On tao and anti-tao
Consciousness only has two directions, toward greater consciousness or away from it. The sum movement of all consciousness is towards itself; all counter-movement is like an eddy in a river.
This article is fundamental spiritual knowledge, it’s neither basic nor advanced. More like something everyone must understand consciously before we can communicate, and then perhaps, the only thing you really need to know at all.
“The Tao remains eternally unnamable. As undivided simplicity, If it resides in an ordinary person, nobody in the world can subjugate him; If an influential person abides by it, everybody in the world will be drawn to him. When heaven and earth come together in harmony, Showering the world equally with the sweet rain of undivided simplicity, People cooperate voluntarily without any governing rules. When simplicity is divided, names come into existence. When names are already there, the process of further division should stop, For to know when to stop is to avoid the danger of complexity. The Tao is to the world what the ocean is to the rivers of the earth."
- Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi), translated by Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
I’m not going to reference children’s books here (although I truly love Winnie-the-pooh) because I think you guys can handle the hard stuff, so to speak.
Also I want this to be very clear, nothing cryptic.
The tao is an inner sense of the ‘right direction’ . It’s not namable, because the right direction is different for every person, and changes each and every moment. You can’t write down a rigid set of rules in a scroll somewhere and have it work for everyone all the time. This is the main reason religions fail to wake people up even though they are usually based on the behaviors and teachings of awakened people.
In contrast, the tao is a constant, inner beacon for the right way to go. And everything in the universe obeys its call. If you follow it, you will become more and more conscious. And everything and everyone follows it eventually. It’s just how it is.
The right direction is independent of circumstance. So there is a way to be a king, and a way to be a slave. Viktor Frankl wrote about the way to be in a concentration camp, and the Buddha wrote about the way to be a prince. It’s not about where you are in the world, it’s about how you are in the world and the direction you are heading.
To use metaphors we have previously used, the tao is movement toward the inside of the awakening spiral, or towards the top of the spiritual mountain. You start where you are at, each and every moment.
Why tao and anti-tao are important
“It’s not that a better way is available and that most people fail to take advantage of it, but that a better way is at all times in full force and effect, and to function from the level of the puny separate self is to work feverishly against it.”
— Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment
Each and every person alive has a sense of the direction of the Tao in their lives, and they choose, because they have free will whether to go with, or against the current.
Many people block out this inner sense, or decide to ignore it, but if they tuned into it in a practice called wu-wei and constantly followed the tao, they would find their lives becoming easier, simpler, and happier all the time.
It’s not about right or wrong, because sometimes the tao of things is apparently negative or sad events; people dying, leaving home and moving away, breakups and divorces, nations failing, natural disasters, and species dying out.
The point is, if you tune into the rightness or wrongness, of things instead of your personal attachment to them they become less painful — more harmonious as Laozi says. You also tap into the power of what-is-already-going-to-happen and stop resisting forces that are outside of your control in a fruitless expenditure of effort. Consequently your path in the world and that of others becomes more direct, calm, and sure.
Where do tao and anti-tao go?
“To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time. From your demonstration others learn, and so do you. The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice. The purpose of the course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn.”
— Helen Schucman, A Course in Miracles
This is important.
The tao is consciousness returning to itself. There is only one direction, all consciousness returns to itself, just like all water returns to the ocean.
The metaphor of Earth’s water cycle has been used by many people including Rumi and Laozi to describe the motion of the tao. To be very clear about this, the ocean is the great pool of consciousness that many people refer to as Source. You, your soul, your consciousness would be a drop of consciousness in the metaphorical water cycle, and your journey to the ocean can take as long as you want it to. There is water in deep caves in the Earth and frozen in the arctic mountains that isn’t moving very fast. Which doesn’t mean it won’t eventually go to the ocean. It will, it’s just taking a roundabout route. You might be a beautiful and unique snowflake in our metaphor and taking your own sweet time.
Another incredibly important principle of the tao, covered by this metaphor is that water can travel in many directions, and not all of it seems like it’s toward the ocean. There is sometimes large currents of water, at the edge of rivers, traveling upriver, in an eddy.
In our metaphor that is an anti-tao direction, away from tao. In a river and river mechanics this creates turbulent flow in the water as the two currents swirl against each other. Which has no real bearing on the eventual path of the river or even the drops in it. They might travel upstream for a time as part of their total path downstream to the ocean and its really neither here-nor-there. No one cries when they see a babbling stream, so why do we freak out when our friends take the wrong direction for a bit?
I worked as a river guide one year in the Canadian Rockies, and learned how to read water mechanics. I highly recommend the study of this embodied knowledge, and then its application to consciousness. I learned in a very visceral way that all currents go downstream eventually, all currents go at their own pace, and navigating a river is much like navigating consciousness in the human lifetime.
I think shaman and spiritual teachers kind of navigate consciousness — not disturbing it, just moving with it the same way a river-runner does. And eventually with the same degree of reverence.
So tao and anti-tao might have apparently different directions, and this creates the intricate movements, turbulent flow, and complex currents we see in consciousness, but it’s also important to realize they both go to the same place.
Tao and anti-tao in spiritual awakening
Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.”— Rumi, The Essential Rumi
In a spiritual awakening you become aware of the tao more viscerally. You begin to feel an inexorable pull downstream toward the ocean, the same way water begins tumbling and rushing downhill at the mouth of major rivers.
Suddenly you will find that involving yourself in anti-tao situations or directions is painful, the turbulence becomes unbearable within yourself and you begin to long for calm and communion with higher consciousness.
I think Rumi says this more eloquently but you begin to long to break free of artificial bounds and be part of the ocean.
Tao and anti-tao in spiritual awakening for skeptics conclusion
"Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.”
— The Buddha (from the Sutta Nipata)
There is only two directions, tao and anti-tao. Anti-tao is suffering, tao is the cessation of suffering. You choose each and every moment which direction you want to go. I want to go to the ocean, but we will both end up there eventually.
