Effortless Living Quotes

“An individual’s attempt to control life according to her own beliefs, and as a result to force this perspective upon others, is the beginning of tyranny.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When we attempt to control life, we are assuming that we do not belong to the universe, so we begin to drown in the current of change.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“If I believe in the intrinsic efficacity of a discipline, I attribute its failure to all kinds of things but not to the discipline itself; so that it does not devalorise itself. If, on the contrary, I have understood the intrinsic inefficacity of the discipline, while not by any means forbidding myself to practice it if I feel the need to do so, a profound lassitude will develop little by little in me which will detach me from this discipline in a real transcendence.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This is because his primary focus was not on the liberation of the individual but on an enlightened society. I am not saying here that an enlightened society is impossible. But it needs to be clear that the foundation of a society comes from what is within the minds of the individuals who live in it. Hence Lao-tzu’s insight is that the enlightenment of the individual takes us a step closer to the total liberation of humankind.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“As a result, we have developed numerous methods of practice to explore this movement of energy through our bodies, such as the Chinese arts of qigong and t’ai chi, the Indian practice of hatha yoga, and the modern movement culture spreading across the globe. The problem with practical movement methods such as these is they can delay our quest for a liberated mind (enlightenment) if the practice becomes a habitual crutch.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“So what we think disturbs our life is actually fate and our unconscious conspiring against our rigid personality for the purpose of our evolution as individuals. As the softness of water slowly wears away at the hardness of rock, so too does fate wear away at the rigidity of our conditioned identity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This striving for control and pleasure is the major difference between organized religion and Lao-tzu’s Taoist understanding of fate. The faith of many religions is based on the hope that one day the events of life will turn in favor of our conditioning and pleasures, instead of understanding that to trust fate is to have faith in God.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Water acts in the same way as mind. When water is disturbed, it is not transparent or reflective, as the waves and ripples obscure its essence. But when water is completely still, it is in its pure, true state of transparency and reflectivity. The nature of mind is stillness, which is beyond effort. Yet the waves and ripples of conditioning obscure this truth. Emptying your mind of these conditioned habits and latent tendencies, you come face to face, so to speak, with the Tao. The Tao of the Absolute is within our natural stillness, and this natural state is where spontaneity is effortlessly born. Stillness is where the virtue of wu-wei is lived. If we come into contact with the still point of the Tao, then we begin to nourish the rest of existence through the art of living wu-wei.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self?”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Satori, as we know, is not the crowning of an ultimate success but of an ultimate defeat. The consciousness of always having been free appears in us when we have exhausted all the attempts, all the training, that we believe may be capable of liberating us. If the disciplines could not be paths resulting in satori, that does not mean that they may not be paths to be followed; they are paths leading to blind-alleys, all leading to a unique and ultimate blind-alley; but they are to be followed just because satori cannot be obtained unless we have come up against the end of this last blind alley. They are to be followed with the theoretical understanding that they lead nowhere, so that experience may transform this theoretical understanding into total understanding, into this clear vision which is the arrival in the blind-alley and which lays us open to satori.1”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Any relationship we have with an individual, nature, or the cosmos can only be genuine and harmonious if we trust their intrinsic nature. Those who live wu-wei understand this best, because allowing life to be as it will brings equilibrium to the world, as one reflects the untouched purity, stillness, and aliveness of nature. Only when you understand that your real nature is wu-wei will you be able to have a relationship not only with yourself but with the entire universe in all of its glory.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When we have worked sincerely within ourselves and made conscious and accepted everything about ourselves, then we have truly become human and are able to sympathize with the pain of others through our humble hearts.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“But many fail to realize that they are desiring not to desire (a point that the Buddha understood). Lao-tzu saw all these pursuits of desiring not to desire as nothing more than spiritual pride and a moving away from our human nature.