The heart of today’s tip comes from three sentences in today’s reading:
A house divided cannot stand.
A house divided cannot stand.
Look within yourself and find what keeps you from being healed,
that you may overcome that thing and be healed.
Today is another day of self-examination. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, we tend to “do and undo at every step.” We need to get in the habit of looking at ourselves to see how we are out of harmony with our desire to awaken. Where do we “undo” our own good work?
As a reminder, self-examination isn’t about judging ourselves to be good or bad. It’s about realizing what we want, and then looking to discover how our current way of being is in our own way, hindering us instead of helping us. It helps to see self-examination as a process of ongoing gentle refinement.
Just as a house that’s divided can’t stand, a ship that’s divided sinks. Let’s find where we are divided against our own purpose, and then see where we are willing to “tighten the portholes and batten down the hatches.”
Ohhh! The previous reference to leaking water reminds me of a Sufi story about Nasruddin, the comical spiritual master:
One day, a student of the legendary wise fool, Mullah Nasruddin, went to visit him at his home. Already expecting some crazy behavior on Mullah’s part, the student reminded himself not to react. Another spiritual teacher once told him, “If you react unconsciously, you push the lesson of the moment away.”
When Mullah opened the door, he was overjoyed to see his student.
“My friend! Just in time! You can help me draw water from the well! Here, take this bucket and follow me!”
The student followed Mullah to the well and watched while he began to pull water from the well and splash it into the bucket that the student held.
After a few minutes, the student noticed that the level of the water in the bucket was not rising very quickly. Where was all the water going?
The student glanced underneath the bucket and saw that the bucket was leaking almost as much as Mullah put in each time.
Not appearing to notice, Mullah continued to put water in the bucket. The student was exasperated.
“Mullah, you idiot! Can’t you see that the bucket is leaking?”
My friend,” Mullah responded, “I was only looking at the top of the bucket. What does the bottom have to do with it?”
