Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 19: Tao Te Ching Series, Verse 8

For spiritually awakened human Beings, figuring out how to balance our growing awareness with the challenges of the material world can be a tricky undertaking. The Tao is often translated to mean “The Way,” and unlike more rarefied spiritual texts, it offers us a deeply practical “users’ manual” on how to live successfully in alignment with Divine Truth. We begin our Tao Te Ching series with this episode exploring the wisdom of verse 8 and how we “householder yogis” can apply it to modern life. 

Transcript

This episode,

Rishika and I are focusing on the Tao Te Ching,

Specifically verse 8,

And discussing some of the really powerful ideas that are captured within this simple verse.

Subjects like safety,

Control,

Humility,

Government.

Have a listen.

I think you'll enjoy some of the conversation on this ancient and beautiful text.

I love the idea that we're going to do a Tao Te Ching,

Maybe series or a few recordings on it because it is such a beautiful text.

I mean,

I'm just sitting here with it in my lap.

When I first woke up,

It was one of the first things I went to and I just devoured the text because when I read through these pages,

It was just,

You know,

Oftentimes when people are doing the work of spiritual awakening or inner growth,

Inner expansion,

They'd like a handbook.

They'd like some kind of manual.

Syllabus or something.

Yeah,

Something to follow.

The Tao Te Ching is that.

In my mind,

It's 81 verses on how to live your life genuinely,

Authentically and completely.

The Taoists caught something that I think a lot of other traditions lose by keeping these succinct teachings to their bare minimum and yet saying just about everything there is to say in these 81 verses.

So I think we could go on for the rest of our lives talking about just this one text.

I often tell people,

If there's one spiritual text you're going to read,

Make it the Tao Te Ching because it's that important.

I love that the verses are like these little depth charges that they point toward things or hint toward them or evoke a particular understanding of something that is not immediately available to the thinking mind,

To the analytical,

Intellectual mind,

But that resonates on a level that you can feel and that you can know within your own experience without necessarily being able to name it,

Being able to categorize it.

It's just so elegant and flowing that way.

Yeah.

Masterful.

It's so beautiful in what Lao Tzu did here.

Yeah.

We're just picking a single verse,

I guess,

As we go forward with this series.

And today we're talking about verse eight,

Which to me it's kind of like a condensed version of the rest of the Tao.

It touches on a lot of different points and contains a lot of practical advice,

As you rightly pointed out.

Do you want to read that or shall I?

I will.

And let me just say that one cool thing about the Tao Te Ching is that it's kind of hyperlinked.

I mean,

It's like if you start to really tap into one serious idea in the Tao Te Ching,

You'll find it linking to all sorts of other ideas throughout the text.

So that's an important point based on what you just said,

That each passage seems to lay out a number of spiritual principles and laws that can stand alone and yet interrelate with each other so brilliantly.

So here,

I'll read it.

This is verse eight.

We're reading from the Tao Te Ching that is translated by Stephen Mitchell,

Which is just an absolutely beautiful translation.

He really captures the essence of the Tao Te Ching in this one.

That's Stephen with a P-H,

Stephen Mitchell.

Verse eight reads,

The supreme good is like water,

Which nourishes all things without trying to.

It is content with the low places that people disdain.

Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling,

Live close to the ground.

In thinking,

Keep to the simple.

In conflict,

Be fair and generous.

In governing,

Don't try to control.

In work,

Do what you enjoy.

In family life,

Be completely present.

When you are content to simply be yourself and don't compare or compete,

Everybody will respect you.

And there it is,

The secret to life.

Many,

Many secrets.

Secrets that are,

As this text is so absolutely brilliant at laying out,

Secrets that are hidden in plain sight.

Yeah,

Indeed.

Hidden by the maneuvers of the ego and our thinking minds,

Which for all of their utility cannot really approach the truth that's being expressed here.

So where do we start?

Let's maybe for listeners just talk a little bit about what the Tao is,

Since the word is mentioned in this passage and it's the name of the text.

Most often the word Tao is translated as the way,

And when we really comprehend what that means,

When we really understand the essence of the Tao,

We understand the way that is mentioned in all the major scriptures and texts.

Like when Christ says,

I am the way,

The truth and the life,

The way that he's referring to is being articulated through this text.

So in a sense,

It's not a way to something,

But it is the way of life itself,

The way in which we can live an absolutely authentic and genuine human existence.

I think that's a pretty succinct way of talking about the Tao,

But it's a condensation of everything it stands for.

From my reading,

I also conceptualize it as more or less the word,

Or even the Holy Spirit in a way.

And those are just sort of different names for the same concept of this underlying intelligence and flowing continuously unfolding nature of reality that we're all a part of,

That can't necessarily be pointed to or understood directly by observation,

But is simply there.

Definitely.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you.

The Tao is the Logos,

It is the word.

