There’s an old Buddhist story.
A student approaches the master, philosophizing: “This world is an illusion, not real.”
Without a word, the master picks up a brick and smacks the student on the head.
“What do you feel?”
“Pain… and suffering.”
“Strange,” says the master. “How can you suffer if the world is unreal?”

Simple lesson, but effective.

Like dreams. You live them as if they’re real — until you wake up. Even lucid dreaming, where you can shape the dream and know you’re dreaming, is still not reality. It’s just conscious imagination.

The two selves myth

There’s this popular idea — especially in New Age circles — that we have two selves: a lower ‘I’ (ego), and a higher ‘I’ (divine, enlightened, pure).
It’s comforting. Makes it easy to say, after doing something stupid: “Oh, that wasn’t the real me. That was my lower self.”

I used to do that too.

But here’s the problem:
Where was my “higher self” when I messed up? Nowhere. I wasn’t aware of it. And after the fallout, there was no “lower self” either. Just me again.

In truth, there is only one ‘I’. The reality of our being is where our consciousness is focused. What you’re aware of, you live. What you live, you become. That’s it. One self. One center. One presence.

When was the ego split?

Let me ask this:
When exactly does this magical transition from lower to higher self happen?
Does the ego hold a farewell party? Do we look back fondly on our “lower self” like we remember high school?

Imagine a new driver getting behind the wheel for the first time. Does he have a “lower driver” and a “higher driver”?
Of course not. He’s just a driver.
The only difference is experience — gained through making mistakes and learning from them.

The same applies to us.

There aren’t two egos. There’s only one — sometimes blind, sometimes aware, always evolving.
The “higher self” is often just a clever trick of the ego to avoid facing the truth of how it is now.

The witness behind the self

But we can go deeper.

Behind the ‘I’, behind the person we identify with, there is something else.
A witness. A subject. A still presence.
Like a body stands behind the leg, and the psyche behind the body, and the self behind the psyche — there is a subtle presence behind the self.

This subject watches. It does not judge, it does not interfere. It simply is.

Yet confusion arises. The self sees something and claims: “This is me.”
That’s how the subject — dressed in the clothes of ego — starts thinking it’s the actor. Like iron glowing in fire, ego absorbs the heat of subjectivity and believes it’s in charge.

And thus begins the fall. The split. The Lucifer myth in theology is just this: ego mistaking itself as the source of light, not just the bearer of it.

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The illusion of a higher self

From this split, we begin to miss the unity we once knew.
We project a “higher self” as a memory of that wholeness. And the struggling, craving, suffering self we live now becomes the “lower self.”

But here’s the twist: that “higher self” doesn’t exist. It’s a projection. A fantasy to escape the discomfort of the present.

All salvation is now.
The key isn’t found in escaping the current ‘I’, but in fully entering it.

What you are right now, in this moment — that’s you.
That’s where God is. Not above. Not in the future. But here. Living as you. Whether in grace or disgrace, that presence is unbroken.

God on the toilet

Yes, even if you’re on the toilet — God is there, because you are there.
The Absolute is not a sterile abstraction. It’s living, breathing, sweating, defecating — through you, through time.

The outside world is just how the Absolute looks from the outside: sunsets, oceans, midnight skies.
The inside world is how it feels: stillness, fullness, bliss.

Close your eyes and fall inward.
You’ll find peace. And that peace, that wholeness, you will see again — outside — in every beautiful sound, shape, and silence.

Even in the “ugly” things, the Absolute dwells.
Why? Because you are experiencing them. And you are the living mirror of the Divine.

The ‘I’ that remains

This ‘I’ is life itself as it’s being lived.
When you’re fully in the moment — when you act without self-consciousness — that’s when the ‘I’ disappears… and paradoxically, that’s when it shines most.

If you were to die today, that ‘I’ wouldn’t vanish. It would still live — here, in these words, and in everyone who resonates with them.

Live like that.
Be present.
There’s only one ‘I’.
And all the rest… are just stories.

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None of them knows me.

Not really.

We move through the world as collections of fragments, leaving different pieces of ourselves in different places. The version your coworkers see bears little resemblance to the one your oldest friends know. The self you present to strangers on the bus has almost nothing in common with who you are at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling.

It's just how being human works.

The ancient Daoists understood this better than we do. While Western philosophy has spent centuries trying to pin down the "true self" – that authentic core we're all supposedly hiding or seeking – Daoism took a different approach. The Dao De Jing doesn't tell you to "find yourself." It suggests something more radical: maybe there's no fixed self to find.

