Hello, I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, so I thought I’d weigh in. Apologies for the impenetrable language: it made sense when I wrote it down!

How many verses are there in all, Karl?

Anyway, here goes:
The tao is the Eternal Mystery. The Mystery is All. Any description of that Mystery is by necessity a reduction of, or a reflection of that which it seeks to describe, and therefore is not the thing itself. Just as the map is not the territory.

As soon as we name something we reduce it to a boundary of “be-ing” and consider it in isolation of the “be-ness” of All (“being” is active and implies a beginning and an end whereas “be-ness” just –is-. Therefore, as soon as you name it, it is no longer the thing you named. It is just the name.

We name things in the hope of knowing them, but without experience and understanding of the mystery all we know is the name.

There is also a warning against dogma here “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”. Beware of those who tell you they understand and have The Key to the Truth™, and that to know and understand The Truth™ you must follow them. Anyone who claims to hold the key does by that very claim show that they do not hold the key. Maybe the keys to Hell, but that’s another story…

Free from desire to know, we are free to experience and connect. To “realise the mystery”. Wrapped up in a web of names we see only the name. We know the cost, but not the value. The word “realise” in one sense means to literally “make real” through understanding and experiencing.

However, all this comes from the same ineffable source. The Name and the Mystery are from one and the same origin. The origin is darkness because we do not know or see it. It remains un-illuminated by the sickly glow of the pale light of human knowledge as it is beyond our understanding

“Darkness within darkness.”

I think this is pointing out that we have already named “the darkness”, and so have fallen prey to the very snare we have been trying to avoid by our oh-so-cleverness. As soon as we limit and claim to understand one “darkness” there is darkness beyond that still hidden from us.

I need a hug… /

Andy…. *hug* *hug*

Karl…. i have spent the past couple of days looking at random objects and realising that as soon as we name them, we ‘lose’ them.

The name limits something to the point of losing the fucken thing!!!

And the Catch 22 is that we MUST name things, or we can’t communicate. I can’t tell you about an apple without naming the apple… it’s too esoteric to define stuff with no definition.

Simple objects… i looked at my daughter’s glass of Fanta…. thinking, “As soon as I call it ‘a glass of fanta’ i lose all the things that it ‘is’ and ‘does’… Calling it by that name doesn’t bring into consideration the tingle on your tongue when you drink it, or the feeling the bubbles make when they land on your hand, or the coldness in your mouth when you drink it, or the hydration to your body… or the chemicals, or the feeling engendered by Fanta marketing campaigns… the labels we give everyday objects are now seeming so ‘dead’ and two dimensional…

I’ve sort of come to some vague conclusion that we end up in a loop here…there’s no way around it really. Everyone is searching for something, let us just say for this particular argument that that is inner happiness, because who wants inner sadness…well that could be a whole new topic…
Darkness within darkness seems to be the sort of ‘answer’ to the verse…not that there’s an answer as such but any who…
We need to search for this happiness that we long for, but probably in the quest for finding it, we lose the happiness along the way, blinded to the things that may well have brought us the happiness we search for our whole lives…we’re taught that we have to own things, and be a certain way to be happy, the stereotypical way of living and growing up, but surely the answer to happiness is not to follow this stereo type and to follow your own ways…

not every ones idea of fun and happiness is that of growing old with a family and a house that is theirs and a job that will keep them paid till they die…so for one person to ask how do I be happy in my life, not one person can give an answer…no-one can tell anyone else that there is a specific way to live…everyone has to go on that search themselves…I suppose either way you look at it, it’s still a search…now obviously not every case of searching is going to be about happiness in life, but the interpretation that I make from this is to not search, just enjoy…you will lose the feeling of being lost in the darkness and instead find the light in the darkness by ignoring the darkness outside…
This is beginning to sound like a ramble, and I planned my answer and everything…

everyone always seems to be searching for an answer of some sort, therefore creating desire…desire a bad thing in itself in most circumstances, as said “Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.” … so having these desires to understand everything and anything that goes, really only blinds your view to seeing what’s actually out there…
now obviously there are going to be different interpretations of anything written, and in a sense i believe everyone will interpret this in the way that feels most at home with themselves, but i see it more as a warning not to search for the answers to everything, that the darkness within darkness will always be…the darkness = unknown answers in an unknown universe…but like i say, to live your life to an actual full, and do what you want to do will lead to more understanding than searching for it…

I agree highly with Kerri, it’s a catch 22, we must place names on things for them to make sense to us and even in describing without naming, I feel in some way still gives names to things, because you are naming the things that the particular item etc does. We can’t escape that because it has become part of our very complex language that even we don’t understand…but by summing something up in one word it loses the sense of reality in it and the actual understanding of it leaving us taking everything for granted…feelings the most obvious case here, naming a feeling with one word or two will never be able to account for every ones experience and everyones own knowledge of it. But we need a word that sums it up in some half arsed attempt so that others around us can have a little insight into our own lives…

Gone off track a little there, but my mind feels a bit clearer hah, though I feel that may not be a great understanding of it now…sorry it took four posts to write, specially if its garbage :p

well you set these things off and the mind just starts working

yes but i mean you introduce us or at least me this so technically it is you that sets the mind off

hi hi Kerri very nice to read your thoughts ♥

Somehow I think I understand the concept of the Tao is not the CURTAINS… it’s what’s outside the window that we can’t see and could never hope to understand… gosh, people used to think the world was flat ffs… nothing is as it seems or as we see it, this computer seems solid but it’s mostly empty space with molecules buzzing around emptiness… that’s the Tao, right? The unknown shit that we may find out one day if we’re not blinkered by labels and fairy tales and have our eyes open in wonder ))

Dangerous Language hey… i like to call it Transformational Vocabulary
I don’t mean to rush you… but come on!! LOL!!! I’d love to see the Dangerous Language Series!!! It’s been a long time since these topics have come up for me and language is a waaaaay cool topic

Kerri: Maps and territories is a common warning on many of the occult forums on-line I used to frequent. I don’t know where it cam from, but it’s a very useful statement.
Rose: I wonder sometimes if happiness is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: the more you chase it the more it eludes you. I wonder if the key to happiness is to simply try to experience the moment. I really struggle with this in real life, though. I’m always churning over something recent or something coming up. I have to catch myself and put me back in now. I do believe that the search is the key, though. As soon as you think you’ve got the answer to end all questions you might as well give up! Having re-read your post, I think we’re saying the same thing after all. I enjoyed your ramblings, anyway…

A lot of Crowley’s rituals contain the warning to perform the work “free from the lust for results”. Do the work, don’t desire an outcome to the expense of missing the (unexpected other) results your efforts might yield.
Finally, the “curtains” comment reminded me that on Iron Maiden’s “Live After Death” album, Bruce Dickinson introduces the song “Revelations” with the comment “This is a song about opening the curtains” )
Karl: If the be-ing is the ‘particular’ and the be-ness is of the ‘eternal’ then yeah, I guess when you name something you move it (experientially, at least) from the eternal to your ‘particular’. You reduce irt from what it IS to what you can understand it might be.
81 weeks of this? Blimey, we’ll all have reached Nirvana or be dead by then!

sometimes you just stop thinking and go for it…you take the freedom infront of you and jump head first into what it is you want…the best and worst feelings come from risks…and i think when we take risks thats when we’ve stopped searching and have decided to take the road that we believe will lead us somewhere rather than umming and ahhing about it…
and yes i agree we are all saying a similar thing over all