I mean,

The Bible could just as easily begin with,

In the beginning was the Tao.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Totally agree with you on that.

Should we just go with the very beginning of the passage?

The supreme good is like water which nourishes all things without trying to.

Yeah.

That is a recurring theme in the Tao,

This idea of no trying,

Of no deliberate action,

Of not,

Well neither assuming control over anything nor requiring it.

And coming to this very basic understanding that the Tao unfolds itself,

Life unfolds itself,

That reality need not be managed.

And in fact,

The act of trying to manage it is counterproductive to the unfolding and simply causes us more difficulty.

Yep.

That's really it,

Isn't it?

That there's this in our attempt to control or dare I say improve,

Because that's one of our human failings,

I think,

Is we always think that we can improve upon nature,

That we can improve upon this absolutely beautiful existence.

And in doing so,

We create more problems and in creating more problems,

We come up with different solutions.

And I think that what you're saying speaks very deeply here,

That if we human beings could just learn to let go and stop trying to control everything and stop trying to improve anything,

There's a supreme good here that we can be nourished by,

That we don't have to force and manipulate our way into.

Yeah.

One of the conundrums of modern existence is that we try to convince ourselves of the exact opposite.

We try to exert and maintain and ensure a sense of control over what the Tao would do,

Over the circumstances of our lives as though we could do such a thing.

And this is the conceit of the ego is that that's even possible.

The ego doesn't know that it didn't create itself.

The ego doesn't know that anything it thinks it has accomplished is pure coincidence or pure arrogance on the part of the ego,

Assuming ownership of something that it was not able to do.

And yet,

Our media are full of self-help articles and 10 steps to accomplish X in your life.

We talk about five-year plans and this idea that we can arrange things in such a way that will always be safe and that everything will always be predictable.

But in doing so,

Not only of course,

You create obstacles here,

But you set yourself up for suffering and disappointment.

It's almost like if the Tao is a river,

You're just throwing branches and rocks and damming it up and trying to divert the water into places it wasn't meant to go.

And that may feel like an accomplishment from a human standpoint,

From an egoic standpoint,

It may feel like we have some kind of control over something,

But the Tao will burst through that dam eventually.

The river will refine its original course.

So what are we to do?

Do we go with the river or do we try to build our dams?

Right.

It brings to mind the conflict we have between our will and the will of life and the way that life will do what it's going to do.

And the more we try to control it and restrict it and direct it,

We find that it just becomes more and more of a mess.

It makes me think of our attitudes toward technology,

Which are run on these narratives of improvement and betterment.

Even when I hear people talk about improving the conditions in developing countries,

They often talk about the introduction of technology into those cultures.

Now,

Of course,

Technology can serve some really positive purposes.

There's no doubt about that,

But there's a lot of purposes that it serves that aren't so positive.

I think there's a good example of we try to direct everything in this particular course that we call progress.

But if we haven't learned by now that our course toward progress leads to destruction,

Then we have to go back to square one and really see what's going on here.

So what do we do with something like that?

I can hear listeners perhaps saying something like,

Well,

What does that mean?

Do we become Luddites?

I mean,

Do we reject all technology and come to a place where we're just farming our vegetables in the backyard and rejecting things,

Which obviously there are cultures that do that.

How does one live in balance?

Is there a place between what the Tao naturally accomplishes without our effort and what we can accomplish through human will where those things can be in harmony?

I don't know.

That experiment seems to be taking place and the results don't seem promising.

So I mean,

We're sitting here on technology recording this,

Which is a cool thing to do in some sense.

But at the same time,

I don't see at this point,

Other than the global connectivity that technology seems to offer,

I don't see a lot of promise that it's going to be a part of harmonizing with the Tao.

That's not to say that I believe that we should just reject all technology and go live on farms,

Although that may very well be the solution needed.

I don't really know,

But I don't know if there's a middle ground at all.

I'm not sure because I think if you're going to live according to the Tao,

You're going to live according to certain virtues and ways of being that currently aren't represented hardly at all by our technologies.

It would mean a massive overhaul in human consciousness that then informs our technology accordingly,

I would say.

Yeah.

When I think about it,

If you're talking about the virtual worlds that people inhabit these days,

The virtues we're talking about are not necessarily represented there.

It's almost like those are worlds in which we specifically go to explore the darker sides of things in a safe and controlled,

Quote unquote,

Controlled man.

You've used the word safety now a couple of times,

And I think that's very.

.

.

One of the things that I've learned about the internet and specifically the investment in pornography,

Mostly amongst men,

And the way in which that relates to being able to engage in pseudo-sexual activity without any sense of being rejected,

Without any risk of being rejected.

You can see that even in an example like that,

There's this element of safety that's playing out.

Yeah.

That's been very apparent to me lately.

Well,

Safety in a lot of ways.

