Follow the Tao

"The Master cares about nothing but the Tao.

Thus he can care for all things.

Tao Te Ching

We can often find ourselves wondering what we need to do to have a life that is joyful and effortless in it's unfolding. We might find ourselves longing to be free from the constant challenges and worries that plague our minds, and rest in a state of relaxed ease and freedom. The mind, of course, will try to convince us that living in such a state is very elusive and very hard to come by - reserved only for monks who meditate 12 hours a day, and live in far-away monasteries. Yet, we find the 'secret' to living a carefree life is actually much more available and easy than we could have ever imagined. It was given by Lao Tzu over 2500 years ago in the Tao Te Ching, the little manual on the art of living a joyful life in the perfect flow of the Present Moment, and doesn't require any superhuman efforts on our part at all.

The 'Old Sage' simply tells us too, "care about nothing but the Tao," and then everything else will take care of itself. Simply put, all you have to do, according to Lao Tzu, is keep the Tao - the Universal Intelligence that is unfolding your Life - ahead of everything else you might think is important; follow it, trust it, and go where it leads you, and everything else will naturally fall into place. Of course, the problems in our life, if we are honest, happen because we put everything BUT the Tao first in our Life. Instead of following the Flow of the Present Moment, we fight like hell, and resist the direction our lives are moving in, and suffer fear, worry and unhappiness as a result.

"Caring about nothing but the Tao', simply means we live in harmony with the the Present Moment (the Tao), and flow in the direction it is going, rather than fighting and resisting everything that happens. It means we keep this Flow at the forefront of our lives, and do the practices (such as meditation, Tai Chi and Qigong), that bring us into harmony with it. When we follow the Tao, and are in alignment with the Way things are, we find a reservoir of power that supports and guides us, and brings us to exactly where we need to be in every moment. To know this effortless ease, all we have to do is stop putting everything else ahead of the Source of our Life, and instead, begin to follow that Force which is creating and sustaining our very Being. Everything else will then take care of itself perfectly, in it's own way, and in it's own time.