"The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name."

Those famous opening lines are not just about the ineffability of cosmic truth. They're about the limits of definition itself. The moment you try to capture something in words, you've already missed it. This applies to rivers, mountains, empires – and especially to people.

You are not a thing that can be fully known or named.

This should terrify us. Instead, it might be the most liberating truth we ever encounter.

The prison of being known completely would be unbearable. Imagine if everyone – your boss, your ex, the barista who makes your coffee – could see the entirety of who you are. Every contradictory thought, every shameful desire, every private grief and joy. We'd never leave the house.

The Zhuangzi, the other pillar of Daoist thought, tells the story of a butcher named Cook Ding who carves ox carcasses with such skill that his knife never dulls. When asked how he does it, he explains that he no longer sees the ox as a solid object but as a constantly changing process with spaces between its parts. He simply moves his blade through those spaces.

"What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill," he says.

This butcher is not just cutting meat. He's demonstrating how to move through life, finding the spaces between fixed definitions, flowing around obstacles rather than crashing into them.

The spaces between who people think you are? That's where freedom lives.

The modern world doesn't much care for this idea. We are told to "build our personal brand" and "craft our narrative." Dating apps require us to summarize our essence in three witty sentences. Job interviews ask us to explain our five-year plan as if the future were something we could map rather than a territory that doesn't exist yet.

We are encouraged to become known quantities, predictable units in the marketplace of personality.

The Daoists would find this hilarious.

Lao Tzu reportedly left civilization riding a water buffalo, heading for the mountains. When pressed to write down his wisdom before disappearing, he reluctantly produced the Dao De Jing, then vanished from history. No personal brand. No LinkedIn profile. No five-year plan – just the freedom of being fundamentally unknowable.

Even quantum physics tells us that particles exist in states of probability until observed. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that we cannot simultaneously know both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy. The very act of measurement changes what's being measured.

You, too, are changed by being observed. You become something slightly different depending on who's looking.

The Greeks had their own version of this insight. "Know thyself," commanded the Oracle at Delphi. But Socrates, when confronted with this imperative, concluded that the only thing he knew for certain was that he knew nothing at all. Self-knowledge turned out to be an acknowledgment of unknowability.

But wait, this is not any excuse for bad behavior. "No one really knows me" isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card for treating people poorly. The Dao De Jing is clear about the importance of compassion, restraint, and what we might now call ethical conduct.

But it does mean we can stop the exhausting work of maintaining a consistent identity across all contexts.

I have played the part too. And that time, I spent almost an entire year trying to be the person a particular job wanted me to be. I typed emails in a voice that wasn't mine. I adopted opinions that seemed to fit the culture. I dressed for the role, spoke for the role, and thought for the role. By the end, I was so tired I could barely remember who I had been before.

The Daoists would call this swimming against the current. They'd recommend wu-wei instead – non-action, or perhaps more accurately, effortless action. Not forcing yourself into shapes that don't fit you. Not struggling to be known in ways that constrain rather than liberate.

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"The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid," says the Dao De Jing. "Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice."

We fear that without a fixed identity, we'll dissolve into nothing. The opposite is true. When you stop trying to maintain a consistent self across all situations, you discover something more fluid and alive than any single definition could capture.

Water has no constant shape, yet it carves canyons through mountains.

This is not just philosophical wordplay. There are practical benefits to embracing your fundamental unknowability:

• You'll worry less about what others think. Their perceptions are incomplete by definition.

• You'll recover faster from rejection. Someone who rejects you is rejecting a fragment, not the whole.

• You'll become more adaptable. Without clinging to a fixed self-concept, you can respond to changing circumstances without an identity crisis.

• You'll judge others less harshly. Because recognizing your own multiplicity makes it easier to accept contradictions in others.

Of course, there are limits to this approach. Complete shapelessness is not the goal either. The Dao isn't about the absence of form but about finding the right relationship between form and formlessness. The empty space inside a cup makes it useful, but you still need the cup.

Some consistency matters. Some commitments need keeping. Some promises shouldn't be broken just because you're "a different person now." The trick is distinguishing between necessary structures and unnecessary constraints.

Alan Watts, the great Western interpreter of Eastern thought, put it this way: "You're under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago." He wasn't advocating chaos or selfishness, but rather a lighter touch on the steering wheel of identity.

The next time someone misunderstands you completely, try something counterintuitive: thank them. They've just reminded you of your vastness, your uncontainable nature, your fundamental freedom from being fully known.

