These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room [on the street, from this window, in this place]
Does anyone remember label makers? Label makers, for the uninitiated, were these popular mini-printers that made-you guessed it-self-adhesive labels.
With a label maker you could label your papers, your files. I even had a friend who labeled her shelves so her husband would know where things went.
Label makers help organize. They help identify.
But they are sometimes meaningful only to the person who made them.
Take my friend with the shelf for instance. If her husband had no clue what a Dutch Oven is, he’s probably not going to put it on the shelf labeled ‘Dutch Oven’.
Lesson 4 suggests that our thoughts can be very much like old label makers. They are only meaningful in the context of our personal reality. What we often call good or bad, is really just our minds labeling. Trying to understand, instead of allowing what is.
There’s a beautiful Taoist parable that illustrates this point:
A man’s horse ran away one evening. The next day his neighbors lamented his bad luck saying “How awful your horse is gone!”
“Perhaps” the man replied.
The next day the horse returned with 3 wild companions. “How wonderful!” his neighbors said.
“Perhaps” the man replied.
Soon after the man’s son was riding the horse and broke his leg. “What terrible luck!” the neighbors said.
“Perhaps” the man said again.
Within a week war broke out in the man’s small nation. All young men were drafted to participate. But the man’s son, being disabled, was exempt from duty.
Once again the neighbors congratulated the man, but he still said:
“Perhaps”.
My thoughts love to label something, like our label maker and the man's dear friends. Good. Bad. Lucky. Unfortunate. But the perspective of the Universe is so much greater than any single object or event. If I can learn to go within, to trust that the Divine within can use whatever comes into our lives for the highest good-well, that is a 'perhaps' filled with a higher purpose.
Allow. Receive. Accept
Namaste dear ones.