Quit Looking at the Clay Pots

We want safety for ourselves and for those we love.

But in our world, in the here and now, the current world, we’ve got trouble. There is no real safety.

 That’s because this safety we seek is all related to our bodies: keeping them whole, safe, free from illness, free from threat or hurt or discomfort.

The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary

Karl Eckartshausen

In the regions of material and corruptible nature mortality hides immortality, therefore all our trouble results from corruptible mortal matter. In order that man should be released from this distress, it is necessary that the immortal and incorruptible principle, which dwells within, should expand and absorb the corruptible principle, so that the envelope of the senses should be opened, and man appear in his pristine purity. [Source]

Health is not about your body being perfect but about your spirit being whole.

Safety is not about your body being protected but about your soul being free.

We get so busy looking at the physical body, this jar of clay, and obsessing over the cracks in it that we totally miss the whole-ness contained in that clay. The clay is just for a time. It will crack. Wholeness is you, internally, eternally. The clay kind of gets in the way and that’s why, ultimately, we’re going to discard it.

The Writings of Kwang-dze, Book II: The Adjustment of Controversies

It was separation that led to completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without regard to their completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended in their unity;–it is only the far reaching in thought who know how to comprehend them in this unity. This being so, let us give up our devotion to our own views, and occupy ourselves with the ordinary views. [Source]

Things are terribly, terribly not what they should be here in the land of clay pots. This clay-stuff has gotten into our eyes and it’s all we can see now.

But the clay is not who you are. It’s not who I am. Any future that depends on a certain set-up of clay figures or a certain arrangement of clay pots is not our real future. It’s not a “real” anything. It’s a fraud, temporary, a covering over reality.

Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, II: Soul Consciousness

Rabindranath Tagore

… In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfils its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite. Therefore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, for through it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, and that he is at one with the All. [Source]

Quit worrying about the outside. Start looking past the clay: your own and everyone else’s. Start seeing inside. Start seeing the sameness, the infinite that we all share, the eternal that we all carry inside the clay.

Without a Place and With a Place

St. John of the Cross

Without a place and with a place to rest — living darkly with no ray of light — I burn my self away. My soul — no longer bound — is free from the creations of the world; above itself it rises hurled into a life of ecstasy, leaning only on God. The world will therefore clarify at last what I esteem of highest grace: my soul revealing it can rest without a place and with a place. [Source]

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