Just Follow Her Lead

Have you ever observed how judgmental we are deep down inside. In fact, nearly every thought has a judgement attached to it. Things are as they are, yet you wrap an assessment of good and bad around it. Take weather for example, you schedule a vacation day to go and play golf and it ends up raining. You are visibly unhappy. Then another day you have just put grass seed on the ground and you are suddenly happy if there is a fine mist in the air. That was just what the grass doctor ordered. So your judgements and your moods are very much dependent on your needs; yet, things always are just as they are.

The Tao is a mechanism that synchronizes you with life. Yes, it is possible to live a life where nearly everything that happens is in its own weird way just perfect as is; but to get to this stage is a process and it requires your participation. One requirement is that you have to accept yourself as you are. If you don't accept yourself as you are, you will start judging yourself. Just imagine, you end up judging judgmental thoughts! Whenever we want to be something that is different from where we currently think we are, we start a war with ourselves. We then drain our energy in an endless back and forth.

All these judgments come from the same thinking that we can control who we are and what we want to get out of life, but as a matter of fact, this voice in our head cannot accomplish anything. So if you start feeling resistance with your environment use this opportunity to step outside of your head. If the mountain won't come to the prophet, the prophet will have to go to the mountain instead. Accept the voice in your head, accept the judgements that seem to be ingrained in you, but let life guide you to quiet the voice and help you transcend your value statements.

When you really think about it, we have little conscious choice over what we do. Our culture, upbringings, education, our interactions with others, and so many other factors condition us. We are all just participating in a giant puppet theater. We think that we are in charge when in fact we are on auto-pilot instead. What we can do though, we can be mindful of what is going on in our head and our environment. And if you do that you will suddenly discover a divine plot behind everything. In Her footsteps the voice in your head will naturally quiet down. When She holds your hand you discover that the notions of tall and short, big and small, smart and dumb, good and bad are all pretty meaningless.

Once you are a Tao traveler your perspective gets turned upside down.  Whatever seems to happen to you no longer seems important. Where there was an agenda before, now there is only an incredible curiosity for what comes next. You are an actor in the theater called life and you follow Her divine script. Rain or shine, it feels fine. Without an agenda there are suddenly boundless opportunities to go into new directions no matter what. So just show up and have fun!

By Christian and Su Zhen