The next time you feel trapped by others' expectations, remember the Daoist sage who "acts without doing, teaches without saying, allows all things to arise without making them happen." You don't have to perform for an audience. You can simply be, in all your contradictory glory.

No one knows you completely. Not your parents, not your partner, not your closest friend. Not even you know yourself entirely…the unconscious mind remains largely mysterious, our motivations often hidden from ourselves.

You are not a puzzle to be solved or a riddle to be answered. You're more like the Dao itself – "something formlessly fashioned, that existed before heaven and earth." You're a process, not a product. A question, not an answer.

Let that set you free.

The Daoists would say freedom was already your natural state. You just forgot somewhere along the way, as we all do. No one knows you. Thank goodness for that.

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If you have worked with me in the past, you have probably noticed my Mesa bundle. Traditionally, a mesa cloth is a brightly colored, beautiful textile that you would find in the Q’ero Communities in Peru. My Mesa cloth, however, is plain white. I’ve received a lot of comments on its beauty and the simple ‘perfection’ of it.

I am well aware that many people assume I’m a perfectionist, and maybe to a certain degree I am. (My sister, who secretly cringes at the fact that I don’t own a clothes iron, would beg to differ!!😉) But I didn’t choose the white cloth for its perfection. I chose it to be the blank canvas for which life creates the art.🎨

I love looking at the colors of life and the wisdom it has collected over the years! There is a dark smudge mark from a powerful sacred fire I tended. And I smile whenever I come across the little blue stain - that reminds me of my son’s sweet, sharing heart & his blue raspberry slushie. 💙

You see, I was never trying to portray perfection. 😉

I have been the victim AND played the villain.😈

I have made more mistakes than I can count, and there are people in my life that I choose not to communicate with. I’m guessing there are more than a few people from my past who would think I had absolutely NO business dispensing healing or spiritual advice when they would consider me to be ‘a mess.’

But, I think that’s the point!

Life is in the messy! That’s where the art, inspiration, and most importantly - the wisdom 🎓 - can be found.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to climb Mt. Everest with a guide who has a shiny, perfect map. I want the guide who has traveled the path so many times she knows it like the back of her hand. The same one who has fallen down over and over, but still always rises with grit and determination under her nails.

🌟Did you know that the highest form of gold you are able to buy is 99.9%? It’s impossible to have anything that is 100% gold. Do you know why? Because gold is liquid and it’s the imperfections that make it solid.

Hmmm…. Sound familiar?

So why do we try so hard to hide away our ‘messy’? We all have it if we are still walking the planet.🌎

Why do we hide away the thing that makes us human? And how can we possibly help each other if we fight so hard to hold up the illusion of perfection? It’s so heavy anyway! Aren’t your arms getting tired?

It is unattainable in this physical form, so why do we expect it in ourselves or from others? How hard is that to maintain, and how hard are you on yourself when you inevitably fall short? 🤨

I believe we are meant to live and fall, make mistakes, and hopefully learn somewhere along the way. I think imperfection, and more importantly, the wisdom and growth obtained from the lesson, are actually the whole point of our existence.

(Well that, and a little thing called love!💗😉)

So I just don’t see how a Loving, Wise, and All-Knowing Creator would ever create us so faulty to begin with, and then expect perfection - or a mediator to purify our imperfections - as the only way to return to oneness with that Creator. (That’s just my perspective though.🤷🏻‍♀️)

But, as I was typing out the title of this piece, autocorrect changed it to ‘(I’m)perfection’, and I think Spirit knocked it out of the park 🏟️before I even got started!!!

Joy bubbled up in that moment, as I was reminded of a friend’s meditation experience. She received a message so profound, it is never far from my mind. In her beautiful moment, she was shown Michelangelo’s David sculpture and received the knowing that God views each one of us as beautiful, priceless, perfect works of art!!!! 🖼️

Imagine that!!!?!

You are already loved beyond measure just for being you!! 💜

ALL of it!

ALL of who you are!☯️

The boring fresh canvas🤍and the life well lived! 🎨

There is no separating the art from The Artist!!

Now imagine reflecting that aspect of the Divine out into your world…🪞

🔥Imagine living in a community that shared their mistakes and truths with each other.

🔥Imagine if we recognized and celebrated the growth and wisdom learned from making mistakes.

