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anita.
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December 8, 2025 at 10:40 am #452741
PeterParticipantThat was well crafted Anita and illuminates what we are circling. I wonder now if we could simplify?
Anita: Rules and techniques do not vanish. They sink so deeply into embodiment that action flows of itself, without effort, without thought..
Peter: Yes.. Embodiment is not born of technique; technique arises as its echo. The small self resists this truth, clinging to control and fearing the surrender that freedom requires. In its doubt, the small self imagines the echo to be the source.
Anita: Yet Flow is simple, just noticing…
Peter: It moves without measure, without panic, without striving. Only presence remains, and in presence, the Tao flows as you.In our dialogues we circle the question: What would it mean to live what we say we believe and know?
A thought that arises: Realizations are not meant to remain as ideas but to sink into us, becoming embedded, becoming flesh. In this way, embodiment is the quiet shift where belief dissolves, and life itself becomes the expression of knowing. Flow
To embody is to stop believing about the truth, and to begin living as truth. It is the Tao flowing through us, where realization is no longer separate from action, and knowing is no longer separate from being…
December 8, 2025 at 10:46 am #452742
anitaParticipantAnother double posting, Peter (this time only 3 minutes apart). I am taking a Tao break (just a joke 😊) and will get back to you later.
December 8, 2025 at 6:56 pm #452766anitaParticipantHi Peter:
“The small self resists this truth, clinging to control and fearing the surrender that freedom requires.”- you said it so perfectly!
“Realizations are not meant to remain as ideas but to sink into us, becoming embedded, becoming flesh. In this way, embodiment is the quiet shift where belief dissolves, and life itself becomes the expression of knowing. Flow”-
I want to surrender to Flow.. but I need not grasp to the wanting to surrender; just humbly, ego-less-ly surrender. Like right now.
It is very difficult because of these Tourette tics. They are in the way of relaxing and surrendering, and I don’t know how to stop them, or if it’s at all possible to stop (for anyone in my place). They’re a half century+ neurological-muscular habit.
Regardless, I am willing to surrender best I can. I think I am surrendering right now. I am hearing the rain (been raining all day).
I am not even following what I’m saying right now, not checking to see if I’m making (ego) sense.. lol.
So, going with the flow, as I hear the rain, and see the total darkness outside the windows. The only light is coming out of the computer screen showing the printed letters I’m clicking..
It feels like the rain is not for me or against me; nether is the darkness, it feels like I am part of the rain and the rain is part of me, and so is the darkness. And the people I interact with on these forums.. no separateness, not really.
.. I just got worried: how do I sound, how do I come across.. Have I just made a fool of myself..
But that’s just ego, is it, Peter?
I am having a feel, a felt realization of non-separateness right now.
Anita
December 9, 2025 at 7:28 am #452771PeterParticipantHi 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.December 9, 2025 at 11:46 am #452786anitaParticipantDear Peter:
To me, the above post is the most meaningful of all your meaningful posts. You sharing your day (“A Day in Flow (update)
Peter rose with the morning light. He poured tea…”) made it personal to me.. here’s Peter sharing his real-life day with me (and others), how precious. It means so much more than abstract reflections.“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?… Perhaps this disconnect is not deliberate, but an unconscious pattern, treating the spiritual path as law as if law was the source itself… True embodiment flows from the source”-
Before I read the above, before I read your post today, I wrote in my thread earlier: “This morning… I had this strange thought (strange because I don’t remember ever thinking it, at least not with such felt- clarity), that I am body, mind and soul. The first two will die, the third will never die.”
I know that I heard and read about the soul for many decades, but it was all on the academic or superficial level, like when I’d study for a test in school and spill out info I memorized, and I’d forget about it.
This morning, on the other hand, I just felt it.. for the first time. It became clear to me- not intellectually but in a soul recognition that part of me is indestructible. That indestructible part, the soul, that’s Tao and Flow is about living in or from the soul more than in the body and mind (aka ego)- is my best understanding, at this point.
Thank you, Peter.. for helping me understand this..!!!
I would love to read more and more from you, particularly personal things, like Day in Flow updates. Actually, I’d like to share such myself.
🤍 Anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 