I noticed my last few posts drifted into the more abstract (as I tend to do), and I’d like to bring things back to something more grounded and lived.

Anita, you don’t need to practice Tao as if it’s something outside you. You’re already in it, and your compassion shines through in the way you do your best to be of service to others. That’s Tao moving through you, and its already wondrous .

What helped me wasn’t a practice or trying to embody anything, but trusting the truths that showed up in my life. Trusting the realizations that never seemed to “work” when I tried to make them work. Trusting that I didn’t need to force them or believe them into being. They unfolded on their own when I stopped trying to manage the process. A kind of faith, I guess, only without doctrine.

For me, I noticed a shift when I stopped saying “I believe” and started saying “I know”… The other day someone asked if I believed in the virgin birth, and before I could think my way into an answer, I felt one rise up: I knew. Not as a historical claim or a theological argument, but as a pattern of reality I’ve witnessed in my own life. A “virgin birth” was what happens whenever something new emerges without my effort, without my striving, without my fingerprints all over it. It’s the moment when I stop forcing and something unexpected, undeserved, and quietly luminous appears. It’s the wrapped gift under the tree, something I didn’t earn, didn’t orchestrate, didn’t even know to ask for.

It’s the possibility that arrives unannounced, the insight that wasn’t wrestled into existence, the grace that shows up before I’ve proven myself worthy of it. It’s the way life keeps offering beginnings that don’t depend on my mastery, only on my openness.

Even in my writing, I’ve noticed that when I stop trying to make things happen, thoughts come together on their own. Sometimes they surprise me. It feels like something new can arise without effort, a kind of inner “birth” that happens when I’m not forcing anything. That’s helped me trust what’s already true in me.

The intention of the post was simplicity but this is what emerged 🙂

Thanks for the story Alessa I haven’t heard it before

I noticed a part of me reading Shang Qiukai’s story as if it hinted at magic or manifestation. But what stayed with me was how little he was trying to do anything at all. His actions were whole because he wasn’t divided. When doubt appeared, the effect vanished. It reminded me that embodiment isn’t about belief exerting power, it’s the ease that comes when the one trying to manage outcomes falls away. And in those moments, I’ve noticed that compassion doesn’t need to be summoned; it rises on its own, and action follows from that quiet, natural clarity.

Confucius’ words linger here too: how about if other and self are both truthful — take note of this. (I read that as transparent to the transcendent)

Hi Anta

I think you captured something real in describing the experience of falling in and out of flow.

Reading your post, I wondered if Tao might sometimes be mistaken for flow itself, or treated as something to attain, as if staying in flow would make everything wonderful. (that reading was a projection of mine, a something I noticed within me)

Tao is not the flow, but that from which flow arises, holding both our moments of presence and our forgetting, our joys and sorrows.

Noticing the rain, for a moment you we are the rain and perhaps the breath softens. Then the mind, the heart, or the body begins to ask: What is this? How do I sound? – And perhaps another part notices this questioning and laughs. Life doesn’t ask us to remain in stillness. It is, I feel, enough that we notice, and return home from time to time.

I was wondering what you thought of the suggesting that over the years we have been circling the challenge of taking our realizations past something that we know?

The following is yesterdays journal entry.

What does it mean to truly live the values we cherish, rather than just speak of them?

I grew up in a community rich with beliefs. From within, those convictions felt certain; yet from the outside, one might wonder if they were truly lived. My own frustration has often been noticing how far we seemed from embodying the values we proclaimed.

Perhaps this disconnect is not deliberate, but an unconscious pattern, treating the spiritual path as law as if law was the source itself. I know this pattern in myself: when I cling to the path as though it were the origin, I end up frustrated, because the place it points toward cannot be reach though law.

True embodiment flows from the source. It is not born of rigid adherence to forms, but of inner alignment with what those forms signify. When the source is forgotten, the path becomes hollow, a ritual without life, a map without terrain. But when the source is encountered, the path becomes luminous, not as a substitute for reality, but as its reflection….

The spiritual path matters, but only as a signpost. It cannot give what it points to. To live the values we cherish, we must return, if only for a breath, to the origin, the wellspring from which all paths arise. When we drink from that source, the path ceases to be a burden and becomes a natural expression of life itself.

A Day in Flow (update)
Peter rose with the morning light. He poured tea, watching steam rise and fade. He walked to work, heard a child laugh, and joined without thinking. At the office, he answered what he could, listened when words came sharp, and peace returned.
That evening, he cooked, hummed, and watched the sky darken. Nothing extraordinary happened. Yet everything was whole.
The path was not effort. It was the source flowing through him, turning ordinary moments into quiet grace.

Hi Everyone
As I return to the Tao Te Ching, I offer these reflections as invitations… Knowing the Tao cannot be held in words, confined to the categories of noun or verb. In the same way, the words silence, stillness, and the Eternal are not things to grasp, but gestures pointing toward the mystery.

This reflection weaves together a CAC daily meditation ‘Trusting the Unknown Path’ and thoughts on Tao. In a moment of synchronicity, the two converged, opening naturally, I think into a wider conversation on Flow.

The Tao moves unseen, shaping all things without striving. What seems like darkness is not absence, but the fertile womb of becoming a possibility of silent night birth, a choiceless choice. To walk the pathless path is to surrender the need for answers and rest in the mystery that carries us beyond ourselves.

The way of Tao is not to grasp but to release. To not know is the deeper knowing; to not need is the greater freedom. The mystics call this “death,” yet it is only the dissolving of illusion, the transition into compassion. Faith is luminous darkness: the trust that the unseen Way is already guiding us.

Tao works in secret. If we saw the whole unfolding, we would cling or resist. Instead, Tao liberates us quietly, loosening attachments and dissolving compulsions. The “dark night” is not sinister but sacred, the hidden alchemy by which freedom ripens beneath our awareness.

No one willingly oversees the undoing of the false self. As deep calls unto deep. Spirit resonates with spirit, the eternal Yes awakening the Yes within us.

In the poverty of surrender, all that is not Tao dissolves. What remains is the infinite beauty already given, Tao as Tao, Love as Love, Self as Self.

So what dissolves?
Not Tao itself, which is eternal and unchanging. Not phenomena, which continue to arise and pass.
What dissolves is illusion of the false sense of separation, the illusion of a self standing outside the flow.

All things arise from Tao, like mist from the mountain, like waves from the sea.
Yet what is not Tao? Only the veil of forgetting, the dream of separation, the shadow of grasping.
The mist dissolves, not the mountain. The wave returns, not the ocean.
Illusion fades, but Tao remains, the unborn, the undying, the pathless path, the eternal Yes.
Everything arises from Tao, but not everything is seen truly. What dissolves is the veil that hides Tao from itself.

The Way cannot be possessed, only trusted. It is not a road but a rhythm, not a map but a mystery. To speak of Tao is to trace the outline of what cannot be named. To listen for Tao is to rest in the space before thought. To walk with Tao is to trust the pathless path, where dissolving and arising are one movement, and where all that is hidden reveals itself in its own time.

Hi Alessa,

I appreciate your grounded views.

For me, flow doesn’t ask life to look different. Embodied, everything is received differently… the calendar stays, the grip softens, heaven beneath our feet.

Hi James

“Not finding stillness, but stepping back from the one who tries to find it” – Yes, And a step further: we say “Tao,” then unsay it. Silence is not a destination, nor a self that finds; it is what remains when finding ceases. The seeker steps off the raft, and the shore is already here.