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Accepting yourself and others as they are is one of the greatest expressions of love one can show, and it actually has the power to energetically harmonize any relationship, no matter how broken it may be. Accepting our pain and owning it brings spiritual light into our shadow so we can become that jewel within the lotus flower. But none of this can happen if we continue to spiritually bypass our pain and avoid relationships in fearful isolation. The spiritually mature understand that isolation is only useful when seekers can bring what they have learned about themselves back into humanity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“If you are intentionally avoiding relationships, you are still bound to fear, no matter who you believe you are.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Those who have only a partially spiritual approach to life often show increasing habits of spiritual pride. This spiritual pride is identical with the pride of many athletes. We often get caught in our own spiritual concepts and build a totally new persona around the means of liberation rather than the end (eating the menu once again).”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“One who fully comprehends wu-wei understands that developing healthy relationships with other people is the spiritual adhesive that harmonizes the Tao among humanity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Nondoing is a laughable way of living, according to people in general. It is the most useless way of being that anyone can conceive of. Yet the act of leaving things alone allows the Tao to bring harmony into the world without our personal interference.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The Tao loves and nourishes all, and so does the sage, because her personality, polluted with petty beliefs, cravings, and desires, has evaporated into thin air, and she naturally exhibits loving traits such as compassion, empathy, and forgiveness.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“We judge everything according to our beliefs, and as a result we cannot clearly perceive the still point of the Tao. But in the power of sincere humility, a sage meets everybody on common ground and can address any problem, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. A sage can only be a sage if she has this capacity for receptivity and does not shy away from the spiritually ignorant.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When you are content to be simply yourself
and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.3”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This receptive, feminine, yin trust in the universe nourishes humanity, because people begin to take shelter under the sage’s wisdom. In emptying the faculties of conditioning, a sage becomes a beacon of light for the Tao to move through to inspire others with its wisdom, bringing the world back into harmony.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The unconscious is never considered to be a reality of our existence, so it is cast off as a useless preoccupation of the spiritually confused. But that “useless” unconscious conspires with fate in bringing to life the miracle of synchronicity and a relationship with Tao.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The origin of synchronicity comes from the union of the Way and the Eternal Self. The Eternal Self and the Way go together as one, and this is experienced as synchronicity. Synchronicity is the language of Tao that manifests in an individual’s life as a result of his or her harmony between the Eternal Self and the Way. In Vedanta, as I’ve mentioned, this is known as the connection between Atman (Eternal Self/ undifferentiated consciousness) and Brahman (irreducible essence/ ultimate reality). There is also the movement of energy in the manifest world (prakrti) and the stillness of pure awareness (Purusha) of the yogic philosophy of Patanjali.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Whether you attempt to remain present in stillness as the Eternal Self or you follow the Way, you will reveal the other, as if they were the same thing. When we look into the Eternal Self we discover the Way, and when we follow the Way we reveal the Eternal Self.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The Hindu philosophy of Vedanta is in part based on the deep understanding that what we in the modern era know as the atom is actually a spiritual aspect of the one consciousness of Brahman (irreducible essence/ultimate reality/godhead), which functions like a breath coming from the spiritual plane into the manifestation of the physical plane.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Furthermore, the Taoist perspective does not see causation in the Western way, whereby each event is separate and stuck together with other separate events. On the contrary, no events can be connected, because connection in this sense would still imply separation. So the Taoists perceive the universe as one single event, with differing fluctuations in the unified field of Tao, in the way that a wave is distinct from the ocean, but it is still the ocean.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When you trust the workings of the universe, its evolutionary unfolding begins to be mirrored in your own experience. It is as if reality is guiding you and revealing a story about yourself and your place within the cosmic spectrum. Though religions speak of divine intervention, many ignore the fact that this intervention is the by-product of synchronicity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Imagination in a lot of cases consists of nothing more than dreams of controlling our destiny. This ultimately hurts us, as these dreams are invariably very distant from reality.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“In the modern era we are audaciously attempting to build a world based on our pleasures and fantasies. But we are slowly learning that nothing can be learned from a world whose chief motive is to avoid pain. You only have to look into your own life to understand that pain has humbled you and has given you the greatest growth.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony