Oh, How I Hate to Wait!

Nobody likes to wait.  Waiting usually provokes thinking of all the things you could be doing if you weren’t waiting.  Waiting, then, is some kind of anxiety, some kind of need for action, even when none is possible.  Ugh!

I love the French word for waiting; attend.  It can mean stop, it can mean listen. It has the implication of care or of some kind of special attention needing to be paid.  Even in English, a synonym for attend is listening. Here, in the world of attending, the world of waiting, the activity is listening.  Not listening for something, but listening in, tuning in, paying attention.   

Listening in, tuning in, is active, productive, even fruitful.  You can learn all kinds of things. In some ways, this kind of waiting and listening is a vital part of the growing process, especially vital to proper timing.  If you listen in and wait, the right time will be easy to know. If you don’t listen in, you don’t wait, you might find yourself having left home without a raincoat, spoken words that you regret or even bumped into the car in front of you.  So many times, you can become caught by the activity around you, fail to listen in, fail to wait, and find yourself in a pickle.

Hexagram 5  is called Waiting or Attending.  A productive moment of growth where we are full, awake, attentive, yet not moving forward.  We are, instead, simply being with, being in, listening, attuning ourselves to the growth within and the environment without, finding a kind of attunement, a kind of harmony with the unknown nature of growth and activity.  What is needed next? How will we know when? This IS waiting.

“When you are fully present in waiting, your intense attention shines out like a beacon, beginning a creative engagement with the world – not by working on anything, but by waiting on it and holding your faith.”  Hilary Barrett from commentary on Hexagram 5 - Xu- Waiting

Waiting does require faith.  This kind of faith is “the willingness to be with the mystery of being” as described by one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Ken McLeod.  This kind of willingness enters you into a very deep and unique relationship with yourself and consequently with your world. Again, it is not a faith in something, but rather a willingness to be present with things when you simply don’t know, can’t know, won’t know, unless you wait, unless you listen.   

What if every time you had to wait, you listened instead?  Can you listen in to what is happening as if you were tuning in to a radio station, trying to hear it clearly, trying to get the message?

Listen here for a little bit about waiting….

Undercover

I love mysteries.  And I love to imagine that I am an undercover agent in life, learning things on the sly, nobody watching, not seeing me when I don’t know, but emerging from the dark corners when there is something really important to say.  Trouble is, I not actually invisible. It is a bit of a paradox; I love the mystery, the not-knowing and well, I kind of hate it. I resist it. My main form of resistance is to ask questions. And even, when I don’t have a question, I invent one.  Just to get some relief from the feeling of not-knowing.

In the great non-linear, non-dual, non-theistic traditions of the east, such as Buddhism and Daoism, not knowing is considered the perfect way to both begin and end anything.  Such not knowing is a space in which any and all knowing can occur. This is why sometimes it is said that a true Sage, a true wise one, is just like a child, innocent and unknowing.  In Hexagram 4 - Meng - also called variously “Not Knowing”, “Youthful Folly” “Youthful Inexperience”, you are in a state of of not knowing. You have begun (Hexagram 3), but you don’t yet know what you will become or even where you are going necessarily.  You are, at this point, in some ways immature. You are immature in the way of a young tree, a young animal or a young person, strong, growing and unknowing. Each living thing comes with innate wisdom, inner beauty and inherent liveliness. Yet each living thing also must live through a growth process that includes the dark, the not knowing.  Sometimes it seems unendurable, this darkness, this state of sensation, of feeling, of not yet knowing.

In all the not knowing,  the urge to ask questions is strong.  Here is a bit of advice from Stephen Karcher commenting on Hexagram 4:

“The situation is immature and your awareness of it is dull and clouded. Accept being hidden to nurture what is growing. The beginnings are there. If you keep on questioning you simply muddy the waters. Let the situation you are confronting educate you.”  

How can you do this? Let the situation educate you? You could ask the question without trying to answer it. Yes, just ask.  Just sit and ask. Let the question be in you and your body like a stone resting at the bottom of the river. Give yourself a few moments to  try it. Ask the question. Sit with the question. Let the question fester inside you. Resist answering. Especially if you think you know the answer.  Instead, repeat the question. Just sit with the question as you would sit on the rock in the river. Sit with all the emotions, the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations rushing around you.  Sit still. Sit quiet. Sit alert, aware. Let all the noise of your mind rush on as you sit in the not knowing.

What happens if you let yourself not know for one minute, for two, for even five or ten?
What happens then?

I use questions as the way in to my own knowing and to guide others into their own knowing. This Spring I am offering a special introductory price for mentoring for three months. Check out all the details here.

Tender and Tough

This week we are looking at Hexagram 3, Sprouting.  As is always the way order means a lot when you are looking at texts that originated in the Chinese language.  In a Chinese language sentence, the order is significant, giving meaning and shape to how you can understand each character.  In our living world, however, you can sometimes think that order isn’t there. You might see only chaos.  But one of the most important teachings in the Book of Changes is specifically that if you can see how the order emerges from the chaos or vice versa, you will be well ahead of the game.  You might even say order leads to disorder or disorder leads to order, but either way if you can follow the change, understand how it comes about, you will be able to stay in harmony, attunement with your world.  

The result of the embracing of pure yang (Hexagram 1) and pure yin (Hexagram 2) is growth, proliferation. Such growth often looks and feels like chaos especially to start with.  Even more interesting or aggravating, is the fact that growth, while exciting and most often welcome, relies on conflict for energy.  Or to say it another way, nothing grows without the presence of opposition and tension.  Whether the conflict is internal or external, the energy of forces that looks to be entirely in opposition give rise to the beauty and variety of life.  

Sprouting is the moment when there is actually maximum resistance to movement and yet movement occurs.  How does this work? How does it happen that movement happens in the face of the forces of resistance, stagnation, coagulation, even apathy? Things are knotted and confused and then suddenly without warning they are clear, alive and ready to move.  The movement of Inspiring Force can be sudden, and unexpected sometimes.  Meanwhile, there is you, your body, the vessel, the receptive, waiting, listening, quiet but alert, ready to step into the dance, into the rain, onto the earth, honoring the something that is growing in you.

The beginning of any growth process is the sprout.  A sprout is the manifestation of triumph, the result of a growth process that is finally visible, the result of the potent dialogue between rest and activity, reflection and initiation, conception and manifestation.  The thing about a sprout is that it is tender.  It is vulnerable.  It took a lot for that sprout to get to exist.  It took quite a bit of force, quite a bit of quiet, quite a bit of dark and then quite a bit of rain and sunshine.   Now, here it is in fine glory, bright green, a perky thing with so much in the way of nutrients, so much in the way of energy, and yet it remains tender.

In the magical, messy mix of life in the process of sprouting, in the midst of much rain, much wind and much chaos both inside and out, what has had the courage I wonder, the toughness, to show up in your life? What is showing up tender and tough and ready to grow? I’d love to know…