see that it has no front; if we go behind it, we see that it has no rear. It's not something we can know, but it is something we can be-- when we are comfortable with ourselves, when we realize our dynamic source. That's the essence of wisdom.

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15. In ancient times, balanced persons were deep and wise. Their wisdom was beyond understanding; it can't be characterized. All we can do today is describe how they seemed to be back then.

They were careful as a person crossing an iced-over stream. They were alert as a warrior in enemy territory. They were courteous as a guest, fluid as melting ice, shape-able as an uncarved block of wood, receptive as a valley, clear as a glass of water.

We need to wait patiently until our mind settles and becomes clear as water. We need to not do anything until the right thing to do becomes obvious.

Balanced persons don't seek to be fulfilled. They don't seek or expect anything; rather, they are present to, and welcome, whatever comes.

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16. We need to empty our minds of rambling thoughts and let our hearts be peaceful. We need to observe how things are always changing while keeping in mind the unity of everything.

All things have the one source. Being one with everything is how we become peaceful. If we're not consciously united with the All, we stumble around confused and sad.

When we realize our union with everything we are more tolerant, more objective, more patient. We are as kind as an old grandmother, as dignified as a king. In awe and wonder we can deal with whatever we have to; and when it's time to die, we are ready.

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17. Even though they are in charge, the best leaders are those who people hardly know exist. The second best leaders are those who are loved. Third best are those who are feared. Least good are leaders who are hated. When we don't trust people, we make them untrustworthy.

Balanced leaders don't do a lot of talking, they act. And when they are done, the people say, "Isn't it amazing! We did this all by ourselves!"

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18. When the Mystery behind the cosmic process is ignored, people "get religion" and start acting pious. When consciousness of the wisdom of the body is lost, people start acting informed and clever. When families become dysfunctional, "family values" appear. When a country falls into chaos, people become patriotic.

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19. When we get rid of the conventional idea that everybody should be holy and wise, people will be much happier. When we get rid of the idealistic thought that everybody should be upright and just, people will act decently. When we get rid of the ideal of working hard and making money, there will be fewer thieves.

The main idea is that we just need to stay balanced and let things flow naturally.

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20. When we stop the endless academic talk we have fewer problems. 

Whether anyone agrees with us or not makes no difference. Neither does whether we are considered a success or failure.

We don't need to have the same values as everyone else or the same likes and dislikes they do. That's just silly.

People get all excited about things the way children do at a parade, but some of us aren't into fads. Some of us are like a newborn infant who has yet to smile.

Others have much, some of us have almost nothing. Some of us drift about as if we are homeless. Some of us act like mind-less fools.

While others are bright, some of us are dark. While others are sharp, some of us are dull. While others have life-goals, some of us don't. Some of us are like a wave on the ocean, or an aimless wind.

Unlike those others, those of us who are outsiders are nourished from the breasts of the Great Mother.

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21. Balanced persons are always aware of the Mystery behind the universe and this gives them a certain aura. But the Great Mystery is unknowable, so how can they be aware of it? The answer is because they are not stuck in thoughts and concepts.

The Mystery behind the universe is also beyond light, so how can it give those always aware of it an aura? The answer is because they let it.

The Mystery of the universe is beyond space and time; it doesn't "exist" but it is. How do we know this? Because we look inside ourselves and experience it.

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22. To be whole, be partial. To be straight, be crooked. To be full, be empty. To be reborn, die. To have everything, have nothing.

Because they are one with the Great Mystery, balanced persons are an example for everyone. They don't put themselves on display, so everyone can see their light. They're not out to prove anything, so their words can be trusted. They don't try to project an image, so people can see themselves reflected in them. They have no goal, so whatever they do is successful.

When the wise ones of the past said "to have everything we have to give up all things," they weren't just spouting words. We can really be ourselves only when we live in union with the Cosmic Mystery.

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23. We need to say what we have to say and then be quiet. We need to be like the forces of nature: wind blowing, rain raining, clouds passing, sun shining.

When we open ourselves to the universe, we are one with it and we can embody it thoroughly. When we open ourselves to its power, we are one with it and we can use it completely. When we open ourselves to loss, we are one with loss and can accept it totally.

When we trust our natural responses, everything falls into place and we are embraced by all things.

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24. Those who stand on tiptoe don't stand firm. Those who rush ahead don't go far. Those who try to look brilliant dim their true light. Those who focus attention on themselves don't really know who they are. 

Those with power over others can't empower themselves. Those who cling to their work can create nothing of lasting value.

If we hope to be participants in the cosmic process, we just have to do our work, then stop.

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25. Even before the universe came to be, there was something-- without form or limit. It was peaceful, empty, alone, unchanging, infinite, present.

It is the mother of everything. Although it has no name, we can call it the Mystery behind the universe. It moves within all things, inside and out, and everything emerges from it.

There are four great realities: humanity, the Earth, the physical universe and the Mystery behind the universe. Humanity emerges from the Earth, the Earth emerges from the universe, and the physical universe comes from the Mystery behind it. The Mystery has no source other than itself.

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26. What's heavy is the foundation of all that is light, just as what doesn't move is the source of all that moves.

So, balanced persons can travel all day without leaving home, and without losing sight of their luggage.

Why should those in charge want to flit about like fools? When we let ourselves get blown around, we lose touch with our foundations. When we move around because we're restless, we lose touch with who and what we are.

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27. Good pilgrims have no fixed plans and are not intent on finishing their pilgrimage. Good artists let their intuitive insight lead them wherever it wants to. Good scientists are free from ideological dogmas and keep their minds open to the real world.

In the same way, balanced teachers make themselves available to all; they reject no one and put every kind of situation to good use. For this reason they are described as being an embodiment of light.

Just as a good person can be a bad person's teacher, so a bad person can be a good person's teacher. No matter how smart we are, we'll always be lost if we don't realize this.

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