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MONDAY’S POEM: The Heart of Perfection
Following up on my musings of late last week I wrote this:
The Heart of Perfection
If all the little mistakes
Are lessons,
And all the little lessons
Add up to a whole
Are the mistakes
At the Heart of Perfection?
If there is a plan to the Universe,
And that Plan
Is a Plan of Perfection,
Then all the little mistakes
Add up to a whole
At the Heart of Perfection.
Let the Plan of Love and Light
Work out!
Every error, every mistake, every sin
Is a lesson;
Learned lessons add up
To the Heart of Perfection!
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

PS: Happy 30th Anniversary, Rosemary! I love you!
Perfection in the Imperfect
In yesterday’s post I told the story of my misplaced sunglasses and my frustration/anger/lesson/awareness/self-love/love development. I am still processing this as a real opportunity for insight and growth. The day after I found the glasses I wrote this in my pages:
It is a better day today because I found my sunglasses. I know, it’s silly to have spent so much emotional energy on this little thing. And when did they turn up? After I had let them go, let go of all that emotional energy, accepted the loss and the lesson and put a good face on the rest of the day. And there is even a deeper lesson in the outcome: accept the lessons as soon as they arise with their teachings! Don’t spend the emotional capital on these small things. Save it, store it. This is true awareness.
Practice Awareness! This leads to perfection. Above all stay in the energy of Love as much and as often as possible. This is the true perspective and the true path to the Tao.
Whether the sunglasses turned up or were gone forever is immaterial. The lesson is the true and best outcome here. The first priority is Practice->Love. This is the Ultimate Way. And the Penultimate is Awareness->Perfection. The first leads to the second. Of course there is a tight feedback loop through all of this. Practice goes to awareness and perfection and Love – the end of it all. But the persistence in the practice comes from Love too. And the awareness comes from Love and practice. It is all tightly woven and I have much to continue to learn and bring to Perfection.
This whole notion of Perfection is a sticky one, especially for an Enneagram Type 1! OK, the Universe is already perfect. It is a whirling mass of delightful energy with an incredible force of Consciousness driving it. Call it Qi, call it the Tao, the Collective Consciousness of the All, Source, God/Goddess. It is perfect in its creation and its evolution. This is a key understanding. This does not mean that I am perfect, that everything I do is perfect. It does mean that there is no imperfection in Creation. It means that all the imperfections somehow blend into a perfect set of lessons for us all and we learn them to lead to the Ultimate Perfection of the Plan for the Universe. Somehow our mistakes are correcting over the long haul. They are necessary to spur and guide the evolution of consciousness.
The secret here is acceptance. It’s one thing to realize this at some level, to write about it intellectually, to think it through and see the logic of it. It is quite another thing to live by the rule: All imperfections are necessary to form the Perfect Whole. There is an implicit acceptance here that is required to the fulfillment of the Perfection – Prajna Paramita!
This is the Heart of Perfection. Acceptance: acceptance of the form and formlessness, the empty limitlessness, the mistakes, illness, old age, death – all part of the Heart of Perfect Wisdom – Prajna Paramita!
Is this the Buddha’s real meaning in the Heart Sutra, that all the imperfections in the world, all the suffering, all the strife are all part of a greater Perfect Whole? Acceptance, surrender, is the pivot point of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. And how can there be anything left after that surrender but pure Love?
Peace and blessings!

MONDAY’S POEM: Vital Force
The feeling of Qigong:
Vital Force
Formlessness
Empty force
Breathing in
Deep down
Belly out
Rootedness
Feet connect
Bubbling spring
Qi rises
Radiating upward
Earth offers.
Root chakra seals
Lower Tan T’ien stores
Energy forms
Prana expands
Heart opens
Expression flows
Mind merges
Vision extends
Crown reaches
Heavenly Love.
Humans link
Heaven and Earth
Form and formless
Eternally One.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.





