Avatar is about jumping from an old pond that is two into a pond that is One. What are two ponds between which Jake Sully oscillates, unable to jump totally into one or the other: The Sky People and the Navi, of the intellectual pond and the Feeling/intuitive pond. The Sky People think the world into existence, the Navi feel the world into existence, but Jake finds himself in the dark night of the soul on his journey where he doesn’t know which one is real. Remember that intermediate place he found himself in. He then made the leap of madness and jumped on the back of the Last Shadow or death itself. The frog jumped out of the Old Pond that was two and landing in a pond that didn’t even exist before he jumped. This Leap of Faith actually created a new pond in which the frog and the pond were One. PLOP!

Before the leap, there were to incompatible ponds—yet there can only be one pond, one reality, one world—but Jake couldn’t choose. If you can’t choose the pond to jump in, you can’t choose yourself. We choose the reality we want to swim in. If you can’t choose because the either/or of the choice cancels each other out, and you can’t eliminate one of the choices, you can’t choose, and this creates the wound the can’t heal, the self or mind divided against itself. The Two can’t become one…unless we just jump….without know which pond we are going to land in.

The Jump kills the the old pond and creates the new pond, the One Pond, the One self without knowing what the jump will do to you, whether you will land in water or on a cement floor. You don’t know if the PLOP is going to splash or SPLAT! But you jump because the pain of the civil war between the two ponds of the mind has become insufferable. You jump because you cannot not jump. Like the sword of the pirate, your pain pushes you to the edge of the plank…and you jump. PLOP is being born again. But first you have to die.

Every spiritual teacher must go through this Koan, I think, this barrier koan of MU before he/she can land in the pond of Zen. Does a dog have Buddha nature or not? as the monk to the master? The master says: MU! or PLOP! ….Of course (if you don’t know the Mu koan) dogs have Buddha Nature because in Buddhism all sentient beings have  Buddha Nature…so the master says MU or NO, which is a yes/no answer. But the question is a yes/no question, a have or have not question.

Should I be a spiritual teacher or not? MU! If you don’t laugh at the absurdity of this, you are not ready for the PLOP!

If you try to be a good spiritual teacher, you miss the  pond. The frog does not try to leap. Trying to leap always comes in a new exiting package you have created to sell your teaching, but when opened it is the same old stale CrackerJacks with a plastic prize.

Wanting  to help others to awake is natural to someone who just awakes. But that urge, and it is very powerful, is just to affirm that one is awake. But there is no difference between wake and sleep…unless you want to awaken someone. The saved always want to save the unsaved so they can validate that they are saved. There is no difference between the saved and the unsaved, for forgiven and the unforgiven…There is no difference between teaching and not teaching.

The fruit has to ripen on the limb, then one day it just drops, like the frog leaping into the pond. The unripened fruit has to teach in order to ripen, but the real student of the teaching is the teacher. The student and teacher are always one. But until that fruit drops from the tree, they are two.

The pond and the frog are separate until the frog leaps. PLOP!

My great aunt in the 1920s living in Philadelphia  noticed that women who were buying corsets had no way to get them fitted, so she started a business, and in no time had employees, even her husband. Doctors would send their patients to her. (I guess doctors proscribed corsets then).When she sold the business, she was rich. Anyway, Aunt Annie because our family’s  Sugar Momma. The invested her money wisely, buying and selling houses for a profit, but most of all she invested in her family, setting up three sisters in huge brick boarding houses in Norfolk (there were no motels then) so they would forever be independent. The great old homes are still standing on Colonial Avenue.

But most of all she lent my uncle Tommy the money to build a photography studio in Tampa so he could become the premier photographer in the city. He put my sisters husband through med school. Everything she touched turned to gold. My mother took care of Aunt Annie in her long old age (she lived to be 99). She was in my mind always the corset that held my family together. Her commandment was simple: never spend the principle. Make your money work for you, but don’t spend the principle. But what was her “principle” really. It wasn’t just money.

It is with sadness that I realize how many times I have forgotten this principle teaching. It is not the money per se that is this principle; it is something else that is really untouchable, something formless that can’t be spent. Lets me see if I can untie the question.

Aunt Annie’s real principle was Service. She had the heart of Service, but that service was wrapped in a strong corset. She didn’t bend, she didn’t waver. She was strong ands straight as steel ribs, and I could never imagine her getting on the floor and playing with the kids. And yet I am here as I am today because of her service to her family, my mother’s family and me and my uncle, whose story now belongs to me.

God’s commandments are always simple but living. If you don’t live the commandment, not because you should, but because that is who you are, what good are they? God’s Corset is not what you are tied up in, but your posture, the way you hold yourself inside and without external support and beliefs. When you are wearing God’s Corset, you need no commandments to follow or give to others. However, when you posture is bad, you can use a corset, but at some point you have to take the corset off, or else you become dependent upon it.

What you do naturally is the living commandment. Independence, not dependence is the purpose of God’s Corset. Be yourself fully means be God fully. That is the principle of Faith. Have Faith in yourself, surrender to yourself, for that is how God wants to live as you, through you, not for you but for service to all. God cannot be divided, but he divides Himself in order that through you He will become undivided. This is the principle that should never be sold or spent. This is your rib cage, your spine, and the corset that holds you up.