Spirit shares gems of wisdom.

Spirit tells me that forgiveness is an unhealthy response to abuse.
What, He asks, does forgiveness undo? Does it accept abuse as okay?
even if the abuser says, I’m sorry?

How can abuse be forgiven, and would forgiveness end abuse or seem
to encourage more abuse?

Surely, abuse must be considered as unacceptable behaviour regardless
of who is abusing whom, and if the one who is being abused accepts
the abuse, then that person is guilty of self-abuse.

How, then can we respond to abuse when we cannot protect ourselves
from it?

We make choices and, perhaps, past choices helped to create the abusive
situation.

Why do you speak of an abusive situation and not an abusive person?

There are none.

Please explain.

We develop abusive habits or we do not.

As an addiction?

Yes.

A simple seeker was meditating on the concept
of wisdom.

Wisdom is much more than a concept.

How can anything be more than a concept?

How could anything be less?

Then, what is wisdom, beyond being a concept.

A concept of what?

A high level of understanding.

Understanding of what?

Whatever.

Whatever is a generalization of everything.

Then, of life?

Whose life, or what life?

Wisdom as a concept of life in general.

Wisdom is wisdom and life is life.

Yes, but I want to understand what life is.

How would wisdom help you do that?

I don’t know.

Perhaps you know more than you are willing
to accept knowing.

Why would I resist accepting knowing?

For fear of the consequences of knowing
whatever.

What consequences can knowledge have?

Personal responsibility.

For what?

For how you choose to respond to awareness.

We were discussing knowledge.

True knowledge is awareness.

And…

Spirit tells me that our personal behaviour
either serves us well or it doesn’t. But, if
it does not then it must have served us well
at some time in the past, or at least we
must have believed that it did.

What if it just seemed appropriate at a
particular time?

There are no particular times for specific
behaviours.

Why?

All behaviours have a history.

What about spontaneity?

What about it?

If moving out of the way to avoid an
accident that never happened before, then
how could that reflex action have a history.

How could it not?

Because it never happened before.

To you, perhaps, but you would be aware
of a possible outcome for not moving
out of the way.

Perhaps I intuitively knew.

Yes, and intuition is a built-in history book.

A history of what?

Of how to live.

A simple seeker tried to clear her simple mind.

If it’s that simple, then what is the problem?

You seem intent on interrupting my thinking about
not thinking.

Did I win, again?

Yes. I forget what it was that I was trying to
forget.

Then we both win.

It’s not as simple as that.

What is the problem?

I’m supposed to let go of thinking on my own.

Who told you that nonsense?

Why would it be nonsense?

Because, it is impossible.

Why?

When you or anyone sincerely meditates,
then your sincerity attracts, as if
it had put in a call to, Higher Help.

We each have an open line to Higher Help?

Yes. It is a Law of Life.

Our simple seeker was struggling to abide by the rules and regulations
seemingly demanded by a nameless control freak operating from the safety
of the world wide web, wherever that was.

She had listened to the ominous messages that kept warning her that
her antivirus service was about to expire. So, she purchased an
updated version, but not online. Would that have made a difference?
Not that it mattered anymore.

The old system still had eleven days to go and refused to be replaced.
She didn’t exist. Her name and email belonged to somebody else, she
was informed.

Do you have an alias?

I can hardly remember me.

Then, what are you going to do?

I’m turning everything off. That’ll teach them, whoever they are. I’m
taking time out to enjoy that glorious sunshine.

Problems will not go away, you know.

I don’t care. I did what I could and…

Spirit shares His understanding of I Ching.

Hexagram 29 – Double Pitfall – presents with
two Water trigrams stacked, one on the other.
This symbolic representation of flooding
warns us of a hidden and unexpected danger;
a trap or ambush.

As in the deck being stacked against me
in a game of cards?

Something like that.

How could I ever know in advance?

It would be too late to know if you did not
know then.

How to develop the skill to avoid walking
into a trap?

It doesn’t require a specialized skill.

What does it require?

It requires right, or appropriate, thinking
and action.

That advice sounds like the eight-fold path.

It is the eight-fold path.

Including right or appropriate livelihood?

Yes.

To avoid associating with those who might
be tempted to take advantage of my simplicity?

Yes.

That might require me to become less simple.

Yes.

Spirit shares gems of wisdom.

Spirit tells me that everything I say or do should be for a reason
that I understand and can accept responsibility for.

He encourages me to live life here and now, day by day, and to create
a living and lived philosophy of life, and to become what I know I can
become; more and more what I really am, by living with purpose and
meaning.

That sounds beautiful but how do I set attainable goals.

These are attainable goals.

But, the horizon is too distant and unattainable for me. I need
structure.

Yes, and there is none, none that is lasting.

A simple seeker was meditating on
the concept of emptiness.

What would it look like?

It wouldn’t look like anything.

What do you think emptiness means
to a spiritual seeker such as
yourself?

Without form.

What is without form?

Potential.

What potential?

Any and all.

Where does this emptiness
that is potential exist?

Perhaps wherever there is no form.

Where is there no form?

You’re leading me somewhere.

Where might I be leading you?

To asking you to explain
what it’s all about?

Yes.

Please explain.

What?

What emptiness is and where it is
and what it might look like
it I could recognize it.

Emptiness and nothingness are
never empty or nothing. They are
potential, as is everything and
everyone that is neither emptiness
nor nothingness

Then we each have a never-ending
potential?

To what?

To be and do.

To be and do what?

To become.

What?

More aware.

Now do you understand Kabbalah?

You know I’m totally over my head and I can’t swim.

Then relax and let your mind float until you develop more skill.

Our simple seeker was reading The Practical Kabbalah guidebook, by C.J.M. Hopking, and was puzzled about the author explaining that the trees representing each of the Four Worlds interpenetrated each other. Fortunately, for Georgia, the author quoted CG Jung as saying that “problems which we encounter on our path of spiritual growth :are not solved, they are transcended.” Georgia felt quite smug about connecting Jung’s thought to the way each of the worlds on the Ladder of Light emerged from the one beneath it, except for the bottom one, of course.

Spirit seemed to take credit for planting the insight in her mind. Yes, from the one tree, which represents a path to spiritual wisdom, higher and ever higher levels of awareness…

Today’s I Ching – 36 – Damage to Illumination

Earth above, Fire below.

Damage follows Advance in the Order of the Hexagrams.

Spirit explains:

Advance expresses progress. Fire is above the earth and can move freely.

This is not the case with Damage to Illumination, where Fire is below the earth, with it’s light and heat constrained, contained. This can appear to damage our sense of freedom.

What now?

To everything there is a season – the ancient wise people knew this truth.

Accept what is but prepare to move forward when opportunity permits.