What limitations I place on Tao are the same limitations I place on my existence. To name anything is to lose the essence of the thing.

“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” Chap. 1

Right from the start, we are warned not to name this eternal power. We are given explicit instructions that to name it is to lose it.

Yet, I name. I name. I name. I name. Dammit, I limit all that could be by my fear of the unknown.

My fear of the mystery leaves me caught up in the known reality of my little life.

“What do you do,” someone asks?

“Oh, I am a writer,” I reply.

“Awesome, what do you write?” They say.

“I write about spirituality and also fantasy.”

“Whoa, that’s cool.” They kindly respond.

Then I sit there wondering, is that me? Is that all I am, someone who simply writes about spirituality? Someone who only writes about magic or fantasy?

And I hate myself for it because I know I have taken the Tao’s name in vain. Can you see it?

I am a writer, is blasphemy to what I really am, to what Tao really is.

I am the unnamable.

You may be thinking, “take it easy, Matt, it’s not that big of a deal.”

Nay, I say to you. Nay, like a horse in the house.

As soon as I speak this little story of what the nameless is, it becomes named and therefore fixed. Being fixed, it will only manifest itself in this way, the way I chose to bring its nameless name to life.

Why is that important? Why is it important? Why?!!!

Because what if the desires of my heart are not in line with the reality I am naming? Meaning, what if I say I am a writer, but the Tao is trying to bring something else through me, something more?

Why do I continue to limit infinity in this way? The Tao is flowing towards perfection constantly, yet here I am telling everyone which way my Tao is supposed to flow as if I somehow know or can even direct its flow. I feel myself swimming against the current when I name.

I believe this is at the heart of my addiction for more. I name something I want, and knowing I have just limited myself, I scrape and scream for every drop of anything else I can get my hands on because I just cut myself off from infinity.

We are trapped here by false rituals, rituals empty of heart, producing only more rituals.

“Ritual is the husk of true faith.”

TTC

This can mean rituals are the trash to be thrown away and keep us from the fruit of faith, or that the husk is the guardian and the doorway into the fruit of true faith. Either way, the meaning will be derived from the application of the ritual.

Our rituals are empty, so they make more rituals (mess). I have a pattern for making money; it’s called a job. This ritual only serves itself. As my way of making money eventually traps me into the ritual act of doing more work to produce more money to have more of what I want more of. The ritual increases itself and enslaves me to its process so that I believe I can not make money unless I have a job and work XYZ amount.

The same can be said for anything we do. Have you seen those people that have coffee mugs that read, “don’t talk to me, I haven’t had my coffee yet.” We have rituals for talking to other people. We need be fully stimulated before engaging.

Do you see this madness? We are then ritualistic about naming. “This is a thing I see, so I must name it.” Because how can anything in a dualistic world exist unnamed?

“The 10,000 things all have names; they don’t need anymore.”

TTC

So, we name it as a ritual to feel secure in our knowledge, and in our security, we create the prison for which we live bound by our fear of the great mystery. Led by empty rituals that are means to no end, yet they are familiar, so we keep them.

Fuck that.

However, if I speak the names and practice the ritual from my true nature, that is honoring the Tao. That is how the Sages lived.

“Can you let your dust settle and allow action to arise naturally?”

In this way, we are not trapped by contrived action but free to live the way we were created to live, in pure connection with the Tao.

Such elegance with which this prison has been constructed. Look at it with all its space and depth. Its variety and beauty, the scents and textures of a truly remarkable heaven.

It is all that it is because I have created it this way. A heaven with so much variety, yet only a few of the 10,000 things are used. Only that which I am familiar with I allow to become familiar with me.

My named termanel life,

With its fixed positsions

illusions of ideas, and novelty.

Touch the sun, can you?

Go anywhere, do you?

Have anything, will you?

No,

They are ruled by the named one,

The judge of all judges, the masked faces of all things.

I am trapped because I name,

I name because of this trap,

I think identifying my cell will help me escape.

There is no escape; the opposite of the way things are is still the way things are; the only ones who are free have left this ritual of naming and go within.

I even require inspiration for my inspiration. Does anything come from the original source, or is it all ping pong balls bouncing off rocks at a rodeo?

Happy day.