Love Note: When the Shoe Fits

Hello!

Is there something that you do that, while you’re engaged in the activity, it’s as though you’re on automatic pilot…so natural is the fit between you and the activity?  In fact it can be so natural that, like the draftsman in Chuang Tzu’s poem, there are no obstacles… the activity (what is done) and you (the doer) are one. It may be easy to take these kinds of activities for granted, because they are so deeply entrenched within us.  

Given this period when many of us have more time on our hands, we have the opportunity to more closely examine a plethora of aspects in our lives, including things such as the ability to draw circles perfectly while being completely free of concerns in those moments of drawing.  Or perhaps for you it is playing the flute, drumming, baking blueberry pie, tending to your rose garden, singing Hank Williams songs, or wood working.  Whatever it is, I invite you to try to do it with intentionality in the next couple of days.  This is not to bring concern and pressure to that which defies such burdens.  Instead it’s an invitation to bring the sacredness of this activity to the fore, an opportunity to experience gratitude for aptitude and mindfulness to this blessing which enriches the landscape of your life.

And then, as the poet suggests, let your purposeful attention to it go, like a leaf floating downstream, allowing the ease and rightness of this part of you to simply be enough.

Sending love, 
Lori
When the Shoe Fits  
Ch’ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.  

His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere.
His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
 
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.  

So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
“For” and “against” are forgotten.  

No drives no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.  

Easy is right..Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.  

~ Chuang Tzu ~