Top 12 of the Tao Te Ching
The Path of Well Being

This verse of the Tao asks us to be like water. Clear water is always changing and moving. Water flows. It doesn’t cling, attach, or fight. The verse also provides specific guidelines for life. It asks us to be gentle and kind, to speak true, to be just, to be competent, and to understand the timing of all our actions.

To “play” with these ideas further, reflect on the following questions:

1.     Where is your life flowing? Where is it stuck?

2.     How could you conduct you daily activities more like water?

3.     Have you ever wanted to “push the river”?  When?  How did it work out for you?

Sometime during this month, do the following:

1.     When you find yourself feeling “rigid” or “blocked”, bring the image of water to your mind and explore options that would allow you to flow through the situation rather than pushing or pulling.

2.     Meditate on the “time and season” for everything. Begin to sense the timing of events in your life, trusting life to flow with you at the perfect time and place for all your good to manifest.

The Tao Te Ching  (pronounced Dow de ching) was written around 6th century BC  by the Taoist sage Lao Tzu, "Old Master", a record-keeper at the Zhou Dynasty court, by whose name the text is known in China. The text's true authorship and date of composition or compilation has not ever been verified. According to legend, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao as an old man, and then walked off into the hills, never to be seen again.

Tao means "way", "road", "path", or "route," but was extended to mean "path ahead", "way forward", "method", "principle", "doctrine", or simply "the Way".  Te means "virtue" in the sense of "personal character", "inner strength", or "integrity".  Ching originally meant "norm", "rule", "plan".

©September 2004 by Jill N. Henry, Mountain Valley Center, Otto NC. All rights reserved.

Dr. Jill Henry is the author of Energy SourceBook – The Fundamentals of Personal Energy (Llewellyn, 2004) and webmaster for www.mountainvalleycenter.com. She is founder, with her husband Charlie, of Mountain Valley Center metastore  and the Otto Labyrinth Park in Otto, NC. Jill is an Associate Polarity Practitioner, an Independent Distributor of the RichWay Amethyst Biomat, and developer and presenter of CEU workshops for nurses, physical therapists and massage therapists  http://www.mountainvalleycenter.com/flow.htm