STATE OF EFFORTLESS FREE

Even this article kills it, and doesn’t quite grasp the elusive and poetic balance of the Wu wei experience. The imagery is the thing, rising up from the words that just as surely kill it. Their only purpose is to trick us into higher imagination. Life and death are not two opposed forces they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for the movement of change is as much the builder as the destroyer.”īut even words are merely trickster symbols that do no justice to the concept. Every form is really a pattern of movement, and every living thing is like the river, which, if it did not flow out, would never have been able to flow in. Like Alan Watts said, “Change is not merely a force of destruction. When we are in the flow state of Wu wei, we are caretaker & destroyer, teacher & student, hungry ghost & slithering wraith. Wu wei is the search for lost time, but it is also lost time. It spills from the heart like a razor just sliced open the wrist of the soul.

STATE OF EFFORTLESS FREE

Like Shunryu Suzuki said, “We must have beginner’s mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows that everything is in flowing change.” Our best effort is to become attentive gardeners, to become aware of a process that we may never understand, but to allow understanding to come as a natural progression of open-minded awareness and to give into the Flow state, as a creative microcosm gives in to a greater creative macrocosm. It must be allowed to grow with its own intelligence, in its own self-organized direction. Similarly, if you prevent it from opening, you destroy it. If you force a flower to open prematurely, you destroy it.

All we can do, as good gardeners, is prepare the soil (the mind, the body, and/or the soul) and provide the proper conditions, and then let nature take its course.

One can be sincere without being serious.

To be authentic we must be sincere, rather than overly serious or insecure about achieving a particular goal. We must trump our insecure seriousness with sincere humor. It must be a free flowing process of intertwining synchronicities.īut we must not be overly serious with our goals and aspirations, instead we must be sincere. And it is actually a letting go of our attachment to our goals so that we are in a better place to achieve our goals. It is effortless and frictionless, despite needing a little effort and friction. It is the noumenal experience of being in flow with the cosmos. It is not an energy that can be forced by the will. The spontaneity of Wu wei is a different sort of energy than we may be accustomed to conceiving. It’s in this in-between where the power of spontaneity can be utilized, where we are both the seer and the seen, the Universe becoming aware of itself. Infinity says we’re everything, finitude says we’re nothing. It is a kind of “going with the flow” that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which – without even trying – we’re able to adapt to any situation that might arise. It is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” But a better way to think of it is the “Action of non-action.” Wu wei is a cultivated state of being effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the cosmos. Wu wei is one of Taoism’s most important concepts. But there may be an answer, albeit an elusive one, in the concept of Wu wei and the power of Spontaneity. How do we let go of wanting to win gold at the Olympics but still remain focused on winning gold at the Olympics? Quite the conundrum, indeed.

State of effortless