We talked earlier about being motivated by FEAR and WANT and how these two are our biggest enemies.

Now think about what I said in Part One of this entry on Verse 13:

If we don’t take active control of our minds, then our heads will express our potential without direction, causing all sorts of problems.

Most of us are living lives driven by multiple fears and multiple wants.  To be completely free of fear and want is just about impossible.  Fear and want are hard-wired into our brains.  What we need to do then is minimize the fearing and wanting that is going on so we can give ourselves room to be motivated by factors  that give us better CONTROL of ourselves.

Verse 13 of the Tao Te Ching addresses the issue of being motivated by our fears and wants related to our social standing.  It says that whether we are at the top of the social rung or at the bottom, we suffer from anxiety based on our position along that social ladder.  If we’re at the bottom, we suffer from wanting to rise.  If we’re at the top, we suffer from the fear of losing our position.

For many of us this is going on without our even realizing it.  Others of us are keenly attentive of it.  Either way, it’s to our advantage to step back and take stock of the situation so that we can minimize the power this kind of thinking has over us.

(To touch base with Part One of this entry, think of the cow.  A cow has no potential to remove itself from its instincts.  It will act with herd-mentality without giving it a single thought.  But you are not a cow.  You have the wondrous ability to examine your own thoughts and motivations.  Use this ability!  Don’t waste it on mindless grazing!  As you read on, think of the freedom you could gain for yourself by training your mind to think according to your potential.)

The way you are seen by others is important, no doubt.  It’s good to be somewhat aware of it because it’s a great way to monitor your behavior.  If everyone is crinkling their nose at you and saying, “Yuck!” you probably just passed gas, and that’s just plain rude.  Don’t do that in public anymore.  So being aware of how others see you is critical to being able to behave yourself. 

But it should not become a ball-and-chain.

You need to be able to act independently of your feelings about how others perceive you.  Sometimes the situation calls for you to behave in such a way that will offend others or even hurt someone.  If you’re enslaved to your feelings of fear and want, you won’t be able to do the right thing when offensive or hurtful behavior is called for necessarily.  This can cripple a person in a leadership position.  This can also put you under the thumb of manipulative people who use your own compassion and sensitivity against you. 

So how do you detach yourself from your feelings about how people see you?

The Tao Te Ching talks about seeing yourself as part of everything around you... of being one with everything.  If you are one with the people around you, then there is no social ladder to speak of; you’re all equal.

Make sense?

Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t adhere to the spiritual notion that there is an actual Force of which we are all a part.  I don’t think, for example, that there is a piece of me living inside my lucky bamboo stalk or that I am one with my cat Boone.  But I do think that there is wisdom in seeing our world as a single system and that we have a responsibility to bear within that system.  Taking care of our system is the same thing as taking care of ourselves.  Thinking selfishly hurts the system and, in the long run, hurts us as individuals.

And I think we can take this system concept and adapt it to the notion of being “one with others.”

If you consider your responsibility within the system around you and can think of the welfare of that system as being the same thing as your own welfare, then you can take it a step further and stop worrying about your status within that system.  No matter what you do, see yourself as contributing to this world and so contribute lovingly, because you are part of this world.  If you do work others consider “lowly” do it lovingly as a gift to this world you are a part of.  Your own self-respect will nullify any disrespect you sense from others.  And the cool thing about this is that others will pick up on your self-respect, and this has the remarkable effect sometimes of changing the way they see you.  But if you don’t respect your own contribution to the world, others pick up on this as well, and it makes it hard for them to have respect for you.

The key is to get your mind off the fearing and wanting related to how you are seen and to focus on the giving, learning how to give with an honest attitude of love, both for your task and for those who will benefit from it.

Another thing the Tao Te Ching mentions in this verse is the need to see that you are not limited to your physical body.  Wow, we could definitely make a whole chapter out of this, but I’ll keep it short.  So many of us - and I’m guilty too - are so caught up in our physical image that we are actually stressed over our physical flaws.  I think that working out is a fantastic hobby.  But some of us are enslaved to physical exercise, not for enjoyment or health, but because we’re scared to death that we will be judged by others to be unattractive.  This is a recipe for certain disaster because our bodies are traveling on a predetermined downhill path that ends badly.  Does that sound negative?  Maybe so, but it’s unavoidable, and it’s something we need to accept and put in its proper place.  Just as our emotions are nothing more than a spoke of our wheel, so are our bodies.  You yourself are not your body; you are the center - the empty space - at the hub of the wheel.  Detach yourself from your body and consider it from a distance as one small extension of who you are.  Then pay more attention to taking care of that core essence because if you take care of that, all the rest (including your body) will draw strength and wellness from it.

A cow is limited to its little patch of ground and fears to venture beyond.  But you, my friend, can go just about anywhere you please if you’ll take responsibility for your own mind and get your face out of the grass.  Learn to find strength inside yourself.  It’s there.  I promise.  If you think it’s not, it’s only because you’re giving too much control to your fears and wants.  Detach yourself from these and lift your head to see that there are other fields and even mountains beyond where you’ve been grazing.

Being human can be a wonderful thing.  Don’t waste it!