For those of you who are part of the My Tao Year 2016, you may be finding your enthusiasm for the task of consciously living each verse of the Tao for 4-5 days is waning.
I know mine is.
It’s not that I don’t love the messages and wisdom in the Tao Te Ching. Nothing can take away from that. But by making the commitment to write about the ‘living’ of each verse every 4-5 days I’ve found my blogs have been getting further and further apart.
This, I think, is due to it now becoming something I feel I ‘have to do’ rather than coming from an inner drive to bring the Tao into my life more actively.
I will continue to write my blog posts, but in consultation with my wonderful group of fellow travellers in our Facebook Group, I’ve decided to start creating a 7-day challenge associated with each verse.
This will involve:
- Taking 7 days to really absorb the wisdom of a particular verse rather than the 4-5 days I originally planned (which means it’ll go beyond the 12 months I had envisaged)
- Me setting a challenge each week related to the verse we’re up to. Currently that is Verse 14 (although I know I’m due to have been up to about 17 by now!!)
- I’ll try as much as I can to connect the challenge to Wayne Dyer’s “Do the Tao Now” section at the end of each essay he writes on the verses in Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living The Wisdom of the Tao (our text for this journey)
- All of us take on the small task involved in the challenge and sharing our triumphs, struggles, epiphanies and everything in between in our FB group or in the comments below.
- If you’re not up for this challenge, let it ride, and just see if the next one feels right for you
This week’s challenge – 14th Verse – Living Beyond Form
Do the Tao Now – Wayne Dyer
“Take note of as much invisibleness as you can when gazing at a tree, a distant star, a mountain, a cloud, or anything else in the natural world. Embrace the principle that allows it to be, and then turn it inward and do the same for your own physical existence. It is the principle that expands your lungs, beats your heart, and grows your fingernails – live in this principle for ten minutes today and take note of how you feel connected to your Source of Being”
The Challenge
Take 10 minutes or longer to meditate today. Either with your eyes open, taking in the richness of the natural world, or with your eyes closed, taking in the stillness and ‘invisibleness’ of everything we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste, but we know is inside us.
Bonus challenge:
Download the Insight Timer app onto your mobile device (this is the iOS link). You can use it as a timer and also to track your consecutive days. If we get a few people downloading it, I’ll create a specific group for us and that way we can see when we are meditating with others in our group – albeit possibly on the other side of the world š
If you are yet to join our Closed FB Group, but would like to join in our live challenge – when I say ‘live’ I mean it’s happening within 7 days of this post – please go to the following link and request to join the group.
And if you’re not in the group you wouldn’t have the 14th Verse, so here’s a reminder (the email hasn’t gone out yet. If you want to receive emails please click on the sidebar to sign up to the email list)
14th Verse of the Tao Te Ching
Living Beyond Form
That which cannot be seen is called invisible.
That which cannot be heard is called inaudible.
That which cannot be held is called intangible.
These three cannot be defined;
therefore, they are merge as one.Each of these three is subtle for description.
By intuition you can see it,
hear it,
and feel it.
Then the unseen,
unheard,
and untouched
are present as one.Its rising brings no dawn,
its setting no darkness;
it goes on and on,unnameable,
returning into nothingness.Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You cannot know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.Discovering how things have always been
brings one into harmony with the Way.~ Wayne Dyer version