If we're using it,

The internet is a safety device,

I guess,

During this pandemic,

Being able to still connect to each other in some ways without exposing ourselves to the virus.

As you said,

That sense of safety,

I think it's retraining our brains and making us a bit cowardly in other ways.

If all the interaction that you have with the,

Quote unquote,

Outside world comes through your computer,

I think inevitably as a whole,

Our society is going to be less skilled at having in-person interactions after a while.

And furthermore,

There's no such thing as safety.

It's a complete and total illusion.

Right.

So our notions of what's keeping us safe,

Whether it's technology or whatever,

That alone,

Our fixation on safety is not in keeping with the Dow,

Which is not a suggestion to be reckless,

Of course,

But it's a suggestion to sober up and realize that our fixation on safety is not,

I'd say it's not natural,

But I'd say even more so it's not,

Well,

Let's go with natural.

I think it's maybe what you're trying to get to is the idea that we weren't meant or bred to be cowards,

That there is a dimension of the human experience that needs to be challenged by unsafe situations.

And so that our bravery and the attributes that go along in that constellation,

That those things can be expressed.

Well,

Even you mentioned the virus,

Even the perspective of safety toward the virus represents a basic human mentality of if there's something that seems threatening,

Avoid it.

But we don't understand the consequences of avoiding the things that threaten our sense of safety because they may actually be the things we need most in order to become stronger in the way that you're describing,

Whether we're talking about our psychological character or our immune system or whatever it may be.

So we need those challenges to our mental systems,

Physical systems,

Et cetera.

And that the function of the Tao is to provide such things.

And to the extent that we take extreme measures to avoid what might be coming at us or not,

You know,

We're simply blocking the flow.

Yeah.

That's why you can see that in someone who chooses a life that is safe and comfortable,

There's no development.

Yeah.

There's no growth.

I don't think the Tao is telling us to be reckless or even to go on any kind of adventure.

It's just,

It's informing us that there's a way of cooperating with life and its challenges.

I think it's suggesting that we trust it.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Even if we're not safe,

We can still trust that the Tao has an intelligence behind it.

There's a reason that might not make sense to a human mind,

But that all is as it should be.

Yes.

Yeah,

I would agree.

Well said.

I love this sentence.

It is content with the low places that people disdain.

That the Tao is not judgmental.

I mean,

This sounds like Christ consciousness here to me.

The idea that all is worthy and good and part of the Tao and that there is no part of reality that is beyond its reach and it's,

I want to say curation.

I don't know if that's the right word.

That's a good word.

But yeah,

The ego will judge and try to elevate itself whereas the Tao simply flows.

And the lowest places especially might need its nourishment.

Yeah.

Human beings have always had the potential for narcissism,

But it's very apparent in our age,

Especially if we look at something like social media.

Everyone's trying to be great.

Everybody's trying to be extraordinary.

Everybody's trying to find a way in life to stand out and to be important and to be worthy and to be special.

And if they're not,

They're usually shut down against such activity.

But this is giving us a radically different command here.

It's saying,

Don't try to be great.

Don't try to reach for the highest.

Settle yourself and content yourself with what's low.

And there,

Just like you said,

At a position at the lowest point of gravity,

You're in a position to receive,

Right?

So our efforts to exalt us only destroy us.

Well,

Yeah,

Andy Warhol was right.

Everybody is getting their 15 minutes now.

15 minutes a day.

Yeah,

Some people.

But I think people are getting a little tired of it.

But in the meantime,

At least that's the sense I get.

It's getting old with everybody being on Instagram and being a star.

So maybe it'll burn itself out at some point.

But as with anything,

If everybody is great,

Then nobody is.

At some point,

It just becomes meaningless.

I think what Lao Tzu would tell us is that there's something extraordinary about being absolutely ordinary.

Yeah.

Well,

That always brings me back to that one Adyashanti quote that I've used more than once on this podcast,

Which is that the ordinary man seeks freedom through enlightenment.

But the enlightened man expresses freedom through being ordinary.

Yeah.

That's very,

Very Taoist.

Very Taoist.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Moving on in this verse,

Indwelling,

Live close to the ground.

Kind of the same idea,

I think,

As the sentence above about water nourishing all things and in the low places.

But it also,

You mentioned hyperlinks earlier in this podcast.

And that would be a really good example because in my mind,

That immediately links to a sentence once written by a guy named William Langewesha.

He wrote a book about the twin towers in 9-11 called American Ground.

And the first sentence is this extraordinary sentence.

It's one of like a half a dozen sentences that I've read in long-term journalism that have stood out in my mind.

And he wrote,

For 30 years,

The twin towers had stood above the streets as all tall buildings do as a bomb of sorts,

A repository for the prodigious energy originally required to raise so much weight so high.

And then he goes on to describe what happened when the support was removed and all of that weight,

All that potential energy came back down to the ground and it actually buried taxi cabs like five stories deep into the crater,

Et cetera.

