Anita… even “not trying” is still a kind of trying… I don’t have an answer in words. Tao, Flow, Presence — these aren’t an understanding of the mind, but a knowing of the heart.

Anita, I hear how strongly your mother’s old message still echoes, pulling you back into “she was good, so I must be bad.” And yet I also see the courage in your wondering: what if my goodness doesn’t depend on her at all?

I realize my language around Flow may have been confusing. You’ve described it as spontaneity, like a river moving moment to moment. What I’ve been pointing toward is Flow as arising and return — remembering and forgetting — while trusting that the truths we’ve realized keep shaping us even when we don’t hold them tightly.

Still, as the story of Shang Qiukai reminds us, we can sincerely believe something that isn’t true, like “my goodness depends on mother.” That’s why I lean into compassion as a Truth as it reveals whether a belief is true or not. If a belief traps us in pain, compassion shows us it cannot be the deeper truth.

To be candid, I find your question both confusing and challenging, because the word “goodness” doesn’t resonate with me. What does connect is the deeper sense of being enough, a wound that feels almost primal. That’s where Flow or Presence feels most alive for me: not in defining goodness, but in learning to trust that even when I forget, the truth of being enough keeps working quietly within.

Hi Alessa,

I really enjoyed reading your reflections on the Shang Qiukai story. The way you pulled out those Daoist themes got me thinking about the figure of the Holy Fool and that call to “be like children.” There’s a kind of sincerity that comes not from wisdom but from innocence and openness that isn’t weighed down by calculation or fear. Shang Qiukai’s accidental mastery feels a lot like that childlike trust, where desperation stripped everything away except pure sincerity.

At the same time, the Confucian critique you highlighted raises an important tension: lasting moral power must rest on knowledge and discernment, not merely on desperation or ignorance. This begs the question of how one might remain sincerely innocent while also wise.

My thought is that when belief matures into trust, when one no longer merely believes but knows their truth… there is a risk of self-deception. Yet the litmus test, I think, is compassion. If sincerity arises from compassion, it is not foolishness but authentic truth. And if wisdom is guided by compassion, it avoids becoming rigid or calculating.

So perhaps innocence and wisdom aren’t opposites at all. Innocence keeps us open, wisdom keeps us grounded, and compassion ties the two together. In that balance, sincerity becomes both childlike and enduring, something that feels authentic and ethically sound at the same time.

Copilot broke it down as a Paradox of Innocence and Wisdom
Trust vs. Belief:
– Innocence trusts without needing proof;
– wisdom knows through discernment.
Compassion bridges the two.
– Innocence without compassion risks naivety or harm.
– Wisdom without compassion risks cold calculation.

Compassion ensures sincerity remains pure while wisdom remains humane.
– The Fool’s Path: Acts sincerely, but risks instability.
– The Sage’s Path: Acts wisely, but risks losing spontaneity.
The Compassionate Path: Integrates both: innocence preserved through openness, wisdom grounded in ethical clarity.
– If sincerity arises from compassion, it is not mere foolishness.
– If wisdom is guided by compassion, it avoids rigidity.

Thus, compassion allows one to “fool themselves” into innocence while remaining truly wise. 🙂

On the topic of flow, I’ve found that leaning into that trust or faith, without the weight of doctrine, creates a kind of openness where compassion naturally arises and illuminates the path ahead. In that space, flow isn’t about effort or control, but about allowing sincerity and compassion to guide each step.

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.