🔥Imagine the safety of living in a world where we accepted and supported each other, & ourselves as our whole selves…

I’mperfections and all. 😉

💗 Big Love & Many Blessings🌸

~Amanda

©05/2025

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Hello seekers!

I have a pick a card reading for you today that will reveal what’s the right career for you… or if you are already on the right path. Plus, there will be some psychic messages to round it all up.

So take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Relax your body. And then pick one of the five options in the image above.

Or, you can choose a number from the following:

⭐ 1 ⭐ 2 ⭐ 3 ⭐ 4 ⭐ 5 ⭐

Scroll down for your message.

If you picked Group #1...

You are exactly where you need to be, doing what would bring the most meaning to you.

For most of you, this is because these are the skills you are trained in. So even if you feel dissatisfied in your profession or career, it's because of other factors not directly related to the work. Perhaps bad co-workers, a toxic management, discrimination, and bias that’s preventing you from shining or doing research, and so on.

For others, you know that there's more to life than just what you do on a daily basis. But you need to develop a few new skills if you wish to transition to something different. That learning curve cannot be avoided. Not even if you jump headfirst into something new and shiny.

For many of you, a bad romantic relationship may be contributing to your stress, draining your will to do your best in your career, or reaching for your dreams. Now's the time to be honest with yourself. Are you truly with someone who supports your vision for your life? Is their life also aligned in such a way that you can walk together and not suppress each other's dreams? If either of those answers is no, you may be with the wrong person, and this incompatibility is bleeding into other areas of your life.

Some psychic impressions for Group #1:

You are represented by a kite—one of those jumbo man-sized ones—and are free-floating through the air. You just want to enjoy the breeze and keep floating, regardless of where the air currents take you. You don't want to drift over sewage, though, or have your senses filled with disgust. As long as your senses are at peace, you are okay with floating anywhere.

Did the reading resonate with you? Leave a heart and/or response if it did. 💜 Subscribe to The Daoist Online for more.

For private readings, check Valeria Black’s Patreon shop.

If you picked Group #2...

You are afraid of your father, or are afraid of being a disappointment to him. This man has accomplished quite a lot in his life and, if he is not retired, continues to do so. You never want him to look at you with judgment in his eyes. If he wears glasses, you never want him to look at you over them and fix a stare on you.

Everything you have done so far in life is to either evade his notice or stay under the radar. But this fear of this parent has blocked you from discovering what interests you. You float through life, mostly aimlessly, hoping to never have to deal with a scolding or harsh words. If you work in the retail industry or are a temporary worker at a fast food chain, it shames you that you are where you are currently.

I cannot divine the right career for you because this fear of your parent clouds everything and every aspect of your life. There's a part of you that is afraid to shine because you feel your parent will sabotage you in some way. But another part of you wants to amount to nothing as a secret revenge on this parent... so they will not have the capacity to brag to their peers about you.

Some psychic impressions for Group #2:

There's an oil lamp (metal, copper?) and it is filled with the freshest oil up to the correct mark where the flame will burn just right. This oil lamp is you. You are not a genie lamp, though. So if anyone were to affix their dreams, goals, and expectations on you, it's akin to them rubbing the lamp and hoping a genie will pop out and make their wishes come true. Stop trying to be someone's genie. Or even bothering about their opinions. Sometimes, the only way to let go of a fear is to acknowledge the harm caused by whatever you are afraid of, so you can live your life independently, regardless of what others may say.

Did the reading resonate with you? Leave a heart and/or response if it did. 💜 Subscribe to The Daoist Online for more.

For private readings, check Valeria Black’s Patreon shop.

If you picked Group #3...

Life is good for you, but there's a restlessness in your heart. Something wishes to come out from within, but you try to suppress it. Perhaps because it doesn't fit your conventional beliefs. You do not know this, but you are a poet.

If you give yourself the chance to explore this aspect of yourself, you will be surprised by the depth of emotions that emerge from you and the deep insights that come from within. This may never become a career path for you, but embracing this poetic path will allow you to thrive in whichever career you choose throughout your life, whether temporary or permanent.

Most of you will do well if you don't try to live a strict, regimented life. You thrive when you have breathing room and the space to extend your wings or learn something new. Being an entrepreneur—maybe even a serial entrepreneur—is a good path for you. Don't aim for the moon and the stars, though. Just aim for running your business well and making it profitable until you start losing interest. That's when you should start looking for buyers so you can move on to the next idea or project that catches your interest.

You are a problem-solver. So don't just run after money, even if that's important from the perspective of living on Earth. If you aim to help others or solve a societal or community problem through your career, you will succeed.

