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The Strength You Were Born With · The Modern Taoist

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Welcome to the modern Taoist with Kit Man, ancient wisdom,
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modern life and the way. Join the free Modern Taoist
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community on patreon@patreon.com/the Modern
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Taoist or visit thewebsite@dawananda.com And now
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the Modern Taoist. Hello, hello and welcome to
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another episode of the Modern Dallas.
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My name is Kim man and I thank you by the way, for everybody
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that's joined us on the Patreon community, everybody's over
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there it's absolutely free to come say hello.
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It's a little more informal there.
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Like yesterday I put up a video of our our little hike we took
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out near a waterfall. I'm lucky enough to live in a
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place where there are, you know, 30 waterfalls within an hour any
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direction. So we're able to get out and,
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and go on those cool kind of hikes all the time.
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But there's a little tiny video up there on on Patreon right
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now. If you'd like.
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Also check out the website. We've revamped a bunch of things
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on the website. It's still not completely done,
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but it's getting there. And that is dawananda.org, DAO
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ananda.org. And we had people ask if they
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could, if we could put up a donation page, which it took me
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what, almost a year to get around to doing that because I
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don't know, it just never felt like something that I needed to
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do. But we had enough people ask and
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it made sense. So that's up there as well.
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And, and we're heading into a different time of the year.
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And so one of the things I want to talk about today, we don't,
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we don't often form whole episodes around specific
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chapters of the Daodejing because they can be a little, I
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mean, depending on the translation you have, they can,
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they can kind of it can, it can delve into something that just
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gets kind of unwieldy and sort of, I don't know, kind of
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exhaustingly boring maybe sometimes.
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But there's a chapter that I particularly like.
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And we, we have had a, a couple of people ask, could I explain
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chapter 55, which is basically in I, I, my favorite translation
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is like a baby, but it's chapter 55 is an interesting chapter.
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And let me just jump right into it because it's very relevant to
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life as we are living it right now.
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There's a a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn't come
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from working too hard. It comes from working against
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yourself, this sustained effort of trying to be more capable
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than you currently are, more certain of a situation more like
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we've talked about many times in control than the circumstances
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would permit. And we've talked about it in
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other episodes as this kind of low level push that modern life
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has convinced us simply what it means to be serious about your
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own life. To be someone that takes things
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seriously, that doesn't coast along.
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To be someone who's always working to be better, stronger,
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faster, more prepared, more resilient.
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And people treat that effort like it is a virtue that they
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need to have. And it feels like the
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responsible thing to do. Chapter 55 of the Da Daejing
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stops you kind of right there and and wants to examine
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something, and it does something that a lot of philosophical
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texts don't do, in that it reaches for the most disarming
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possible image to make its central point.
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A lot of Taoist talk and a lot of philosophical talk is always
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about big exalted things, sages scenting on the mountaintop,
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rivers, mountains. An ancient master in his study
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right today. The image that I want in your
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mind is something that it is it, like I said, it is a little
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disarming. And that is the image of a
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newborn baby, a person of very deep virtue.
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Laozo says deep virtue is like a newborn child.
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Soft bones, weak muscles, no knowledge of the world, no
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strategies, no defenses, no accumulated armor.
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And yet, predators leave it alone.
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It's grip. You ever have a newborn baby?
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Grab your hand, your finger. It's grip is surprisingly
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strong. Have you ever noticed that?
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Have you ever noticed that a baby can scream and cry for
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hours and never go hoarse? It is, in the most literal
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sense, operating at full capacity and forces absolutely
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nothing. Now, that's not meant to be
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charming, right? That's meant to be clarifying.
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Because what Lazo is pointing at is something most adults have
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spent years moving away from without realizing what they were
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losing. We can talk all day about how a
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river doesn't have to try to be the river, but let's make it a
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human being. A newborn baby doesn't try to do
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anything. It doesn't strive, it doesn't
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perform, it doesn't manage how it's perceived in order to
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optimize its energy expenditure. A newborn baby's not trying to
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maintain a consistent identity across social media platforms.
