The Exquisite Beauty of Temptation

The Exquisite Beauty of Temptation

I read Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters when I was a schoolboy, in 1983. This classic of popular science which also won the American National Book Award for Science in 1979 is a layman's account of the world of quantum physics. The book cemented my growing desire to pursue a career in the sciences. There were many other books along the same lines that I managed to read in subsequent years but Gary Zukav's "Wu Li Masters" and Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics remained my bible throughout those exhilirating years. That was more than 20 years ago...

Then in 1999 when I was working in Singapore, I picked up a book from the MPH bookstore called The Seat of the Soul, written by a strangely famliar author: Gary Zukav! To my surprise, this new book of his wasn't about quantum physics or any of the new sciences; it's about spirituality--a subject that has also became close to my heart.

Like what it did to me as a schoolboy, once again, reading Zukav's writing elevated me to greater heights of understanding--now not only at an intellectual level but also at a spiritual one. I loved the book so much that I followed up by listening to an audio version of it, read by the author himself. That was six years ago...

Cut to the present: For the last three days, while commuting between Subang Jaya and KL for my training, I have been listening to The Seat of the Soul again. And what a wonderful experience it was! I found myself nodding in agreement with everything that Zukav wrote in the book: every word, every sentence now rang with crystal clarity. And I marvelled at his eloquence---he managed to express everything that I knew to be true in my heart and mind, things that I had since learned and verified through personal experience, with such beauty and honesty.

Let me share Zukav's take on "temptation", which I thought was spot on:

What is temptation?
Temptation is the Universe's compassionate way of allowing you to run through what would be a harmful negative karmic dynamic if you were to allow it to become physically manifest. It is the energy through which your soul is given the gracious opportunity to have a dry run at a life lesson, at a situation that, if you can see clearly, can be removed and healed within the confines of your private world of energy and not spill into a larger energy field of other souls. Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity.

The entire dynamic of temptation is the compassionate way of allowing you to see your potential pitfalls, and cleanse yourself before you can affect the lives of others. It is a form of decoy in which the negativity is compassionately drawn from you, if you can see that before you create karma. As you respond to the decoy, you cleanse yourself by becoming aware and not having to actually live through the experience. You cleanse yourself without creating karma and interaction with other souls. How exquisite is temptation.

How exquisite indeed is temptation!