We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot Four Quartets

04 November 2006


Law #6 The Law of Detachment

In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty... in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe. --Deepak Chopra, from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.

This one really resonates with my life...it explains the feeling that I've experienced living here in England versus living at home in America. Here, I feel more free, but not in the sense of free to be an idiot or live recklessly etc.. but free in the sense that I have a creativity and openness that I have not been able to cultivate in America. I have thought it was because this is not my natural terrain, I am an outsider in a way, and will always be and because of that, things look and feel different..its not so easy to take for granted, or go into cruise control mode. It is the freedom from past conditioning, because there is nothing here to remind me of the past, nothing that I have done repeatedly or easily.

I remember reading in the Bodhisattva's Way, I think it was (I no longer have the book) that a Bodhisattva must leave their homeland.. Having taken the Boddisattva oath, I am practicing, but certainly not one yet.. and this makes sense, that you must leave your home because you have to break out of your own comfort zone, put yourself out there. Of course one can get comfortable anywhere. Stepping into the unknown and staying there though, keeps your mind sharp, keeps it open, and you don't necessarily need a different location to do that. Through meditation we can train our mind to look and approach life differently.

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