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It is entirely, completely, without reservation, it's self.
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And that complete selfness is what makes it both invulnerable
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and inexhaustible. Chapter 55 is asking a quiet and
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serious question. What in the hell happened
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between then and now? What did you trade away in the
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process of becoming the person you currently are?
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And is any of it worth getting back?
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Most of us spend our lives in the process of becoming harder,
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and I don't mean that as a pejorative.
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I mean that in the in in the literal sense.
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More armored, more defended, more deliberately constructed to
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withstand life specific pressures and disappointments.
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Those experience, those things that we have experienced have
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taught us to expect the worst. This process begins early.
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That newborn child who trusted everyone and everything at some
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point got hurt and it began to learn to be selective.
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A person who expressed themselves openly and got mocked
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learns to be more careful in their expression.
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A person who committed to something and watched it fail
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learns to hold back just a little, to hedge, to not put
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everything in. And each of those adaptations
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feels like we're getting smarter, right?
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Like that is the appropriate response of a person who has
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learned how the world works. And each of those adaptations,
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in some specific and and and limited sense, is correct.
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The world does sometimes kick you in your ass.
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Sometimes it stings. And that hedging that you have
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learned does sometimes protect you.
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The armor that you have built genuinely does deflect some of
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what it was built to deflect. The problem is not the
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individual adaptation. We've talked about this before.
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The problem is rarely the thing. The problem is the accumulation,
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right? Because you're not just wearing
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a suit of armor, you're wearing a suit of armor that has layers
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to it, and each layer of hardening that gets added
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doesn't protect you against the specific thread it was built
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for. It reduces the surface area that
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allows for genuine contact. The person who has armored
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themselves against vulnerability can no longer be fully reached
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by intimacy, right? The person who has hedged
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against the disappointment can no longer fully commit to
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anything. The person who has learned to
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manage how they are perceived can no longer be entirely
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present without part of them watching how they are perceived.
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And this is what Chapter 55 is pointing at specifically.
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The hardening process going from newborn baby to something else
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feels and looks like growth, but in many respects it is the
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opposite of growth. It is not the accumulation of
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genuine strength. It is the accumulation of
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defense, of defensive structure, And defensive structure, however
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necessary it is, comes at the cost of the very quality that
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made the newborn both invulnerable and inexhaustible.
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And that quality is what Lao Tzu calls harmony.
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He. And the meaning is precise.
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The newborn cries all day without going hoarse because it
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is operating in perfect harmony with its own nature.
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Nothing is being withheld, nothing is being forced, nothing
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is being managed. The full energy of that baby's
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system is flowing without obstruction.
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An adult who has accumulated a lifetime of defensive
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adaptations is not operating that way.
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Their energy is not flowing freely.
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It moves through a series, or rather maybe even a system full
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of obstructions, the places where authentic response has
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been suppressed, where natural movement has been redirected,
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where the original self has been edited to conform to what
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experience taught you was safer. And the result is a person who
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works very hard to produce what the newborn produces without
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trying. This is the problem that Chapter
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55 is diagnosing. Not that you've grown or learned
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or adapted to the world's realities, but that in doing so
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you have traded away something essential, and that the trading
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feels so much like progress that people never stop to look at
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what it cost. The last lines of Chapter 55 are
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the ones that really hit hard and they don't get enough
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attention, Lautzo says. Forcing life is called an I'll
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omen. The mind that tries to control
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the natural energy of life, that uses effort and will to override
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what is already present, is thought to be strong.
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But things that reach their peak through force age quickly.
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That is not the way of the Tao, and what is not the way of the
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Tao ends early. That is not mild.
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That is a very precise description of a mechanism that
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most people in the modern world are inside of without knowing
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it. And as I try to always give you
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at the beginning of these conversations, is how the
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mechanism works. And that mechanism works like
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this. The natural energy of a person,
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what the Chinese call Jing, the essential life force, is not
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unlimited. That is a misnomer.
