Inspiration

What is Inspiration

Inspiration is the drawing in of breath or the inhalation. Inspiration is the process of connection to feel and creatively expand upon how one lives and acts. Take these two definitions of inspiration to understand we breathe in our inspiration. This places a limit to how much inspiration we pull in at once. Then we require action, our exhalation to recenter and balance ourselves, to be ready for our next Inspiration. Inspiration comes from both the greater universe (the breath in) and your style of life (the breath out) that tease it out and blends it to become your own.

As you seek inspiration, do so in measured steps. Discover inspiration has a heartbeat of its own. Allow inspiration to grow over time to expand your life. Push out with a lifestyle that is always taking in the connections from inspiration while improving how you live in this step by step process.

Daily Tao Inspiration

Each day 4 different inspirations will be shown.

While people work at the speed of light in the modern world.

We cannot exceed the speed of life itself.

At times it’s possible to have the illusion of pushing ourselves further and faster… but that comes at the cost of your own inner reserves.

Pause, linger and let your own breath pace life.

Casey Kochmer

The Uncarved Block

The uncarved block represents the ultimate art form since in potential; the uncarved block can be everything. However, Taoists are human, loving to give in to emotions, whimsy, and freedom to just let go. To let the art take the artist to the wildest heights.

This is an example of a Taoist letting go. Taking the uncarved block of wild boulders, and seeing in it themselves. Our very nature within the rock.

We are many things in life, including at times: rock. Our potential is what we might be, and reality becomes the shape we carve out for ourselves. Ideally, we leave our shape un-touched, un-formed so we can experience life fully.

Strangely much of Taoist practice reverse the shaping that we do upon ourselves. We can start off with one shape, to let go of form, to then become whole and uncarved again.

Taoist Teachings

Risking everything that I am
to become myself

Juggling balls of fire
where the fire is my own spirit

Transformation is never easy
Watching who you are crumble
While growing into the wonder of something new

Casey Kochmer

Things have a life of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. “It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.
-Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?”
– Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die.
-Jack Kerouac

“I’m not a body with a soul, I’m a soul that has a visible part called the body.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

The Soul

Add Your Inspiration!

Seeking Inspiration

People are waiting: waiting to be inspired, waiting for a leader, waiting for a sign. People wait and wait and wait. And then, when the moment comes, nothing happens most of the time.

Because a person:

1) Doesn’t recognize the sign or/and
2) Misinterprets the moment or/and
3) Isn’t in shape to act sustainably.

Inspiration in itself isn’t enough.
Yes it’s a starting point, but you still need to do the leg work.

What is next?

Inspiration or knowing what is next means nothing: if you are not ready to run ahead.

So while waiting for your Inspiration, take some time to grow stronger: This means to do yoga or exercise or draw art or practice some music and actively live. Keep yourself expanding and slowly get in better shape. So when inspiration finally does roll around, you can run to keep up with it.

You see, getting in shape, working with art, exploring music, allowing yourself to get stronger does so much for you. It allows a person to play. Within that play, it prepares you to see more of the world. In playing, we connect to others. So in taking time to grow stronger in your own life, it does so much more. It prepares a person for a moment of truth. It primes a person for inspiration: so when it happens, you recognize it fully.

In this manner, you will be ready for your future vision. You will be able to run the distance because you took the time now to get stronger.

Don’t waste your “now”: if you want to live in a better world in the future. Otherwise, all you will have in the future will reflect the waste of time you put into now.

If you need help finding a graceful path to play so you can be ready to tackle your future, then call me, and I will teach you the Taoist path of playing.

Inspirational Lessons

Here is a quote that has been shared thousands upon thousands of times.

Do what makes you happy
Be with who makes you smile
Laugh as much as you breathe
Love as long as you live
– Rachel Ann Nunes

Yes, this quote has a good lesson on the surface to live happily. Also, it makes you feel good after reading it. But does the lesson it tries to teach help you change your life? The answer 99.9% of the time will be no. Wonder for a moment how many of the thousands upon thousands of people like this quote took a moment to follow thru with what it actually suggests to do?

Did you take some time off the computer to find something to laugh at or took a second off to hug your child or make a pet happy or love a person you were near? Be honest: will this picture deflect your life’s course to go out right now and laugh, to live more openly?

The lesson is disconnected from reality; it doesn’t complete itself with actions that a person can directly follow right away. Overall this is a beautiful quote that isn’t very effective at helping improve a person’s lifestyle.

Inspiration is important, but it is very personal and needs to be timed to a person’s life. This shows how the momentum of our life isn’t as easy to shift as we would like to think it is. It takes quite a bit to shake a person loose from their habits, patterns, and social obligations.

The lesson?

(1) Don’t confuse “feel good” with action.

(2) Life is within our actions, don’t be fooled into thinking you are living a complete life when you feel good.

(3) It takes quite a bit to shift a person into action.

(4) Inspiration, while powerful, on its own, isn’t enough to change the world. Inspiration has to be backed by truly connecting the insight to heartfelt actions.

