Upcoming Full Harvest Moon – Culling

“Just meditate on this fact. If the past is not there, who are you?“

– Osho. Tao: The Pathless Path (p. 146). Kindle Edition.

At the age of 48, the Daoist (and future Master) Sun Bu’er met Wang Chongyang, the Daoist teacher she would eventually follow. She was exasperated and outraged by Master Chongyang in the beginning. However, by the age of 51, she was a Master in her own right, and left every part of her prior identity and life behind, striking out alone to continue furthering her Daoist cultivation. Sun Bu’er felt it necessary to destroy her own beauty and behave as if mad to safely do so. Eventually, she developed a lineage of her own, teaching other women to strive for oneness with the Dao.

I have no plans to leave my wonderful family behind in the future, but in many other ways, I take Sun Bu’er as a major role model. As I approach my 48th birthday, I am inviting a spirit of culling similar to hers into my life. I am so grateful for the presence of the teachers/Shifus in my current spiritual path, so I am not aspiring for that change; I feel as though I have already recently had a lifestyle upheaval on the scale of what Sun Bu’er experienced at 48.

What remains to that end is a powerful culling. In tune with the Season change, shedding excess – and the past – is my aim. Starting small, in the physical, is the release of clutter, of many things clung to as part of my past identities. Health wise, I am slated for more testing and determinations… cardiology, neurology. I have a goal of truly pinpointing my possibilities and limitations.

Philosophically, mentally and politically, I wish to heal some of the anger, despair and pain (exasperation and outrage, indeed) that cut wounds in me over the last decade. I am pleased to have an excellent therapist for assistance in this and other mental health issues. While I am open to change, I will also accept my own perspectives as valid, regardless of how mad and ugly others may find them – and me.

That said, I want to lift my vibration, shed what no longer serves, and aim for a more mindful, in-the-moment state. Spiritually, I wish to continue to cultivate the Dao in an eremitic style, more of the hermit priestess/monk than the Master teacher/leader of many. A focus on the three Daoist virtues/treasures of simplicity, compassion and humility – and a culling of the rest. Perhaps at 51 years, I’ll be living near the hermit ‘mountain groves’ noted by Wang Chongyang and others of the lineage.

As the Harvest Moon comes full this week, this is the direction in which I hope to aim the Huntress’s bow. Between then and 51, I hope to shed the past, open spiritually, and move towards Oneness. Not Two.