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It replenishes, but it requires the right conditions to do so.
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Those conditions are rest and harmony and the absence of self
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opposition. When a person is living largely
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in alignment with their actual nature, doing work that is
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genuinely theirs, that brings them joy, responding to
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situations where their authentic reactions are existing rather
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than managed. The system replenishes naturally
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when those conditions are present, and expenditure and
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recovery stay roughly in balance, right?
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They stay all balanced out. But when you are a person that
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forces things, when the will starts overriding the natural
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signals, When the performance layer gets thick enough that it
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requires constant energy to maintain, when the gap between
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who you actually are in a given moment and who you are
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presenting or sometimes pretending to be, becomes
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sustained effort, that expenditure begins to exceed the
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recovery. The system runs at a deficit,
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and that deficit, held long enough, produces exhaustion, Not
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a tiredness, but a depletion. The visible symptom of this
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depletion is what Lao Tzu calls early aging.
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Not necessarily in the physical sense, although that happens
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too, but in the quality of your aliveness.
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I have something very someone very specific in mind when I
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think about this, and I'm not going to say who it is, because
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they are related to me and they may listen to this.
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I don't know that they do, but I think of this person a lot
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because they're of their lack of aliveness, even though they are
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alive and living and doing perfectly fine.
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They think the person who has been forcing for long enough
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develops a particular flatness, a going through the motions
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quality of life. The enthusiasm that was once
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genuine has been replaced by the performance of enthusiasm.
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The curiosity that once was natural has been replaced by an
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effort to appear to be interested.
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The energy that was once freely available is now something that
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has to be manufactured through caffeine, through external
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motivation, through increasingly effortful application of
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willpower to a system that would honestly just prefer to rest and
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would prefer to get in alignment.
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Your system much prefers to be in alignment.
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This is the mechanism the chapter is describing.
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Chapter 55. Force applied to life produces a
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version of strength that burns its own fuel.
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It produces fuel and burns its own self out.
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The more it is applied, the more is required and eventually the
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cost of maintaining this forced version of yourself becomes the
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primary project of your energy. The newborn baby does not do
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this. It has no forced version of
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itself. It only has the actual version,
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fully expressed, without obstruction or management.
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And that's why it cries all day without going hoarse.
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Because the system is not fighting.
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The energy is flowing in One Direction outward, fully,
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sometimes freaking loudly, without the enormous internal
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friction of worry. I'm not asking you to go out
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into the street and start screaming because you wouldn't
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be able to anyway, because you'd be worried about what the
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neighbors think. What Lautzu is asking with, by
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the way, this chapter is unusually direct for him.
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What he's asking is, do you know what you're spending your energy
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on? And do you know how much of it
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is going towards the maintain, the sorry, the maintenance of a
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constructed version of yourself? The place to look for this
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pattern is the texture of your energy across the day.
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OK, not in dramatic exhaustions, but in very quiet moments.
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Notice what it feels like to arrive somewhere you're
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comfortable being yourself. A place, a person, a situation
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where the performance layer that you have is not required.
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Where you don't have to manage how you're coming across or
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maintain a particular version of something, where you can simply
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be whatever you are in that moment.
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Most people, when they arrive somewhere like that or with
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someone like that, feel almost a release, a subtle but real but
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very real shift. Like setting down something
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you've been carrying long enough that you've stopped noticing
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that release is weird because what it is, is information.
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It's telling you how much your energy was going towards
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carrying something that you only notice when you don't have to
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carry it. Now notice the inverse.
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The moments in your day where your energy is depleted, where
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your energy expenditure is the highest.
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Not because of some task, I'm not talking about physical work,
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but because something about the situation requires you to be
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someone other than who you currently are, who you even want
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to be. The meetings where you perform a
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version of yourself that simply does not exist outside that
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meeting. The conversations where you
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manage what you say before it comes out, the social situations
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where the gap between your internal experience and your
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external presentation is so wide that trying to build a bridge
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costs everything. In both of those cases, in the
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release and in the expenditure, what you're observing is the
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difference between harmony and forced operation, between the
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newborns effortless full expression and the adults
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sustained self management. Lautzen's observation that
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knowing harmony is knowing the eternal is, is worth talking
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about here because it's pointing at something specific rather
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than something beautiful. The eternal, in Taoist terms, is
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the unchanging, underlying nature of things.
