The Uncarved Block

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself."     Richard Bach

     When I began my quest for wholeness, I first sought to understand what wholeness meant. According to Webster's Dictionary, wholeness is defined as "having all essential or original parts in the appropriate order". The only thing I knew that had all essential parts in an appropriate order was Nature. Did the birds see themselves as less-than? Did the trees fear they would fall off their path or question their ability to be the best tree they could be? Nature seemed so perfectly content to simply be. Knowing that I, too, was a part of Nature, I knew I MUST have that same wholeness within me. I just had to find it.
     The Taoist philosophy has a concept called the Uncarved Block. It teaches us that we are born perfect. Wood in its most perfect form is a tree. Wood is not its most perfect when it is cut, carved and painted so we can stand it in the corner of our living rooms. We may find beauty and comfort in it when it is in this state, thus creating a different kind of perfection, but we are the most perfect when are simply being what we were born to be.

     I think we are so focused on our weakness, improving ourselves and the need to grow and change that we forget that trees grow and change through no will of their own. There is a power, an intelligent and conscious force, that drives all life forward. We like to think we can control these forces but this is the very illusion that makes us feel unhappy, incomplete and separate. True power comes when we can relinquish the illusion of control and embrace our own perfection. Only in doing so are we truly free to see the perfection of others and the absolute awe of this amazing universe in which we live.