“With” and “As”
(The Tao Te Ching) He who identifies himself with the world, receives the world. He who sees himself as the world comes to accept it.
“With” and “as” are the key words in the quote above. These two words are worlds apart regarding attachments and aversions. The most recent Buddha, the one most of the world believes to be the only Buddha, taught a simple message: all pain and suffering comes from attachments and aversions. “With” and “as” in the quote above falls proportionally in line with what the Buddha taught regarding attachments and aversions, as well as Jesus and Krishna.
If a person believes themselves “with” the world, they identify with the transient, temporary, illusory, and ephemeral as real. If you’re with the world, doing as the world does, operating within a belief system that happiness is found by getting and acquiring which the world portrays as important, you won’t find lasting happiness, joy, satisfaction, or contentment. You’ll find more wanting, craving, needing, trying to get.
If a person identifies themselves “as” the world, they’ll start to see through their attachments and aversions to what impermanence might encompass.
None of us are what the world says we are. None of us will find inner peace from what the world provides. None of us will find joy in attachments and aversions. None among us will find anything but rebirth when aligned with the world. Once you align with the world as being in it but not of it (as it, not with it), you’ll start to see the power in the word “as,” opposed to the oppression baked into the word “with.”
We are all connected in this game of life because we are all the same thing intrinsically. If you’re with the world, you see only illusions, only reflections of the ego. Moving through life as the world allows for a connection with higher and higher truths.
You are not your feelings, but the world says you are. You are not your thoughts, but the world says you are. You are not your emotions, but the world says you are. You are not the money you make, but the world says you are. You are not your possessions, but the world says you are. You are not anything you see, taste, touch, or smell.
Being “with” the world is a decision to stay blinded – it’s taking the blue pill. Identifying “as” the world allows for a divine acceptance and separation from choosing illusion as reality.
Who knew two little words could hold so much wisdom?
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