Turn Up the Heat

Turn Up the Heat

An oven turns on, as it were. It must be set to low, for I can hardly feel it. But the slow, steady warmth is noticeable in the chest, and the radiance emanates to the extremities. Skin tingles, the hands feel energetically “full.”

What is this? I sense it is something quite other than thought – in fact, it pushes at the borders of thought. It smothers the mental action into inactivity. I want to abide in this warmth, so I do. How can I not? It is there of its own accord.

A thought bursts like fireworks across the mindscape: “I have never yet known who I am!”


Following this unrequested announcement, I smile and shake my head. These thoughts, they are characters! Why should I believe such a statement is really true? Maybe it is, maybe not. Maybe I HAVE known who I am!


But anyway, what difference does it make? The concept is just another detour, another distraction.

All KINDS of concepts about what is happening, what has happened, and what might happen, are eager to flood into my awareness and start pontificating. I can feel them, urgently striving for potential attention like race horses bustling at the starting gate.


I have already followed their enticing but ultimately barren paths many times before – their deadening ways that are nevertheless so alluring. They are sirens, those thoughts! They will captivate you to death!

But the warmth I feel, this seems like it could be an antidote to their distracting sedations. It feels like the mama capable of putting those rambunctious, undisciplined, immature thought babies to bed.


Chapter 59 of the Tao Te Ching reads:

The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas.

Yes, THERE is liberty above all liberties – to be free of the mad mentality that leads to one’s own inner desert of chaos and confusion. The ego that wants to take credit for everything, good or bad, as though the universe were under its control.

Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.

So the world has an oven too, according to the Tao. Like the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and indeed the universe, which spin through their immense seasons harmoniously without the meddling influence of human egotism to throw them out of balance.

Soon - let us hope - the world will indeed . . . govern itself.