I feel like the Tao Te Ching could be translated The Book of the Eternal Flow, or the Eternal River.
I woke up this morning, and have started doing a practice described in the Kum Nye books, but which is likely pretty wide spread across various Buddhist traditions, of, upon waking, holding my right nostril and breathing out through my left all aversion, hatred, and avoidance; through my right all desire and clinging; and through both dullness of mind and stupidity.
And I thought: which of these is fed by tension? The answer? All of them. All are fed by tension. All are relaxed in relaxation.
Then later this morning I started feeling my job in this life is not to rise too high, nor allow myself to fall too low, but to participate, to accept each thing, each task, each emotion and feeling as it comes. To be in the river with openness.
In this world, the main “sin” is getting stuck somewhere, emotionally, with emotion understood very broadly and widely. When you say yes to flow you let everything go automatically. The Universe will do that work for you, gradually, softly, patiently, and as completely as you need to keep flowing. You don’t need to forget, but the remembering should not have hooks in it.
I think this is close to the truth. No spirit is asking us for perfection, but rather for on-going participation, on-going dancing in an endless series of waves, all of which contain what we call beauty and ugliness, and which point to larger, more subtle flows that contain everything our souls have been yearning for in healthy ways.
Children are not yet “people”, are they? They don’t yet “own” responsibility, care, trouble. They don’t yet know how deadly serious the business of life can be. They don’t own “understandings”, in which one is both under and motionless, holding something up one didn’t create, necessarily, and which one rarely looks over carefully.
The motion of the child is spontaneity, and it is never too late to grow down.