And so anyway,

When I read that sentence,

I immediately thought of this line from him because it suggests that we need not build ourselves up,

That we need not create lofty anything,

Whether it's an ideal,

Whether it's a grand palace or skyscrapers,

Because the Dow inevitably will destroy such things.

It will bring our folly back down to the level of balance.

We know this in common parlance when we say,

The bigger they are,

The harder they fall.

We're already okay without the fluffery,

Without the window dressing,

Without making ourselves big on social media,

Et cetera.

And to do so only invites suffering.

Well I would say that a little bit differently.

I mean,

I agree with everything you said.

I wouldn't say we're okay because I think there's a lot of room for,

I know this isn't what you meant,

But I don't want to send the wrong message to people that they're okay as they are because I think that's a really skewed philosophy.

But I think what you're saying here is deeply important.

And I think it also means something here about living close to the earth because the earth is like you referred to one of our early podcasts,

You referred to the earth as this Eden,

This place where we're provided for,

Where there's fruits and there's vegetables and there's food to provide for our sustainment.

And I think that the more we build,

The more potential we create for that humility.

That's exactly what humility is.

It's a return to earth.

This passage keeps reminding me of that brilliant teaching by Christ when he says,

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

And this attempt to exalt and build and reach like the tower of Babel toward the sky and toward heaven has one inevitable result and that is to crash back to the ground.

Right.

Right.

It's an interesting observation to look around at everything that has been built by humans.

Like look at the big cities.

We've never seen 9-11 accepted and certain other things.

We don't see skyscrapers fall down ever and we just kind of assume they'll always be there.

Like New York City skyline will always look like that,

But thousands of years from now,

That may be gone,

That may be raised.

And I think there's,

In addition to what you said,

Which is quite literal about living close to the earth,

There's also this reminder that everything ends up being destroyed at some point.

Yeah.

And I mean,

Quite practically,

So many people I know,

They don't even actually put their feet on the earth anymore.

There's no contact with the earth anymore and there's something very precious about just walking on the ground.

And I mean that physically and I mean it metaphorically too,

Is that contact.

I mean,

We don't put our hands in soil anymore.

Some of us do.

Well,

Some do,

Of course,

Yes.

But many don't.

Many don't.

I was reading a book on energy healing recently and it was talking about the vibrations that come up from the earth.

Earthing is a thing.

I don't know a lot about it,

But people who are familiar with it,

Of course,

Know that walking barefoot confers certain benefits that are drawn up through the cells of the feet energetically.

And living in our high rises and wearing our high-heeled shoes just puts another layer of separation between us and the planet that nourishes us.

Right.

So once you do a psychological study on the higher up you live in a skyscraper,

The further you live from the earth,

The more distorted your consciousness.

I'd be very curious about that.

People who spend all day in really tall buildings would be very curious.

That's an excellent point.

You know,

I read somewhere once that you actually weigh less at the top of the Empire State Building than you do on the ground floor because of the gravity difference.

Interesting.

So that can't help but change certain other things,

I'm sure.

Weird creatures we are.

Can I read the next verse?

Next line?

You may.

Absolutely.

In thinking,

Keep to the simple.

Amen.

We'll keep it simple on that one.

Said the neurotic intellectuals.

Well,

You know,

We do have that capacity to overthink just about anything,

Don't we?

That's what we're trying to do in yoga all the time in meditation is not think so much.

Because the brain is the problem.

I mean,

It's a conundrum though.

It's a paradox because the brain is,

You know,

Obviously this incredible instrument that when used for good and when aligned with good and in balance with everything,

It serves us well.

It's so fickle and faulty and easily mis-programmed.

It's interesting because even piggybacking on what you just said,

Someone like an Einstein or a Mozart or,

You know,

Any of these people who possess that rare quality of extraordinary genius where they weren't complex thinkers.

I mean,

We think of Einstein as this like mad scientist who was,

You know,

Probably as neurotic as any thinking person is,

But he received his insights in moments of,

He was gifted these insights,

You know.

I think we underestimate just how prepared an empty mind is to be inspired.

And if we could only understand that what we're trying to achieve through so much thought and analysis can be achieved through simplicity,

I think we'd be a lot more likely to surrender our mind.

Anybody who's read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way,

I think you've read it.

Oh no.

The Artist's Way,

It's by author Julia Cameron and it's at least 30 years old,

I think,

By now.

But anyway,

It's a book about creativity and overcoming artist block,

Writer's block,

Things like that.

And essentially,

You know,

The entire book is about techniques for getting the brain to sit down and shut up so that it can create a blank slate for logos to come through or whatever your divine inspiration is for the pictures to happen.

And you know,

We see those moments right before you fall asleep when we all have our most brilliant ideas or see the most colorful visions.

I had one last night and it's like,

If I could paint that,

That would be quite something.

But of course it's gone,

You know,

The minute I close my eyes.

But anybody who's tried to write knows that if you overthink it,

The words that you do manage to get out on a page are too heady and intellectual and not very inspiring most of the time.

And it's funny too,

Because we associate thinking with intelligence and genius,

But we don't often acknowledge that it is our intellect that keeps us complicated.

And it's the intellect,

I mean,

In some degree,

Like if you think of the idea of Satan as the anti-Christ or the anti-divine that lives in us.

Part of its rule,

Part of its way of being is through the arrogance of intellect.

This idea of knowing better,

Right?

And this construction of,

Well,

I think for a moment of like a physicist and we might attribute a certain level of genius to a particular kind of physicist.

When in fact all that physicist is doing is really understanding the code that is written into existence.

The physicist didn't create that code,

Only discovered it.

And so all of our thinking amounts to very little when we understand the laws of reality.

There's something to be said for creative genius or any kind of genius as being,

As you said,

A gift,

As a stroke of grace.

And the arrogance of the human ego is such that it thinks that if we can only prepare properly or if we can know all the things,

Then we'll have a foundation.

And as a five,

I speak from experience.

I used to think if I knew all the things,

I'd be safe and then I could put them together any way I wanted to create my own reality.

And that's not the case.

And I used to really kind of resent people who seem to have it all figured out or who had been given some great gift of,

I don't know,

Being able to sing or perform some kind of a task and be well compensated for it.

And one of the beautiful things about reading the Tao and other parts of my practice has been to be able to release that resentment and understand that there's no shame in not being special.

There's no shame or failure in simply being part of the flow of things.

And so what if that person over there got chosen for whatever the beautiful gift is?

That's what they're expressing.

You know,

I may be expressing something completely different that's not apparent to me.

It doesn't make that person somehow better or more successful simply because it's more obvious the reason that they're here.

And that has given me great comfort,

You know.

What ties very much into the end of this passage here too about comparing and competing.

Right,

Right.

And nobody really likes a know-it-all.

Let me tell you,

There was this moment when I was in college.

We were walking across campus in Arizona and it was a beautiful evening,

Late fall in the desert.

We were walking across campus and the moon was just so crystal clear against like a dark blue indigo sky.

And I was with two other friends and one of the friends just stopped and he looked and he said,

Oh my gosh,

Look at the moon.

And we all looked up and it was just this moment of just extraordinary beauty.

And I think the three of us were very just enjoying each other's company that night.

And then the one friend started talking about what phase the moon was in and what phase it was going to be in.

And going on to all this detail he was learning in his astronomy class about the moon.

And after about two,

Three minutes of talking,

The other friend,

He looks over,

He said,

Man,

You just ruined it for me.

You just totally ruined it for me.

And that's what the intellect does,

Right?

It's like we can no longer appreciate the beauty of the moon.

It's like we have to talk about it and we have to talk about its details and how far away it is and how big it is and what phase it's in and as if that's the way to appreciate something.

That reminds me of my first year.

I was a broadcast journalism major in my first broadcasting 101 class where you start to learn how they make the magic on TV.

And one of the first things the instructor said was,

You need to know going into this class that by the end of it you won't be able to enjoy TV anymore because this is going to suck all the magic out of it once you know all the tricks.

Over analysis is not what we're here for.

We see this in yoga class all the time that the thing itself,

Whatever you're experiencing,

Is not the same as your thoughts about the thing.

Those are two different concepts and they're often very,

Very different from each other.

And so our part,

Our task in yoga is to be present to the experience of the thing and not the analysis of the thing.

Yeah,

When I work with people in inquiry that's one of the big things,

One of the big challenges that we're always working with is being able to be in direct contact with our experience versus analyzing our experience.

Yeah.

It's very tempting.

Oh,

I can see how the mind is,

It's almost like it's trying to become the Tao.

It's like the mind is trying to usurp the Tao and become the way itself.

All right,

So can I read the next line here?

Please.

In conflict,

Be fair and generous.

Americans all over the place are saying,

What?

No.

When you're in conflict,

Yell and shut that person out of your life and block them on social media and call your friends and complain about them.

Conflict is a funny thing.

We don't really like it.

We don't really want to go there.

But at the same time,

If we don't,

We end up oftentimes in some variety of self-betrayal.

So I think it's a little bit like the safety issue.

We can't eliminate conflict from our lives,

But we can be present to it.

We can accept it when it arises and try to approach it and approach resolving it from a place of honesty and generosity,

As the line says.

And as the Course in Miracles counsels,

By seeing through the superficial interactions that we're having with other people to the divinity of what's really beneath those things and honoring that rather than attacking.

I wouldn't normally say something like this here,

But one of the interesting philosophies I've always had about tipping servers.

