You Simply Are

In an experiment people where hypnotized and told to get up in a business meeting at a particular time and water the plants. Indeed, in the middle of a business meeting these people got up and watered the plants. When they were asked what made them do it, they gave all kind of reasons such as 'The plant suddenly looked really thirsty'. The point is that they had no clue why they were doing this bizarre behavior, but they felt they could explain it nevertheless. Not a single person said 'You know what, I have no clue why I did what I did'.

You simply are; you are driven by all kind of things. The scent or the height of a person, the intensity of the sunshine, the prevalence of clouds, the background noise of laughter, engines or birds, the way you have slept, the amount of coffee you have had, your hormones, the lunar and solar fluctuations. You take it all in and you make your all the choices in your day under the influence of all these factors and then you wrap some rationality around why you do what you do. You make decisions and then explain mentally to yourself why you made them.

There are a number of ways we can deal with this insight. We can shrug and say 'whatever'; we can try to understand and analyze all these biases to the best of our abilities in order to make better conscious choices. Or we can conjecture that we are just part of a magnificent movie plot, that is, we are being set up for a reason. The latter approach is the philosophy of the Tao. Everything that happens to you is perfect as is from the perspective of bringing you home. There is no need to explain anything consciously and rationally because everything just happens the way is supposed to along the Tao. While the spiritual journey starts with decisions, with many wrong turns along the Way; soon enough you just wander along the path subconsciously. It is the journey home, the connection with the Source which is effortless, thoughtless, but full of joy and peace.