All Around Growth — reflections on faith, freedom, and finding purpose through Orthodox Christian living, formation, and the long work of becoming. Earlier episodes available to supporters.
Only when the last book has been fitted to the wheel is their completion. Good morning, everybody. And welcome to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. For those of you who are new to the show, this is a show that provides insight and tools to allow us to build the lives and homesteads of our dreams. This is episode number 206 of the show titled Completion. And today we will be reading from 365 Dao by Deng Ming Dao. A book of daily meditations from a wise Taoist author. Shedding light on every facet of life. With a little bit of poetry and some reading. Ambitions, career, family, and everyday identity are like the outer wheel. All the different talents and deep aspects of the mind are like the smokes. The consciousness is the hub that holds it all together. At the center of the hub is emptiness. That aspect of ourselves that is open to the universal reality. Unfortunately, we are not always whole. Perhaps it is a matter of opportunities missed when we were younger. Perhaps it is a lack of education or experience. Whatever it may be, we should, through introspection, search out what we lack and then work toward fulfilling it. Once we identify and complete some part of ourselves, it is like fitting a spoke into our wheel. When we have enough spokes, we are whole. A new wheel will have a long future of rolling. Ourselves, once made whole, can then serve our spiritual aspirations until the end. And that is how many of these episodes will continue. At some point, I had this battle back and forth of trying to produce higher quality content. Giving a little beep to Cody. We're both getting an early start to these fall days, and that's something that I wanted to talk about briefly as well. It's just the change of the season, the autumn season, but just to quick close out one thought before moving into another. So I took my time and thought I'd end up putting more time into it. And I did. And perhaps the podcast was higher quality and it was. So I succeeded in the things that I'd set out to do. But as I did less of this, I actually found less satisfaction. This isn't really taking too much time, and I'm still able to focus on the things that I need to focus on in life. So here we are. Here we are. Because I haven't felt that way in quite some time. But for a few weeks of making a concerted effort to take care of myself, rest and do little else other than just maintain my current obligations. Prepare healthy foods. And do the dishes and go to bed and then make my bed. I'm keeping it very simple. But I realized it's October 14th. We're well into Q4. It's the 287th day of the year. And I'll read more up here at the tracks. I'm at the stop sign. I wanted to touch back on this. And that's what's interesting about this time of the year is it's a little bit more challenging to review my notes. Review the whatever daily devotional I'm reading because at this time. Something like that. It's still dark. I mean, I saw Cody and he's out and about. You know, it's it's uh he's up and early hunting. The walk-in cooler is full of produce and meat in the form of a deer that's waiting to be processed. Completion. Now ambitions, career, family, and everyday identity are like the outer wheel. All the different talents and deep aspects of the mind are like the spokes. The consciousness is the hub that holds it all together. At the center of the hub is emptiness. That aspect of ourselves that is open to the universal reality. What is the universal reality? Right? I mean, I'm all over the map this morning. I understand that. I even wanted to touch on some subjects that I found myself thinking about during the walk. Ideas. Right? Ideas. Ideas don't mean anything. Unless we act upon them. Ideas are great. I'm not shitting on ideas. But, you know, so many. So many times I've just oh, I've got all these ideas, ideas, ideas. And then I get overwhelmed with ideas. I don't act on ideas. And because I'm overwhelmed, I engage in bad habits. I feel bad about the bad habits. You know, it's like uh it's like uh it's like fat guy, uh fat bastard in Austin Powers. I eat because I'm I feel bad. I feel bad because I'm fat and I eat because I'm fat whatever. You g you know it is this ridiculous cycle. Break the cycle. Break the cycle. Like this, where we experience the struggles and the challenges in life, right? And we read this morning, unfortunately, we are not always whole. Perhaps it is a matter of opportunities missed when we were younger. Perhaps it is a lack of education or experience. Whatever it may be, we should, through introspection, search out what we lack and then work toward fulfilling it. Once we identify and complete some part of ourselves, it is like fitting a spoke into our wheel. When we have enough spokes, we are whole. Whatever it may be, through introspection, search out what we lack and then work toward fulfilling it. What are you working toward? I've realized that with all these ideas, I'm working towards so much. So I set goals, and learning how to set goals has been a very long process. I've been working on modifying and refining my goal setting process for over a decade, and you know, I've had these broad paintbrush goals in the past get healthy, you know, um exercise more. Or something like that. And you know, these are good things to these are good goals to have, but they're not smart. They're not specific. They're not measurable. They're not attainable. They're not realistic. Smart goals allow us to achieve whatever it needs to be, or whatever it takes to make these big ideas come into fruition. But unless we approach the goals that we have in a smart way, we're never gonna get anywhere. Because that wheel isn't hole. We haven't identified and done the work to complete some part of ourselves like spitting smoke into our wheel. We don't have enough smokes. We haven't pursued enough goals with specificity. Each of those specific smart goals is like a spoke in the wheel. All the ideas that's that's that's part of the wheel. Maybe like the tire, but each individual time-bound measurable goal is like the spoke. Once we've done enough of the little goals, the whole idea of the wheel can come together and actually function as such. Right? But we don't get anywhere fast, and we oftentimes spin our wheels, so to speak. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. I believe I'm getting that acronym SMART correctly. Learning how to do that has been pivotal in allowing me to become more successful in various aspects of my life in which I've tried to become successful. And it's allowed me to achieve some of the goals that I had. And this process has allowed me to further refine the goals that I had, resulting in more pleasure and happiness once I've actually begun to do the work. So uh one other thing on this whole goal idea is utilizing the the self-journal. I'm not going to go into a dialogue about that. I've spoken about it in the past, but that's really helped me break the year down into quarters and the quarter down into three segments, and that's helpful. A new wheel will have a long future of rolling. Ourselves, once made whole, can then serve our spiritual aspirations until the end. Oftentimes, when we're thinking about a specific aspect of life, we've got this laser-like focus on one thing. We lose sight of the other things. Which is why in a wheel there that's properly balanced, right? It is smooth and there is no disruption in the movement. Wheel that is not balanced or not aligned due to spokes not being true, does not move properly, ultimately can lead the user of it to injury or harm. So it's important to make sure that our wheel is built right, built properly to provide us the long future of rolling and rolling well. So, like we read in the beginning, only when the last spoke has been fitted to the wheel is there completion. The part that stuck out to me the most was unfortunately, we are not always whole. Perhaps it is a matter of opportunities missed when we were younger, perhaps it is a lack of education or experience. Whatever it may be, we should, through introspection, search out what we lack and then work toward fulfilling it. Once we identify and complete some part of ourselves, it is like fitting a spoke into our wheel. When we have enough spokes, we are whole. Listen to that again and again and again. I'm gonna read it one more time. Unfortunately, we are not always whole. Perhaps it is a matter of opportunities missed when we were younger, perhaps it is a lack of education or experience. Whatever it may be, we should, through introspection, search out what we lack and then work toward fulfilling it. Once we identify and complete some part of ourselves, it is like fitting a spoke into our wheel. Once we have enough spokes, we are whole. Alright, guys, that's it for today's episode. I'm gonna link to this book in the show notes. It's a wonderful book that provides a different perspective. And sometimes a different perspective is exactly what we need. Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.
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