I've had a number of discussions with people where if they're not getting a certain level of service,

Their idea is to tip less.

My philosophy has always been that when you encounter that tip more,

Because that person is in a shit state,

They're feeling awful and they're treating you awfully because they feel awful within themselves.

So do something kind.

Give when it's unexpected.

And I think that that kind of notion of giving to someone when they don't deserve it,

Extending kindness when someone hasn't earned it,

It's a rare virtue that I think we could all do.

Well,

It would do us all better if we could see that the reason people act the way they do is because they're suffering and that giving someone the benefit of the doubt,

Being fair,

Being generous in those moments is part of the solution,

Not punishing each other for negative behavior.

And I think that if we could learn that lesson,

Then these forces that we meet that we want to destroy and eliminate and get rid of,

They would change if we could actually treat them differently.

I don't know where we got this idea that things like our honor need to be defended.

That if somebody lies about you,

For example,

That you either get them to retract it or you beat them up or somehow punish them for something rather than standing in the truth of who we really are and understanding that nothing anybody else says about us can touch that.

Well,

There's a serious difference between defending our honor and defending our ego.

And I think people confuse that all the time.

I think if we lose touch with what honor really is,

Then defending our honor becomes defending our ego.

Because honor is something,

Like you said,

That it's something where we stand for something that's very true and important and meaningful,

Which is very different than standing for once.

The ego's conceptualization.

Yeah,

Right.

Definitely.

I mean,

It's important for us to consider the fact that we're not really attuned to what real honor is.

But there's this,

I guess what I was trying to allude to is this sort of middle school score keeping thing that a lot of people never grow out of.

Such and such said this to me or such and such didn't perform this task that they should have or I was snubbed in some way and therefore it perpetuates this feeling of ill will and conflict in people when,

As you suggested,

We could simply not fixate on those things as though they meant something.

And just understand that life is what it is.

Yeah,

We should get over ourselves.

Yeah,

Yeah.

We should.

In thinking,

Keep to the simple.

That's enlightenment,

Man.

It's getting over yourself.

And it has exactly what enlightenment is.

All right,

Next one.

In governing,

Don't try to control.

Now there's a tricky idea.

How does one govern without trying to exert control over something?

Well,

I recall,

I think it was Osho who said something really beautifully.

He said if governments were serving their true purpose,

They would be there to serve people,

To provide for their needs and to protect them in the ways that they can protect them.

And he said,

But government functions exactly the opposite.

It functions to control and restrict and confine people.

And there isn't a government on this planet,

Aside from maybe what once existed in Tibet,

Where the government is actually centered around true human virtue and divinity.

Even the most well-intentioned governing is just more control,

Restriction.

It's a paradox that we are born free beings,

Ostensibly,

On this planet,

And then we're immediately walled in.

We're walled into our countries,

Walled into our neighborhoods,

Into our racial identifications,

Or you name it,

We get smaller.

We're these expansive beings who were already limited by ending up in these human bodies,

But then we make our world even smaller.

You can't just roam freely.

And I understand that there's a certain safety component to that,

That again,

Here we are at safety.

The government's trying to maintain their borders and keep them from being overrun by malicious hordes.

At least that's what they tell us.

At least that's what they tell us.

That's true.

I mean,

We really don't know,

Do we?

No.

Well,

Is the fence to keep people out or is it to keep people in?

I know.

They certainly manage who can come and go and under what circumstances.

I mean,

I don't think in our current conception of government on this planet,

There's anything that looks even remotely close to a government that's inspired by the Dow,

Not even close.

Well,

It's so vast.

I mean,

We're talking about eight plus billion people on the planet now.

If you were talking about a government of 10 people or a society of 10 people,

Say,

Who all pooled their resources for the common good and then maybe elected one person to kind of manage things,

Then you can see kind of what the idea between the government that you're talking about,

What an ideal government might look like.

That person is just there to do some sort of functional task.

That's what tribes have.

That's what tribes do.

Exactly.

And then in that case,

You can look at a sentence like,

In governing,

Don't try to control because a society would simply be as it is with a little bit of administrative oversight.

But when you talk about the world or the United States of 330 million people,

Our brains can't even really get around the idea of what it means to manage a society of that size.

There's no way to do it.

It's impossible.

And eventually we'll realize that because one body of people can't represent 330 million people with any kind of real concern or care or what have you.

I think the concept of leaders chosen through their competence and earning wisdom the way that you would see in a tribal setting or you'll see with certain masters,

It represents something much more genuine in the idea of government.

But what we see in those situations is there's no attempt to control people.

Tribal is something that comes about through us learning from each other what works and what doesn't.

Well,

And the funny thing is that in a quote unquote first world country,

We look at those tribal societies as something undeveloped or unsophisticated,

Uncivilized,

And instead all things being equal,

Perhaps it's a much more authentic and life affirming way to existing community on this planet.

