Living in the Flow: Practicing the Teachings of the Tao Te Ching

As the New Year gets underway, perhaps you find yourelf yearning for a direction in your life that goes some other way than backwards. Perhaps you are tired of your habitual struggle and resistance to life, and the constant worrying about what might happen in the future, or maybe you're just wishing to having more harmony and balance in your day-to-day activities.

Luckily for us, the answers we have been looking for have been around for about 2800 years, in the form of a simple little book called the Tao Te Ching, which means, The Book of the Way and It's Power, or, if you like, The Book of the Powerful (Virtuous) Way. This little book, written by an old sage named Lao Tzu, is a user-friendly guide for living our lives with effortless ease in the perfectly unfolding present moment (the Tao). Through some time-tested practices like meditation, letting go of our illusion of control, and patience, we learn gradually to trust this ever-present 'force' (the Tao) to take us where we always need to be (here) at the exact time we need to be there (Now).

If all this sounds to simple for you, it's because it is simple! Yet, the mind (that damn voice in your head that's always trying to control everything), will try to convince you that it just can't be as simple as letting go and surrendering to the perfect flow of the present moment. It will try to convince you that you need to do something, anything to make life turn out the way you think it should, and in this constant state of trying to make things work out the way the mind thinks they should work out, you tie yourself into a knot of anxiety and suffering, thereby cutting yourself off from the beauty, grace and ease of the Tao (the perfectly unfolding present moment).

If your in a space where you truly wish to let go of your habitual struggle with life, and experience another way of Being, I would recommend actually reading the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation) for yourself. It will only take you a couple of days, though it's wisdom will take you a lifetime to digest, and if you really want to go deeper still, come and join us for our Wed. evening meditation and study of the Tao Te Ching at The Chapel at Common Ground (details can be found on the Classes page). If you choose to follow the wisdom of the Tao during 2017, you'll likely have one of the best years you've ever had.....