Listen to the Audio Here https://anchor.fm/matthew-whiteside/episodes/Tao-Te-Ching-Day-3-The-Way-euo630
The brain flips over and over trying desperately to grasp at this content that seems so opposing to it self. My mind wrestles with what I should write but my body, my heart knows already what it is saying.
This is the beautiful mystery of the teaching of the Tao, which literally translates to the Way.
The Tao Te Ching, speaks to the the Tao being the source of all, and in everything . It is the creative light in everything and it creates everything.
I have been struggling the past few days personally. I made a decision to leave my day job and do this instead. Now the process of doing this is wonderful and I love it, however I do feel terrified on a regular basis by the choice I made.
It is funny that I chose to spend every day for a year reading the Tao Te Ching and on the third day of this practice after feeling very distraught and unhinged a bit I have been given the secret sauce of creation.
The Tao speaks of doing less and less until eventually nothing is done and nothing is undone. It says, “Do you have it in you to allow your dust to settle and let action arise naturally?”
It speaks of a person always in action doing and striving and never reaching, always on the hunt and never fulfilled.
And it clicks. The Way.
The Tao is the source of everything it is in Christian literature, the word, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God.”
The Tao is everything, all paths, all Way’s, The Way. The Tao Te Ching says, “Easy is the path, but people get distracted by the side paths.”
Here is what I am trying to say. No matter where we are in life we are still on the path, the path is impossible to not be on, there is nothing that exists that is not The Way.
The only reason any of us feel as if we are going in the wrong direction is because we think ourselves separate from the Tao. But, that is not possible, the only thing that we can do is be in resistance to the Tao, that resistance is resistance of ourselves and yet is still exactly who we are.
To receive ourselves graciously and with love that welcomes in the resistance, includes the defiant part of us is to include more of the Tao.
It would be like a drop of rain landing in a river and when the drop lands it finds it self in misery wanting to be rain again, because as rain it found its first identity as water. Now in the river it holds onto the identity of rain that made it feel like water for the first time. Not fully aware of the incredible water it has become, apart of something even more grand, the river.
We are thus the rain drop, landing in a river and our only problem is that we want to be a rain drop again.
Being one with ourselves, the The Tao Te Ching says, “when in meditation go into your heart.” Our heart knows what we are and who we are.
We choose our value on a moment to moment basis, we can identify with the rain drop, or the river but either Way, we are still water. We are all the Tao, we are all The Way. There is no way to deviat from the path, because we, you, I am the path.
Stop me if you heard this before, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father accept through me.” This is a quote from Jesus, and what I believe he meant was if you want to know who you are look at what you are. You are creation, you are the Tao, and you can not know the Tao unless you know yourself.
“A person that knows other people is full of knowledge, a person that knows them selves is full of wisdom” The Tao Te Ching.
We can call ourselves rain drops, or rivers all day long but we are water, we are essence. Knowing this is what the Tao Te Ching, is teaching.
All it means for any of us is that we do not have to fight anymore, we don’t have to be at war with ourselves over who we want to be, who we were. Because of who we are. We are Source. Let that sink in.
If you knew that you could not fail, what would you do? This question embodies the Tao, because the truth is, you can not fail. The Tao gives life to all things, and all outcomes. We are expressing the Tao.
Wow, is anyone else feeling this brain blast. I feel like my lid has been blown off. Reading the Tao Te Ching has definitely been enlightening but, writing about it has shifted me completely.
I hope that you all are getting as much from this as I am.
Happy Day.
Seeking Purpose Today 