#inactionasaction

“The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinity worlds. It is always present within you and you may use it whichever way you please.” -Tao Te Ching, 5

It’s been a violent winter where I live. I haven’t had internet again for a month or so. 

New year, new assignment. I’m moving ! I’m leaving the tundra near the end of the month. I’m moving south of where I am to another rural, and massively forested area. The winters are not so violent, and I shouldn’t have anymore internet interruptions at my new cabin.  I haven’t seen an abundance of trees in close to two years.

Alas, this will be the last post discussing Dao. We are moving on to another philosopher in the next post. 

The quote from the Tao Te Ching is incredibly appropriate for this last post. Here are some of the things we’ve learned from Dao over the last year:

-Inaction as action. Existentially, this limits the repercussions you put out into the world. On earth, this reminds to “let God handle it” and to stay out of jail. 

-Your perspective rules your world. If you perceive people to be useless pieces of shit, they will be. If you perceive yourself to be less than others, you will be. Every human being has something to offer society, it is up to you to see this. People can help assist you to consider another perspective, but it is up to you to fully believe in it.

-Material possessions will never fulfill you greater than inner peace.

-Inner peace comes from acceptance of the circumstances you cannot change; acceptance that you are only a single person who can only do so much; acceptance of yourself and all of your perceived shortcomings-internal or external. Finally, the ability to adapt to change when it is beyond your control, as protest against stagnant energy and internal turmoil that comes with feeling powerless.

-Also, belly breathing. It feels good, do it.

Finally, this last quote merely reminds you that all you’ve learned here is inside of you. Congruent with Dao, your action or inaction, is always your choice to make, at any time.

Do with this, as you wish.

I have personally benefitted from learning about Dao and will likely continue the practice in my personal life. I find this school of thought to be most beneficial for people with BPD, anger, GAD, and PTSD.  It helps balance the extremes people with these conditions. It also helps tolerate the uncertainty and stress in life for those of us that have experienced victimization in some facet or another.

Next time you hear from me, I’ll be swinging in the trees like Tarzan (in a parka).

Have you ever been drunk ? Have you ever felt the burn of vodka in your throat and the subsequent numbing to the bitter cold of the world around you? Have you ever stumbled through your back door to watch the tile swivel beneath you ? 

Have you ever woken up next to a coral colored toilet in a motel room? The maid pounding on the door, everyone has left and you’re stranded in a vacation town in the off season?

Did you drink and fall in love with life again only to vomit it back up until the acid of reality stained your shirt?

“If you over esteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal” -The Tao, chapter 3.

Come in, we paid for another night and our ride will be here in the morning.

Over-esteeming “great men” until people become powerless. We’ve talked about this before, but I’ll summarize the concept here: When we put people on a pedestal it’s not only distorting reality regarding that person and their importance but it’s painful when they don’t fulfill the role we believed they would. They never do, because the person you’re imagining in your head is under your control and operates within your schemata. The reality is that this other person has free will, you cannot control them, and their life experiences are completely different than yours, resulting in someone who will behave in likely opposite ways that make sense to you.

In addition to this, when we believe people are greater than us, we remove our agency in the relationship. We may hope this person “chooses” us. If you have that hope, you’re already pre-disposed to this being very traumatic for you when you are “not chosen”. In reflection, this type of thinking is submissive and has the greater potential to be abused. You’re so desperate to be “chosen” out of belief you are not worthy, you will accept behaviors that are hurtful to you more often than not. The ultimate fear is that you will be abandoned. The only way to solve this cycle is to orient oneself to the reality of human beings:

They more often than not will not do what you want them to do.

Pivoting from this point, is when you believe only a select few are “great”, you blind yourself to the great people around you.

“If you over-value possessions, people begin to steal”.

This holds the same sentiment as the the half of this quote, yet it refers to inanimate objects. Think of it like this: 

A cellphone in the year 1850 is useless. If someone left it in the dirt, it would stay there until it was fossilized. 

A cellphone in the year 2024, left in a bathroom at a bar, is most likely to be stolen. 

A kitchen full of spices in 2024 remains untouched in a burglary, yet there was a time where obtaining cooking spices was so important, entire countries were invaded and populations enslaved. 

When objects lack relativity, they lack importance. Society has worked for centuries to provide us with our various technologies, none of which would be useful in a different context. Think about that, centuries of science and development to create the internet whose importance varies on where it is in time and space.

When we over-value possessions, it distorts our reality. We become unsatisfied without it. We may even develop complex ideas about ourselves when we do not “own” a common object. As a society, we have taken this concept so far, that material possessions borders on moral good. 

To have, is to be good, to be without, is to be bad. And if you’re bad, you do not deserve the same things I have, as a good person. Shelter, food, and water are no longer universal rights, you must deserve them in the eyes of society. We don’t look at our systems as faulty, we look at each other with blame. 

People are desperate for food, water, and shelter, yeah. But people are really desperate to feel good. To be deserving. To be on the pedestal. To be important. When we are desperate, we behave like feral animals, tapping into our most primitive forms of feeling.

There are lessons within the paragraphs here, but there is one more that encompasses them all:

 Ultimately, when we do not view reality in balance, our realities become distorted, and we behave in ways that are not congruent with who we truly are (or want to be). We readily give away our power over reality only to be whipped around in the tornado of distortion and identity. 

Classically, the Dao suggests “practice not-doing, and all will fall into place”. In this case, inaction would be acknowledging the distortions, not trying to fight them, but to reflect upon their presence as a skylight into what sleeps below.

To tie it up all nicely, over-valuing facets of life alters your reality in the same way wormwood will alter where you wake up in the morning. Stop drinking (metaphorically, but for some of you, literally!)