Every individual wakes up in search of something wonderful. It’s the fuel that drives you and keeps you up at night.

The word “seduce” in Latin means to lead astray. Because of this, it has lead to all kinds of different interpretations.

But the reality is, nature seduces you, your dog seduces you, a poet seduces you, a great musician seduces you. Everything is going seduce you—it’s not good or bad.

This is a problem with meditation for many. They don’t let it seduce them.

They approach meditation as if it’s an arcade game and somehow by partaking in this game they’re going to experience something wonderful right away.

So they try it, and after a few moments they say, “When is my mind going to stop?”

In the Taoist traditions you are given a simple riddle to work on this, “No block, no occupy.” Then you are told to study a baby.

This riddle is brilliant. If you could internalize these words, your life would have a lot less restriction. Later in their life, usually around the age of sixty, Taoist monks appear stupid or lost, because these monks are trying to stay in this state of astonishment and wonder like a baby all day.

By not being blocked by their own mind and the outside world. They want to literally have the mind of a baby. They’ve developed feelings rather then logic. They want to be lost in the love of the universe.

They often say this metaphor “I go wherever the Ox takes me.” They let this pure feeling of the universe guide them to wherever they need to go.

As Iban Arabi, a Sufi poet said…

My heart holds within it every form, it contains a pasture for gazelles, a monastery for Christian monks. There is a temple for idol-worshipers, a holy shrine for pilgrims; There is the table of the Torah, and the Book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love and go whichever way His camel leads me. This is the true faith; This is the true religion.

We build up beliefs from society about how we should behave and this blocks us from our true nature. We become hard, we no longer see beauty in nature, we no longer let it seduce us.

They say, the Buddha used a lotus flower to explain enlightenment. Because a lotus flower grows from murky water to become something wonderful, something real, something magnificent.

The true beautiful state of happiness and guidance that comes from meditation lies in letting meditation and nature seduce you. As Rumi says, “ If you wish to be a mine of jewels, open the deep ocean within your heart.”

Editor: Lynn Hasselberger

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