Well,

You know,

There's talk now after these two recent shootings,

There's mass shootings,

There's talk about more gun control,

Which on the surface looks really good.

Let's control people's access to guns.

I'm not saying I'm even against that.

But what we haven't learned yet for some reason is that the more you try to control,

The more you get the opposite.

It's like just like a child,

You try to restrict their freedom.

Whatever you try to restrict,

Even if it's to their own liking,

They'll resist it.

We have that impulse toward freedom in us and anything that tries to limit it is going to create the opposite of what it's trying to create.

How does that relate to the Tao,

Do you think?

If it says don't try to control,

Does that mean we simply accede to chaos?

Whatever happens,

Happens?

Well,

That would be that.

I'm glad you put it that way because that represents the error in our thinking.

Is that if you stop trying to control,

Everything devolves into chaos.

When in fact,

If you stop trying to control things right themselves.

If you stop trying to control citizens,

You would see citizens become a lot more responsible.

We have precious few examples of that.

Well,

We don't see many around us.

But yeah,

That's what I'm thinking.

Although actually,

I take that back because I can see an example of just taken during this pandemic,

When the federal government was unable or unwilling,

Depending on who you talk to,

To manage things like PPE and the rollout of personnel across the country and stuff,

Communities began finding their own solutions.

Communities,

Local cities and states threw their hands up and decided that we will just fix it ourselves.

It seemed to me like even at the level of in my little village in Mexico,

People saw a need and came together to try and need it without the artificial manipulations that would be imposed from a state or a national government.

So yeah,

I think you're right.

And people do come together in natural disasters when all the supports are yanked out to try and right the situation.

Within this notion that control is a necessary element of governing,

There's an inherent distrust of people.

And as the Dow says later on,

When you distrust people,

You make them untrustworthy.

That's an interesting point because that's the next thing I was going to ask.

What about the people who would exploit the system or lack of a system?

Well,

I heard a story once about a tribe and I unfortunately can't remember the details,

But it was a tribe where if you did something that was clearly like,

Let's say you committed a crime,

You stole something or you abused or you hurt somebody,

You'd be brought before the tribe not to be judged and condemned.

You'd be brought to the tribe and you'd be told by these tribe members how much you were loved and all the beautiful things about you.

Because it was apparent to them that you had lost touch with that.

You had lost touch with the Dow and so you needed to be restored.

But we don't have that kind of idea.

We have this notion that you need to be judged and condemned.

We're so far from that at this point at a societal level that it's almost inconceivable,

But it would mean a radical transformation in the way we view human beings,

Not as people who can be chaotic and abusive and need to be controlled and restrained versus people who have potential and need love and encouragement to be the best version of themselves they can be.

Well,

We can only hope that we evolve into something closer to that as time goes by.

We will eventually come hell or high water.

Probably hell first.

Maybe a little bit of both.

Okay,

Well moving on.

In work,

Do what you enjoy.

I'm all for that.

It doesn't pay very well though.

Well,

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

I can think of lots of examples of people who are doing what they love and getting paid well for it and I can think of examples of people who do what they love and aren't.

But if the enjoyment is there,

That's what matters because that's the real richness.

That's the real reward.

No one is going to die saying,

Man,

I wish I had made a little bit more money.

Not a single human being will say that ever,

But many will say I wish I had enjoyed more.

I think there's another point here that's important.

An idea that we've touched on in other episodes,

Which is that when we're in alignment with our purpose or in alignment with the flow of reality,

The word,

The logos,

When we hit that sweet spot,

It feels good.

It's rewarding in and of itself and that's one of the ways you can kind of know that you're in the zone and that you're moving where life wants to move you,

Etc.

And we have so much confusion over this as humans about,

Again,

With our planning and our plotting and our thinking,

We need to be a certain way at a certain level at a certain time in our lives instead of simply trusting that the Tao,

The word,

The Holy Spirit will move us as it likes and that we feel good when we notice that,

When we're aware of it.

We don't trust the Tao,

We trust our own plan.

And as long as we're doing that,

We're in conflict with the Tao,

Not collaboration.

Well,

That's easy.

In family life,

Be completely present.

Oh dear,

That's a hard one.

Well think of it this way,

The most important way to change the world is to work on yourself.

The people you're going to have the greatest impact on are the people that are closest to you and around you the most and they're going to have impact on the world in the same way that you do,

Right?

I mean that's one thing that I think a lot of people later in life really come to is,

I wish I didn't work so much,

I wish I wasn't so preoccupied with this,

I wish I was there for my kids more.

You know that sense that we're not wholly present to our day-to-day affairs and we need to be because that's where the real spiritual work is.

Yeah,

And that's where the real,

The sweetness of life is too,

But we're so distracted by the idea that success and possessions and things is going to provide those experiences for us or those good feelings that we're looking for,

That sense of harmony with life that we miss what's right in front of us sometimes.