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It is the quality that persists beneath all variation, all
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adaptation, and all constructed identities.
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The person who knows harmony, who knows themself without
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effort, who has genuine contact with the effortless, unforced
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operation of their own natural energy, that person knows
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something true and stable about themselves.
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And that stable truth is not what you've constructed.
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It is what was there before the construction began.
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The recognition practice that we have to do then is not about
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tearing down what you've built because the adaptations in the
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armor have their reasons, right. Some of them are genuinely
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necessary. I'm not here to, to tear any of
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that down or, or tell you that that's wrong.
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The protect the the practice is about developing the capacity to
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distinguish in specific moments, in specific situations between
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what you're doing because it's genuinely called for and what
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you're doing because the pattern and the armor is required you to
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do it regardless of whether it's called for or not, right?
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The first is responsive, second is automatic.
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The difference between them is exactly the difference between
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the newborn's effortless but very strong grip on your finger.
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Firm, not because it's force, but because it's natural and the
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adults effort, full effort, full maintenance of a consistency.
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In the moment you're picturing this baby and how it can be so
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wildly strong when it grabs your finger because it's not trying.
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Something to watch for is a a specific kind of moment because
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it's where the distraction shows up most clearly.
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It is the moment. Excuse me?
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It's the moment when a situation changes and your response is no
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longer the right one, but you have the response anyway.
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When the defensive armor activates, not because there's
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an actual threat, but because the pattern has been running
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long enough to become autonomous.
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You can feel that moment if you're paying attention.
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Something in you responds to what is not actually there
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anymore. Anger that belongs to an old
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dynamic arrives in a new situation that doesn't warrant
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it. We've talked about this before.
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The guardedness that protected you once keeps operating in a
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relationship where you where you are genuinely safe.
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The difference between that happening though, and that
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happening and and continuing to do damage is you, is you
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catching yourself. Because each time you catch
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that, each time you see that pattern running past its
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usefulness, that is the moment where you are beginning to
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understand where harmony is right.
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A small direct contact with the natural response underneath the
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constructed 1. That contact is the practice.
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That is what we're looking for. That is why I've brought it up.
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I don't know 3 or 4 different episodes before, because that is
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the practice finding that moment of contact.
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Chapter 55 ends with a warning and a promise.
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Actually, the warning says whatever is contrary to the Dow
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ends early. Your forced life, the life
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organized around sustained effort of being something then
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you other than you actually, or what you actually are, burns
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through itself. It produces A premature aging, a
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depletion that arrives before it should, because your system has
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been running against itself long enough to exhaust what should
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have been a much deeper resource.
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Most people, if they're honest, can feel some version of this
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inside them already, a specific kind of weariness, A tiredness
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that comes not from doing too much but from being someone
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other than yourself. This flatness that descends on
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stretches of life, the sense that something is being spent
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and is not being replenished. That is not neuroses.
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It's an accurate perception of a real dynamic.
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Chapter 55 is naming it clearly, so that the response can be
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something other than pushing harder.
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That is the warning. The promise that comes after is
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equally direct. The person who carries harmony
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in abundance, who lives in genuine harmony with their own
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nature rather than sustained opposition to it, becomes,
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again, like the newborn, protected from the predators,
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the poisonous insects and the wild beasts and the birds of
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prey. Understood.
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Metaphorically not they're not. We're not talking about real
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birds and bugs here. We're talking about the
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metaphors. Those are the hostilities of
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life that genuine alignment makes you resilient to, not
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immune. Resilient resilience is not
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immunity, right? Think of it like getting some
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people are resilient to the flu, but they are not immune to it.
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The difference is they still get the flu that doesn't last very
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long. They don't get very sick.
