A God Shaped Pot
If you make a God shaped pot in your head, something will fill it and it will look like God to you. God does not look like anything. Always remember that you are the one that made the pot look how it looks to you. Culture, religion, may have helped you shape it into that image, but ultimately you’re the owner and creator. Know that this is not God, but your God shaped pot that you’ve created to house God in your mind.
The stories that we tell ourselves are powerful. These stories are like the God shaped pots that we create. In fact, I believe the potter’s hands and the writer’s pen are both apt metaphors for the process in which we create our mental constructs. The same logic applies. If you create a marriage shaped pot in your head, that is what marriage will look like for you.
You make the pots, but often we do so with instructions and designs given to us by culture. I remember getting new Lego sets as a child. I’d follow the instructions that came with the set and make the things as they appeared on the box. That would usually last a grand total of 15 minutes before I’d tear it apart and build something of my own creation, using bits and pieces from my bucket of other sets that I’ve demolished.
Are you just following the instructions and building your mental constructs as society and culture have told they should look like? Are you trying to make your relationship the look like that Facebook or Instagram couple you follow? Or your house look like the picture in the magazine or Pinterest? What if you didn’t get all of the bits and pieces that were supposed to come in the box? What if that picture really just doesn’t fit with your true authentic self?
You tell the story, you make the pots, you create the mental construct in your mind. If you don’t like the picture on the box or don’t have all of the correct bits, tear it down and build your own creation with the pieces that you have collected.
The stuff that fills the pots that you create in your head is the prana, the energy, the breath of life. It doesn’t look like anything. We’ve made our containers look the way we were told to make them look, but some designs just aren’t as useful to some as they are for others. The stuff inside the container looks like nothing, so the thing it’s supposed to be looks like nothing. It will take the shape of whatever container you put it in.
Don’t confuse the pot for the thing that actually resides in the pot. Know your power as creator of the mental container. Discard what is not of use to you. Make new containers that are more useful to you. Don’t forget the non-being, life energy, that fills the container is from God and is what makes it work.
Tao Te Ching, Ch. 11, Red Pine translation
Thirty spokes converge on a hub
But it’s the emptiness
That makes a wheel work
Pots are fashioned from clay
But it’s the hollow
That makes a pot work
Windows and doors are carved for a home
But it’s the spaces
That make a house work
Existence makes a thing useful
But nonexistence makes it work
