Tao Te Ching 21

The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao; that is what gives her radiance.

The Tao is ungraspable. How can her mind be at one with it? Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.

The Tao is dark and unfathomable. How can it make her radiant? Because she lets it.
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By now one of the central themes in the Tao Te Ching is apparent. It invites us to find peace through no longer clinging to our cherished ideas. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking or with the ideas and concepts that arise from our thinking. The problems come when we cling to them, when we attach ourselves and our identity to them.

One of the pivotal moments in my life occurred in the midst of three years of marriage counseling with my first wife. While the counseling wasn’t successful for us as a couple, this single moment changed my life. In this particular session, after our counselor had patiently listened to me answer her questions month after month, she finally threw up her hands in exasperation, slumped back in her chair, and declared, “Jon, you are SO into your head!” Her tone was not complimentary.

A light bulb came on in that moment. I knew exactly what she was saying. My head was my fortress. It was where I went to defend myself; it was my safe place. My head had enough ammunition in it to allow me to repel all invaders for a long, long time. I thought I was in a highly secured place – I just failed to realize that it was a prison.

Letting go of our thinking is an amazing step into freedom and fresh air. The sky is clear outside those prison walls. We can make good use of a lot of our thinking and of the thinking of others, if we make sure we keep the doors and windows open and remember to step outside when the usefulness has ended.

At the risk of diminishing the point, perhaps we should give more thought to a little bit of counsel from The Beatles, who may have been truly “speaking words of wisdom” when they encouraged us to, “Let it be, let it be.”