And of course,

We could go down a whole spiritual rabbit hole of why we incarnated with certain people in our family and what lessons we're learning through our association with them,

But just from a normal standpoint of human connection or being witnesses to each other's experience in this reality on this planet.

There's so much there that we miss.

Yes.

Well,

Having a kiddo,

As you know,

Teaches you this.

I mean,

If there's one thing I've learned from my son,

It's that he doesn't want treats and he doesn't want,

I don't know,

Interesting experiences,

Extraordinary moments.

He just wants presence.

I mean,

The thing that brings so much joy to the two of us is just getting on the ground and wrestling together.

And it's so simple.

And it's just both of us are completely present and there's so much joy and laughter in it.

And those are some of the most meaningful experiences that I've had.

And I mean,

There's times I've tried to create really significant experiences for him and they're just,

They don't go anywhere.

But these simple moments every day are the ones that really matter.

Okay.

I got three dogs and a cat here with me.

And family life.

Be completely present.

I'm very present with them most of the time.

When you are content to simply be yourself and don't compare or compete,

Everybody will respect you.

Why would I care if everybody respects me if I'm not going to compare and compete?

You don't.

I don't.

They respect you because you don't care.

Well,

Think about the people who earn our respect or the people who,

They're not soliciting us for anything.

They're not manipulating us for anything.

They're just showing what it means to stand upright and nobly.

And that's what makes them honorable.

We respect them because they're not begging for our respect.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They don't come with an agenda.

They're not trying to convince you that they are a particular personality or have certain qualities.

And I think most of us,

At least after a certain period of experience with meeting people,

You can tell the difference between somebody who stands unassuming and humbly,

But in truth,

In the power of their being,

As opposed to the slick manipulators.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's kind of exhausting because when you encounter somebody like that,

Who's got an agenda or is trying to sell you something,

Even sell you some notion of who they are,

You can feel the energy almost being like sucked out of me.

There's this sort of notice me kind of help uphold my ego thing going on that sometimes you can't help but feel obligated to play into.

And we all know that that doesn't feel very good.

And we all know when we do it ourselves too,

That doesn't feel good either.

You catch yourself,

You know,

Putting on errors or trying to assume a certain position in the world,

That doesn't feel authentic.

Right.

Because this,

Well,

Comparing and competing is a product of envy and envy is,

It's the result of not being content with who we are and where we are and this need to be above somebody else.

It's terrible.

It's awful.

It is the thing I think about American culture that is so,

How other cultures can look in and see how aggressive we are because we still believe that there's some kind of utility and value in being higher up than someone else.

And the whole thing is a complete facade.

Yeah.

It's totally phony.

The longer I'm on this planet though,

The more compassion I have for the longing that underlies that.

This mistaken learning that we have kind of accumulated that makes us think that if we're not quote unquote somebody,

Then it's almost worse than being nobody at all.

That there's a failure that's happened there.

I think that's a part of this whole American myth as you noted.

And there's such sadness in that.

Well,

It's,

You know,

Look at a baby or look at an elderly person who's attained wisdom.

They've stopped caring what people think about them.

And I think that we admire that kind of freedom when we encounter it.

Because between what,

Seven years old and 60 years old maybe,

We're so busy trying to be somebody that we don't even see the beauty of existence anymore.

I think when we say to be content with being yourself,

One of the problems that I think we face is we don't even know what that is anymore.

We don't know what being ourself even is.

And so a lot of people will take that with a dose of resignation and think,

So I'm just contenting myself with where I'm at,

What I've achieved.

And I mean,

I'm lonely,

I'm miserable,

I'm overweight,

I'm broke,

Whatever.

So I'm just contenting myself with that.

And no,

That's not what we're saying.

We're not saying give up on life and just be content with nothing more.

We're talking about a richness of being that inspires us to move in the world in a way that is true and genuine and good.

And that trust.

And that trust.

Trust that the Tao is there in all things.

Yes.

And that it is the very thing that buoys us through this life.

Yeah.

Now,

Well,

We can see what happens as the Tao speaks of.

I'm sure we'll get to this at some point in these recordings where when you lose trust in the Tao,

You lose trust in everything.

You lose trust in life,

You lose trust in yourself,

You lose trust in others.

And without that sense of trust,

I mean,

Maybe and with good reason because we've had our trust betrayed so many times in this life,

Right?

But without that trust,

Life loses its goodness.

Yeah.

So we've got a moment before I go.

Reviews

I’m doing a course on the Tao w/Charles Freleigh. This is my first intro to the full transcript and now I’m searching for more context of these simple yet complex passages. I really appreciate finding your Tao series and listening to your insights, analogies and examples. The idea of the river and the dam was enlightening. Your talk provided deeper understanding and for that I am grateful.