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They I got the flu today, probably.
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I don't know. The person who is not fighting
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themselves as considerably more available to meet the world's
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challenges than the person who has depleted themselves by
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trying to be someone or something that they are not.
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And the application begins with a single question.
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Ask yourself honestly, in the context of your actual life,
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what am I forcing? Not in the abstract.
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OK, Specifically, where in your daily life are you applying
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sustained will to override what would naturally be there?
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You got to go deeper than thinking about, oh, I have a job
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I don't like. That's not what we're talking
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about. We're talking about the fact
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that you have to perform something that the moment does
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not require. Where is the gap between your
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internal experience and your external presentation?
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And what is the maintaining of that gap costing you?
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It is costing you your harmony. So we're not talking about
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abandoning responsibility or commitment or the genuine effort
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that making a living requires. It's not what we're talking
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about. Taoism has no interest in being
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lazy. It has no interest in you
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quitting your job and going off into the woods and sleeping in
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your car for four days. That's that's not what we're
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talking about here. Chapter 55 is not a case for
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doing nothing. The newborn is not passive.
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A newborn baby is the least passive.
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Its grip on your finger is weirdly strong.
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Its voice when it is screaming is wildly full.
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That is not pacificity. The energy is completely
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present. What is absent is self
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opposition, effort that is genuinely called for, that flows
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from real engagement with what's actually in front of you, that
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moves in the direction of your actual nature rather than
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against it. That effort doesn't deplete you.
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What depletes you is the other kind, the effort that goes
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towards maintaining a version of yourself when the situation
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doesn't require it. Right.
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The application is to look for places in your life where some
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of that force can be released. Not everywhere all at once.
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Not going into the street and screaming, That would be its own
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kind of forcing. But one place.
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One relationship, 1 area of your life where the guardedness has
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outlasted its usefulness. One role where the performance
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has become more effort than the work itself.
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One context where you could be more genuinely yourself, and the
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cost of doing so is lower than the accumulated cost of not
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doing so. You see what I'm saying?
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When you find what that place is in your life then.
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And without drama, without making announcements, without
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turning it into a statement about your personal development.
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Just choose to be yourself. You don't have to go all the
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way, not immediately, just a little more yourself.
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Just enough that your system gets a small experience of
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moving without the friction of self blocking.
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That experience is what chapter 5 is pointing, or chapter 55 is
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pointing at. Not a destination.
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We don't do destinations. Not a permanent state of
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achieved natural harmony. No, no no, no.
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Just a recurring, renewable, available experience of what it
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feels like when the force lets up and the natural energy is
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still there, still fully present, still complete.
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The newborn didn't lose that. You still have it entirely.
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But where is it? You're saying to yourself, if
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you've been paying attention, you know where it is.
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You still have it. It's buried.
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It's buried underneath all those layers.
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They got built on top of it, and it is, as Lautso says, in
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accordance with the eternal. It's there, It is available to
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you. Harmony exists inside you right
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now, as long as you can dig underneath those layers.
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Be yourself whenever possible. Find situations where you don't
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have to force. Find situations where you have
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that cosmic lack of a better word release right now.
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I know you're thinking about it. I know you're like, Oh yeah, I
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could do this. Do it.
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OK, let's move on to our listener question for the day.
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This one, I don't have a for some reason, I don't have a name
34:56
on this one. Do we have a name?
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I don't think so. Oh, there it is, Ella, says Kit.
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I feel like I've been doing this practice for a while now and I'm
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genuinely more present than I used to be.
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But the people around me haven't changed.
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My family still triggers me. My colleagues still frustrate
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me. I thought I'd be above it all by
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now. What am I missing?
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Ella? What you're missing is not
35:24
probably what you might think. The expectation that is embedded
35:32
in your question is that deeper practice should produce greater
35:39
immunity to the people around you.
