Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao

by Wayne W. Dyer

“Stop pushing yourself,” Lao-tzu would say, “and feel gratitude and awe for what is. Your life is controlled by something far bigger and more significant than the petty details of your lofty aspirations.”

thinking in alignment with the Tao. With the assistance of the eternal Tao, all of the sharp edges of life smooth out, the knots loosen, and the dust settles. Try it!

respond. If you find your worldly ego interpreting or judging, then just observe that without criticizing or changing it. You’ll begin to find more and more situations where it feels peaceful and joyful to be without response . . . just to be in the infinity that’s hidden but always present.

Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.

When you have a thought that excludes others, you’ve elected to see yourself as “special” and therefore deserving of exceptional favor from your Source of being. The moment you’ve promoted yourself to this category, you’ve elevated your self-importance above those whom you’ve decided are less deserving. Thinking this way will cause you to lose the all-encompassing power of the Tao. Organizations—including religious groups—that designate some members as “favored” aren’t centered in the Tao. No matter how much they attempt to convince themselves and others of their spiritual connection, the act of exclusion and partiality eliminates their functioning from their true self. In other words, if a thought or behavior divides us, it is not of God; if it unites us, it is of God. Stay centered on this Tao that resides within you, Lao-tzu advises, and you’ll never have a thought that isn’t in harmony with spirit.

Events will take on a perfect momentum, a glorious cadence. You can feel it in your body: The energy will rise up in you in a thrilling crescendo, setting your very nerves aglow. You can feel it in your spirit: You will enter a state of such perfect grace that you will resound over the landscape of reality like ephemeral bird song. When Tao comes to you in this way, ride it for all that you are worth. Don’t interfere. Don’t stop. . . . Don’t try to direct it. Let it flow and follow it. . . . As long as the song lasts, follow. Just follow.

The Tao is not confused about what to create and how to go about it, as this is your legacy from the mysterious feminine. Listen to your inner callings, ignore how others might want to direct your life energies, and allow yourself to radiate outward what you feel so profoundly and deeply within you. There is a reservoir of talent, ability, and intelligence inside of you that’s as endless and inexhaustible as the Tao itself. It must be that way, because you are what you came from, and where you came from is this all-encompassing, endlessly creative Divine Mother, the mysterious feminine of the Tao.

The ego is a demanding force that’s never satisfied: It constantly requires that we seek more money, power, acquisitions, glory, and prestige to provide the fuel it thinks it must have. Living a Tao-centered life rather than an ego-centered one removes us from that rat race, as it offers inner peace and satisfying fulfillment. This is what I believe the wisdom of this verse of the Tao Te Ching is saying for the 21st century: Make an attempt to reverse ego’s hold on you by practicing the Tao’s teaching to “serve the needs of others, and all your own needs will be fulfilled.” Generously thinking of and serving others will lead to matching your behaviors with the perpetual rhythm of the Tao—then its power will flow freely, leading to a fulfilling life. Ego wants the opposite, however, as it tells you to think of yourself first and “get yours” before someone else beats you to it. The main problem with listening to ego is that you’re always caught in the trap of striving and never arriving. Thus, you can never feel complete. As you reach out in thoughts and behaviors, you activate loving energy,

By letting go, you let God; and even more significantly, you become more like God and less like the ego, with its lifetime practice of edging God out.

We can heighten our awareness that advertising is primarily designed to sell products and services by convincing us that we need something in order to be happy. Analysts might tell us that the economy is failing if it isn’t continuously growing, but we can realize that excessive growth, like cancer, will ultimately destroy itself. We can witness the results of overproduction in the gridlock on most highways: It now takes longer to go from one side of London to the other than it did before the invention of the automobile! We also see this principle at work whenever we shop. I call it “choice overload”—pain pills for

Let go of your identification with your stuff and with your accomplishments. Try instead to enjoy what you do and all that flows into your life simply for the pleasure of doing and observing the flow itself. You literally own nothing and no one: All that is composed will decompose; all that is yours will leave and become someone else’s. So step back a bit and allow yourself to be an observer of this world of form. Becoming a detached witness will put you into a state of bliss, while loosening your tight grip on all of your possessions. It is in this releasing process that you’ll gain the freedom to live out what the Tao is always teaching by example.

When you’re unaware of this steadying influence, you attach to one element of one cycle in life, leading to what Lao-tzu calls “eternal disaster.” When one person leaves you, it feels like the end of the world. When a business venture fails, you flunk out of school, or you have a painful illness or injury, you feel depressed. If you get trapped in these emotional endings, you’re not permitting them to also be a natural part of life, leading you to feel disconnected from your Source. You become stuck in the “rush of worldly comings and goings,” unable to remember the constancy where “endings become beginnings.”

The enlightened leader trusts those whom he or she is in a position to govern. This view results in trust, as he or she who has faith in the people will be trusted by them in turn. Consequently, they’ll be able to say, “We did it ourselves.” So raise your children to be self-sufficient, to make their own decisions as soon as they’re able, and to feel pride in the decisions they do make. See yourself as an enlightened leader, and show the world a new type of leadership. Children who grow up with such a view will be the next generation of great leaders that Lao-tzu describes.

Even After All this time The sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.”

Love those you’re entrusted to lead, just as the sun loves our planet. Simply be there to serve, never demanding anything in return.

polite and

Notice attempts to compartmentalize you: Are you dependent on a system of reward and punishment for approval? Do the rules and codes of conduct you follow come from a heart-centered space, or are they designed to create a label of “specialness”? Don’t fight these institutional pressures or even the fact that they exist—simply let go of all attachments to them. You are not saintly (a good person) because an organization says so, but rather because you stay connected to the divinity of your origination. You are not intelligent because of a transcript; you are intelligence itself, which needs no external confirmation. You are not moral because you obey the laws; you are morality itself because you are the same as what you came from. Choose to see the outward forms as poor substitutions for your true nature and you’ll begin to live without attachment to those forms. You’ll see your own inner laws, which never require codifying; you’ll live with freedom and simplicity. Trust first and foremost in yourself. Live without attachment by being generous. Let go of evaluating yourself on the basis of how much you’ve accumulated and what is in your financial portfolio. Stop putting a dollar value on all

Accessing this quality allows you to participate in the greater whole, where the power of the Tao flows unimpeded by fearful self-judgment. Change the way you live by tapping into this greatness, and the life you’re living will literally change.

greatness attracts more of its own self to itself,

was a you! This is what Jesus meant by “And

Lao-tzu urges you to avoid the extremes, the excesses, and the extravagant, and know that all is unfolding perfectly, even if your thoughts tell you that it’s imperfect. Those thoughts must also have their own time, and in the natural flow, they’ll be replaced by new ones . . . which will show up on time as well.

Invite Divine natural order in by simply allowing what you’re experiencing to go forward without criticism or control; in this way, you move to the center. Think of the need to control as a signal to allow the Tao to flow freely through your life. At first your ego-mind may loudly scoff at the idea of the Tao being responsible for the perfect unfolding of everything. It’s up to you to recognize that your belief

There’s a time for being exhausted, and there’s a time for being vigorous.