Some psychic impressions for Group #3:

There's a tree in the middle of a forest. It's nondescript like all the other trees around it. But it has a beautiful bark and supple leaves. Yet, this beauty will never be appreciated by any passer-by or even the other trees. This is you. As long as you recognize the beauty and suppleness within yourself, you will feel strengthened within and happy to live each day. No one will be able to drag you down or break your confidence. Your self-esteem will be solid.

Did the reading resonate with you? Leave a heart and/or response if it did. 💜 Subscribe to The Daoist Online for more.

For private readings, check Valeria Black’s Patreon shop.

If you picked Group #4...

In times of need, people come to you. Whether you are a good shoulder to cry on, an excellent therapist or mentor, an emergency worker (like a firefighter, paramedic, etc.), or just a bastion of peace and spirituality in your community, you have inherent value. This kind of career is the right one for you.

Just remember: you were taken advantage of when you were younger for your ability to help others and for knowing exactly what to do in crisis situations. So make sure that you don't allow anyone to undervalue or devalue you. You should be compensated for your work, no matter who believes it should be free. After all, they aren't the ones paying your rent, electricity, and home/children's expenses.

Set strong boundaries and learn to mix compassion with nerves of steel. The right career path for you will also make you a well-respected figure in your community and society.

Some psychic impressions for Group #4:

You are a cloud... but not a raincloud. You are the kind that brings a smile to the face of a little child or makes lovers search for meaning and shapes in you. This psychic impression is a bit meta, so stay with me. You are the cloud that sees it all but is not judgmental. You are highly observant but also peaceful. If you were attracted to more than one group, read the other message as well.

Did the reading resonate with you? Leave a heart and/or response if it did. 💜 Subscribe to The Daoist Online for more.

For private readings, check Valeria Black’s Patreon shop.

If you picked Group #5...

Life has lost all meaning for you. You try to live through the drudgery, day in and day out, but you feel as if you are weighed down by ten tonnes of bricks each day when you return home. You may not realize this, but your employers are treating you like a slave. Literally.

This is labor trafficking. You need to open your eyes to this mistreatment and either advocate for yourself or move to a different company or employment. Even a change of career may be a better idea than staying where you are.

For most of you, the reason why you are being treated this way is because you are an immigrant or a person of color or a woman, or you belong to some category that your co-workers and bosses are bigoted towards. It can even be your religious background that is bringing out this bigotry, or the way you choose to dress or do your hair.

It's not you, it's them. Never allow those who abuse you to tell you that you deserved that mistreatment. You must put an end to this chapter and begin a new one.

Some psychic impressions for Group #5:

You were rarely hugged as a child, or maybe even never. You come from a background where abuse was passed off as normal. It was not normal. Definitely not when someone threw a shoe at your head or dunked your head underwater for getting bad grades. Don't normalize this abuse by comparing scars with other people who may have had similar life experiences. You stand the risk of becoming the monster you despise instead of finding your soul tribe and living in peace and love. Beating down on innocents won't make you stronger. Just like whoever beat you down when you were a child was not strong but a pathetic creature, taking advantage of a little one. Find the strength within to end the cycle of abuse and free yourself from slavery.

Did the reading resonate with you? Leave a heart and/or response if it did. 💜 Subscribe to The Daoist Online for more.

For private readings, check Valeria Black’s Patreon shop.

Do you want to support the author, ?

Any payment this article earns will go directly to her!

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The only constant in my life has been feedback; sometimes, debilitating feedback. It has broken me so much that I am still picking up some scattered pieces of me. It has taken me a few years to understand that most of the feedback was useless and not about me, but the memory of the hurt is taking time to leave my cells.

The first time I received feedback was in my third grade, when I was interested in poetry recitation and my class teacher said, “Make sure you don’t spoil my name.” I was really confused as a seven-year-old, and before you, as a reader, start judging my teacher, I would like you to consider a time when you made someone’s interest about your ego, and about how you will appear to the world, instead of supporting them.

I had no precedence of having gone on stage in that school before that day, but she somehow thought it necessary to tell me how I should do, before I even tried. Luckily, that didn’t have a huge impact on me, because I did not understand it, and after that, I had several teachers who were mature enough to encourage my interests without putting themselves in the middle. And I never received any feedback from any of them, and I excelled at oration, acting, and recitations, and have no stage fright. I am also an educator.

