Audio available on my podcast Upon Awakening: A Beginners Guide https://anchor.fm/matthew-whiteside/episodes/Tao-Te-Ching-Day-6-The-Mystery-ev764k
“The named is the mother of myriad things. Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence. Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestation.”
Tao Te Ching – Chp. 1
There have been many a mystery in my life. Mystery’s such as, why is the sky blue? Why do some people grow really tall and others, not so much? And of course, why did the chicken cross the road?
To all these mystery’s the answer’s eventually came. The sky is blue because that is the only color crayon I had. Some people are really tall because they got extra long bones. And chickens cross the road because they work across the street.
But, the great mystery spoken of in the Tao, in the opening chapter is the great mystery and I believe I know why.
“The two emerge together but differ in name. The unity is said to be the mystery. Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.”
Tao Te Ching – Chp. 1
It was something that came to me as I was working out one day about a year ago. I was alone in my room putting in work, when the idea of the double slit experiment popped into my brain. The thought of a wave and a particle existing simultaneously, a particle when the wave is observed a wave when it is not observed.
Then I began to think of myself alone in that room, no one there to observe me, yet I was much more particle than wave, as I knew myself to be. But for anyone that knew of me and did not know what I was doing in that moment a wave of potential existed in their own consciousness.
I could be doing anything, a limitless number of things. Yet, I wasn’t I was doing one thing, exercising. And it hit me, this is what the double slit experiment is monitoring. At any moment we are both a particle and a wave dependent completely on whose consciousness is in observance.
I know very exciting. Here is how it relates to the Tao. “Constantly without desire, one observes its essence.” To be without desire allows an infinite potential of possibilities to be true. When we do not desire we allow the Universe, the people in our lives to make real any potential It, they, so choose. We can live in a Universe of infinite potential in this way.
“Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations.” When we want something, the thing or person or situation we want goes from being a potentiality and becomes a true reality. We observe what we want with our minds and in the realm of the quantum, the wave transforms to a particle. This is also basic law of attraction stuff here.
No desire = essence/wave/potential
Desire = manifestation/particle/fixed potential
The great Mystery then- “The unity is said to be the mystery. Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.”
The great mystery is that we all have free choice, we are all in some way desiring or not desiring something about something, or someone or some situation and in so creating a mysterious world that has no right or wrong, yes or no, good or evil. Only that which we decide to make so.
We each get to decide which wave we make a particle. Do we want manifestation, or do we want essence.
When we live in the past we fix our minds on the manifestations that no longer exist yet we fix them in a way that we find either pleasing or non pleasing. This is where we find depression or purpose for our lives. How do we fix the past manifestations?
When we live in the future we do the same thing, only this time our future manifestations have a taste of the way we create our past. We are still dealing with fixed potentials, and to do so is to create a life we are used to living over and over again.
The trick here then and what I gain from this passage in the Tao is to live here in the now. Live fully with the essence of what could be, devoid of past and future manifestations to allow that which is to be made “particle” in your life the most new and exciting thing.
To do this is also part of the mystery, we would all need amnesia and no imagination to live in this way, it seems. But, can you imagine, being fully at peace and in love with all that is observed by you in every moment as if it were the first and only time you would ever see it.
That to me feels like that most beautiful way to live. To be again like a child and allow all that is to be.
I hope this was all very confusing for you. As it was about the Mystery of mystery’s and I think I knocked it out of the park.
Happy Day.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.”
Tao Te Ching -Chp. 1
Speak of this to no one.
Seeking Purpose Today 