35:43
That as you have become more present, more aligned, more
35:46
genuinely yourself, the things that used to trigger you should
35:50
lose their power. And eventually you'll be so
35:52
settled that the family dynamics or the colleague frustrations or
35:56
whatever will simply roll off, like my grandpa used to say,
35:59
like water off a duck's back. But my friend Ella, that is not
36:06
how it works, and more importantly, that's not really
36:10
what the practice is for, because Taoism is not working
36:16
towards being impervious. Let's go back to the newborn for
36:24
a moment, right? Cries all day, fully,
36:29
completely. No, holding back doesn't get
36:33
depleted. The harmony is the absence of
36:36
the response, right? We just talked about that.
36:38
It's the completeness of response without, without
36:42
residue. So what you might actually be
36:47
developing and may not be recognizing as progress because
36:51
it doesn't look like in your words, rising above it all or
36:55
being above it, What you may be developing is the capacity for
37:00
the trigger to move through you more cleanly.
37:03
You are now noticing the trigger.
37:07
Whereas before the trigger was triggering you and you didn't
37:10
notice it. Now you are obviously are,
37:12
because you just said that that the trigger should lose its
37:15
power. So you are developing the
37:17
capacity to notice and to allow that trigger to move through you
37:23
more cleanly. You're allowing it to arrive, to
37:27
be felt, to complete its triggerness, and to pass, rather
37:33
than having it arrive, catch on something, and pull the whole
37:37
wool out of the sweater. That is not the same as being
37:42
triggered. That is a a different
37:44
relationship to being triggered. The family still triggers you.
37:48
That's probably not going to change completely because the
37:51
trigger is wired into a very old dynamic and those things are
37:55
very durable, as we've discussed.
37:57
I don't know, 8 or 10 episodes ago.
38:00
What changes with practice, slowly and unevenly, is how long
38:04
the trigger holds you and how much of your energy it saps the
38:08
triggers. I want you guys to always
38:10
remember the triggers are still probably going to arrive.
38:13
Unless you get yourself to a point where you are a Taoist
38:17
master and these triggers just come and go and flute through,
38:20
float through the wind, then then you're probably still going
38:24
to have to be dealing with the trigger.
38:26
The key is not that. The key is not letting the
38:29
trigger stay. What changes with practice is
38:35
slow and uneven, but it does change is how long that trigger
38:39
holds and how much of that energy it takes.
38:42
If you're honest about the comparison not between now and
38:46
the ideal that you're measuring yourself against, but between
38:49
now and a year ago, I bet you'll find out that that duration of
38:54
that trigger is shorter and your recovery time is quicker and the
39:00
residue is lighter. Because remember, we're not
39:05
going after a destination. Being above it is not the goal
39:10
because that does not exist. Real progress is what you are
39:18
going through right now. It just doesn't look like you
39:21
thought it might because you had an expectation of being above
39:24
it. You see what I'm saying?
39:28
I'm proud of you because the simple act of writing that tells
39:33
me that the practice is working. You noticed and that trigger is
39:42
not staying well done. Sometimes we go through these
39:50
situations, and I'm going to go a little off topic for a second,
39:54
but sometimes we go through these situations and we expect
39:58
there to be a in the modern world, everything that we expect
40:04
always has an outcome, right? We expect things to get fixed.
40:13
We take our car to the mechanic and we expect the mechanic to
40:17
fix the car. That is a tangible, physical
40:22
thing, right? It's specific steps that lead to
40:28
a specific result. We are not a car, we are not a
40:35
machine. We are nature, and the only
40:41
thing that will ever arrive is a return to naturalness.
40:52
But that takes time and it takes learning the difference between
41:02
forced effort and natural effort.
41:07
And we spend a lot of time. I, I'm, I'm going with the some
41:10
anecdotal information here because of the, the questions
41:13
that I get, which by the way, you guys keep them coming,
41:18
they've been. So they just get better and
41:22
better as we as we do this. But many questions I get from
41:27
people that are just joining our community, are just beginning to
41:30
practice stowism are all many of them are, are still expectation
41:37
based. And we need to remember that
41:42
that there is no final episode to this.
