Tao Te Ching 28

Know the personal, yet keep to the impersonal: accept the world as it is. If you accept the world, the Tao will be luminous inside you and you will return to your primal self.

The world is formed from the void, like utensils from a block of wood. The Master knows the utensils, yet keeps to the block: thus she can use all things.
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I have often recommended The Four Agreements, a book by Don Miguel Ruiz, in which we’re advised to make and keep four agreements with our self:

-- Be impeccable with our word
-- Don’t take anything personally
-- Don’t make assumptions
-- Always do our best

Each agreement is challenging, but the one that may be the most consistently difficult for me is not taking things personally. Here, the Tao Te Ching advices us that accepting the world as it is, which is essential to living a peaceful life, is to keep to the impersonal. That might be another way of saying, don’t take things personally – everything that happens in our life is not all about us.

People who don’t take things personally are able to open up the ego-based shell that both defends and takes offense and thereby open up a path to the primal self – the real self that underlies all the egotistic layers – a self that is luminous in nature.

Similarly, rather than focusing on the objects of creation, including the self, the Master stays focused on the source of all things and by doing so maintains an ability to see, understand and use all things without discrimination. The Master’s drawer is filled with far more utensils than ours.