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

Following the light is a wonderful phrase and actually very easy to do. Imagine that you are a sunbeam. You are focused on the ground, exploring the world. Next to you are hundreds of other sunbeams, all focused on their ground, exploring their worlds. There is an appearance of separateness when we focus on the physical world. Yet, if you look back over your shoulder as a sunbeam, you see that there is a connection of light to you. And if you follow that connection back to Source (the sun), all of a sudden you discover that every other apparently separate sunbeam also has a connection back to that Source. In fact, at Source, there is no separation at all. There is only one Sun. And from that one sun arises millions of sunbeams. That is following the light.

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

1.      How would you treat your “enemy” differently if you could meet him/her at Source, at the sun?

2.      How could you live your life differently if you really knew that you were not separate from anything or anyone?

3.     What if we are all One?

Sometime during this month, do the following:

Pick a day, and live your life as if you were not separate. Allow yourself to see yourself in every person, in every tree, in the sky, in all that is in this world. Pretend that you are a sunbeam who has looked up and realized that you come from the same place as everyone and everything else in the world. Explore the mystery of the Light, and experience it throughout the day. And if it feels good for one day, try it again and again!

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