41:48
This comes this. We do this to become resilient
41:54
to whatever outcome is presented to us and facing those outcomes
41:59
in the moment they arrive, rather than expecting them to be
42:02
one way or another. Yeah, your Daoist assignment for
42:11
this week. At some point today, I'd like
42:14
for you to find 10 minutes where you don't have to be anyone in
42:22
particular. 10 minutes. No role to fill, no version of
42:30
yourself to maintain. No one is watching, no one is
42:36
managing, and you don't have to manage anyone.
42:40
Nothing to produce. Sit somewhere comfortable
42:46
outside if you can. And for those 10 minutes, let
42:50
yourself be as unfinished as you actually are.
42:58
I don't want you to try to be calm.
43:01
I don't want you to try to be present.
43:03
I don't want you to be living in the moment.
43:06
I don't want you to be practicing an attitude of
43:09
gratitude. I don't want you to be
43:13
demonstrating anything, even to yourself.
43:16
Just whatever is there, be you. If you're restless, be restless.
43:26
If you're sad, be sad. If there's nothing in
43:30
particular, you be nothing in particular.
43:35
I don't want you to spend that 10 minutes accessing your
43:38
original nature or returning to the newborn baby's harmony.
43:42
I just want you to sit there. Give your system 10 minutes of
43:51
not being forced in any direction. 10 minutes of not
43:56
performing is more than most people will ever manage in a
44:01
week. And if you can do that for 10
44:05
minutes tomorrow or later today, you'll learn to do that for 10
44:11
minutes every day. And at some point, those 10
44:15
minutes will become 20, and those 20 will become 45, and
44:18
those 45 will become a couple of hours, and you'll begin to get
44:22
replenished. But do it now. 10 minutes of
44:29
just being you. That's your assignment.
44:34
Chapter 55 is not a chapter about becoming a baby again.
44:39
It's not asking you to to be naive, or pretend that things
44:42
you've learned from experience don't matter, or to approach the
44:45
world as if the armor you built has no purpose.
44:48
It's asking you to be something, or to do something rather more
44:52
precise and more difficult. It's asking whether you can feel
44:57
the difference between the natural gap that firm hold that
45:00
comes from genuine alignment. They cost nothing to maintain
45:05
and the forced grip, the one that requires continuous will
45:09
and continuous expenditure and continuous self opposition to
45:13
sustain. Remember, the baby grabbing your
45:15
finger is doing it without forcing.
45:17
It's not trying. If you reached out to grab
45:19
someone's finger, you'd concentrate on how hard you grab
45:22
it. That's not what we want.
45:27
We're asking whether you know what harmony feels like from the
45:30
inside, not as a concept, but as a direct physical experience of
45:36
operating without friction. Chapter 55 is asking with the
45:42
seriousness that only Loutsome managed to combine with
45:46
gentleness in the same breath. Whether the version of strength
45:50
you're building is the kind that grows or the kind that ages.
45:55
Whether the life you're currently living is moving
45:58
within your nature or against it, or whether the cost of
46:03
forcing is 1 you've actually consented to or one you're
46:08
simply allowing to happen because you have not stopped to
46:11
examine it. The newborn is still there,
46:15
fully intact, fully available. You never lost it.
46:21
It's underneath everything that you piled on top of it, and the
46:27
practice is learning gradually to find your way back.
46:33
If this one landed with you, if chapter 55 clarified something
46:38
you've been feeling but didn't have the words for, send
46:41
somebody else along for the ride.
46:43
Give them the link to the podcast and you have a question
46:46
or something you're sitting with, put it in the comments.
46:49
Go to the website daoananda.org, DAO ananda.orgor.com or come by
46:57
the the Patreon. We're all over there.
46:59
Everybody's having a great old time.
47:03
Slowly but surely we are building things over on
47:06
patreonitspatreon.com/the Modern Taoist.
47:09
And until next time, thank you so much for coming along in the
47:13
journey and for listening to The Modern Taoist.
47:19
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47:29
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47:33
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