By: Vince DiPasquale
33rd Verse
One who understands others has knowledge; one who understands himself has wisdom. Mastering others requires force; mastering the self needs strength.
If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.
One who gives himself to his position surely lives long.
One who gives himself to the Tao surely lives forever.
The central theme of the Tao for this month is the value of learning to let go and let God. To understand others means to have knowledge. To be in touch with ourselves involves wisdom. How do we allow ourselves to get from knowledge to wisdom? We are familiar with the “I know “ disease. How many times have we been told that we are doing something unhealthy, and we respond, “I know”. To only have knowledge is to be stuck. Knowledge only requires force or, as we call it, control. The secret of living the wisdom and gift of life is to accept and be open to the source of life, a God who created us and knows what is good for us. We all need to be open to good, orderly direction. To let go means to be free.
Let’s examine a simple formula for understanding the move towards the gift of wisdom.
We usually must work hard to overcome ourselves to get wisdom.
Since we are human, all knowledge comes to us in our intellect. Unfortunately, if it gets stuck there it turns to control. Thank God for the gift of gravity. In time we will begin to become aware and begin to process it through our eyes and ears. The awakening is when we begin to see and hear. In time it will get to the mouth so we can talk about it and learn how to share our knowledge with others. Gravity then allows us to process in our chest area (our center of pride) thus the battle between the ego and the heart begins. This is the
ultimate struggle of life. In order to move towards wisdom and common sense, we must release the ego (ease God out), let go of control, and allow our knowledge to be connected to our feelings. Gravity will then take knowledge to our gut where we can separate the positives from the negatives. We can let go of the negatives and allow the positives to flow to our feet where we can walk the talk. This theory is a simple way of telling us that to allow our knowledge to become wisdom we must allow ourselves to live the Tao by having the serenity of peacefulness and to accept the fact that we cannot control life. The more you try to figure out life’s journey the more you frustrate it. Life is to be lived. To do so we must live in the flow of life. Letting go is not easy, but it is worth it. If we learn the secret of being open to the journey of life with its struggles and joys, then we will live in the spirit. To be fully alive means to experience each moment fully. Remember that in every life a little rain must fall. Rain is necessary for growth to take place. So let go and let God. Stop trying to figure out our life and just live it. Over the course of our life’s journey things always balance out. Remember we are one of God’s creations and God has a plan. Let’s be open to it.
The Month of March is a good time to allow ourselves to go with the process of life. It’s a time for new beginnings as we approach the season of spring. March was always the month of transition. Let’s all let go, let God and experience the wisdom of understanding.