(5) Don’t try only to teach a path into a better world. Actions must follow teachings.

True Inspiration.

Inspirational products are created to help smooth our life. To improve and strengthen our stance in life. However, a brief inspiration is like a breeze. Most inspirations pass by quickly, and while enjoyable, they don’t do much either. Also, at times, inspirational slogans are propaganda traps themselves to keep a person locked into a situation they may not want to have as their own. So the above quote could be used to inspire a person to stay in a bad marriage to their detriment. So inspiration can be used in either a positive or negative manner. Not all inspiration truly leads to a path of greatness for everyone equally.

True inspiration must meet the times head-on and get matched to a person and their situation. Otherwise, the lesson it contains will merely only get a smile and then be forgotten in the larger rush that is life.

A Final Lesson About Inspiration.

A final quote to consider:

There is nowhere
where it is not…
There is no single
thing without Tao
– Zhuangzi

So here is a series of questions to consider after pondering this inspirational quote.

(1) When you read this. What does this say to you?

Now flip it around, and instead of asking what it means: instead ask this:

(2) How can I look at this to see something new to help me explore life.

Before asking (3), let me help you switch this around.

Experiment by replacing the word Tao with:

The Unknown
Love
Heart
Completeness
Emptiness
Its Way
A Question
A Mystery.

Now the question.

(3) What did you learn by switching these words?

If you had trouble with questions (1) and (2), try again by using this little trick of wording. Combine up the answers and merge them to form a little bit of new wisdom at how to embrace and accept what Tao comes closer to mean but not quite fully be.

Swirling

Swirl what is swirl?

Swirl is a state of …
Feeling the wind, the sun on your skin.
~ taking the moment ~
~ as eyes close to soak feelings ~

some days are a blursome times I am a blurall the timeall the sameall a blur

Video Classes

Skipping for no reason. (Well I skip to feel flight)

Long breaths of expression from inside out.

Making someone laugh.

Acting to whim, to dreams
Within a plan
That can freely shift.

Personally for myself “to Swirl” is my Personal Tao.

The world is merely the world.
I am merely human, gently passing others.
In passing, imparting momentum, helping a world to spin.
Each person is their own prayer wheel: Swirling ourselves to being alive.

Prayer

I received this question last week:

If you will, when you pray, to whom do you pray? Keep in mind that I understand the word pray as a hebrew word which literally means ‘to ask’.

I don’t pray in words or indirect asking:

The process of prayer is a process of connection to wholeness, touching into the weave of living unity.

While in Taoism, we do have phrases and such. I don’t go there since it’s too easy to misinterpret the translation.

I think the best way for me to say this is:

I pray with a mixture of:

Seeing a wholesome connection to be made,
Asking out with actions. By speaking in personal acts of kindness, you will receive gifts back from your actions.
Then releasing into acceptance

If you live well, life itself is the prayer and your dance of actions speak out and ripple to replay back with answers to prayers put forth. Simply in this mixture of intention, personal action, and acceptance.

A Taoist friend who runs a weekly circle sent me this

A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come in with game in its mouth. The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox. The next day the gods fed the fox by the means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at the greatness of the deities and said to himself, “I, too, shall just rest in a corner with full trust that the universe will provide me with all I need.”
He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door when he heard a voice say, “ Oh, you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox!” Sufi
Many Taoists call upon the immortals or a particular immortal to focus the prayer. Know being immortal is accepting one’s full nature.

I call upon my heart and a connection of completeness we all share with the universe. Some would term that a higher power. In my acceptance, the weave into which we perform the asking doesn’t need to be defined; as such, you can even say Tao at that point.

There is a point in Taoist practice where one achieves clarity of thought, no thought, just potentials which as a practitioner we embrace, activate, and explore. I teach this to all my students; it’s a core part of how to explore Taoism.

I no longer channel thought since it’s outside to how I even “think” so to speak. On a normal day to day moment, I let my mind reside within an area of crystal-like clarity.

Meditation and mantra are practices to focus on awareness. Now, what happens when you simply live in clarity and awareness outside the need for meditation and mantra? This means being within an undefinable space where clarity of thought, means no thought, but rather simply being fully present in one’s life.

It’s when in this clarity, it’s possible to channel, to help others, or pray, by holding space in a manner to aid another person’s heart of being, in kindness to share and open up potentials for others as required when they are open or are in a release to discovering their nature. To help assist connection to occur.

This is a form of prayer: but channeled of kindness in supporting those around us. To help connect another truly: both to their center of the heart and to the larger world, they are part of.

How I say and do this: well, depending on who I talk to, I can describe it in a thousand different ways, all the same thing. It’s just perception colors how we label the process.

For many this is

Prayer.

Now consider for many people prayer is the reaching out for inspiration! So to strive for inspiration can also be a prayer!

Zen Garden

Inspirational Comments

Take a moment to share what you have found inspirational in your life.