I received feedback on my oration at home from my mother, who was quite good herself. Her feedback was based on emphasis on words and constantly encouraged me to try. Since I was interested, I learnt it, and in no time I was on my own. Then in the ninth grade, I received feedback from another teacher, who commented behind my back (I accidentally heard it), that I speak in a sing-song tune. What I felt bad about was not what she said, but that she said it behind my back, and she also said, “I don’t like how Megha speaks.”

The fact that I thought she liked me, but spoke behind my back, and didn’t like how I spoke, hurt me. By now, I had won several awards at the school and inter-school levels for oration and acting, so I wasn’t shaken, but it broke my trust. A couple of years later, the way I spoke naturally changed, and I recognized that I was much better when I didn’t have a tune while delivering dialogues.

Why do I even narrate this? It is because a lot of us do not know how to give feedback, let alone receive it. She was my teacher, and she had the power to help me understand what she was saying. She could have addressed it with me, and practiced it with me, and maybe I could have changed right then. But it is also possible that I could not have, because maybe I wasn’t ready to receive it, and then we would have been at the status quo.

Now, as an educator and a colleague, I am very aware when I am giving feedback. When I say now, I mean in 2025 literally, because there has been a learning curve. (I am definitely unable to apply this awareness in my personal zone, but I shall get into this later.) For the longest time in my life, I was imitating my teachers. The examples I quoted here are from school, but over the years I have had several teachers in college, in university, and in dance, music, Yoga, Vipassana, and Reiki.

I have had teachers who loved me and still do, but even amongst them there were some who would say, “You aren’t that good at writing poetry, you shouldn’t try”, or some who threw my classmates’ first photographs on SLR, out of the window yelling, “This is such crap”, that I was so scared to show my out-of-focus photo. And teachers who would come into the classroom and just insult everyone, saying, “You are all good-for-nothing!”

I am just stating teachers here, but I have parents, uncles, aunts, friends, who all want to “STATE THEIR TRUTH” or “SPEAK THEIR MINDS” about me because I was trying and doing something they were not. People who wouldn’t blink an eyelid to compare me with their children and be envious of who I am, and slide in comments, “Ah, that wasn’t so good, was it?”

Or my parents, who literally never waste a breath to truly and genuinely appreciate anything about me, because apparently it would get to my head if they said anything good. Of course, there were also amongst them; teachers, aunts, friends, an uncle, and adopted relatives who went over and beyond, and still do, to encourage my dance, my writing, and just me! I owe my life and my ability to pick my scattered pieces to those who built me up.

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And I am not sure if this is my story alone, because having lived in this world, I haven’t met many who know “WHO THEY ARE”, to be capable of giving feedback to anyone else. But having said that, when one is in a position to make choices - e.g., Curating art or tech, teaching, mentoring, or just working together- how does one ensure that we are enabling the people depending on us to reveal the best of them to us?

I realize that what I just stated is covering a lot of roles in life, and in any of the roles, it is important to remember that NO PERSON OR EXPERIENCE PRESENTS ITSELF, UNLESS IT IS NEEDED BY THE SOUL. So, irrespective of getting into the material realm of communicating by using words, it is important to communicate with the Spirit Mind (Concept taken from Hisami and Jeffrey Allen) using Ho'oponopono, Reiki, Vipassana, Prayer, or anything else. And usually the spirit mind addresses it way better than the material mind can.

But if we need to use words, the stated scenarios could be addressed in the following ways:

1. I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING: I only know what I have experienced and perhaps if I have managed to learn from it. But even then, I might be engaging with someone who is far more accomplished and insightful than I am, and I might not have developed the capacity to evaluate what they are doing or saying or displaying. I am in that position because of some past karmas of mine, that’s all. Just because I have a position, doesn’t mean I KNOW!

So how do I give feedback?

I personally, ask a question first:

1. What are you intending to communicate?

2. Then I say what I am getting out of the exhibit (Writing, dance, painting, music etc.)

3. I am sometimes able to pinpoint and say what pattern in the exhibit communicated something to me.

4. Then I give space to the person exhibiting to ask me questions or not.

5. I do give them to think about it and revise if they would like to, else it stays as is.

6. I wouldn’t deselect a piece because they didn’t take my feedback, but would deselect it if it isn’t the most effective in keeping with the vision that I, in whatever position, am trying to communicate, knowing FULLY WELL that I might be the one falling short, and not the exhibitor.

2. I CAN SPOT A BLINDSPOT IN SOMEONE I CARE ABOUT: There are times when a colleague or a friend or a relative you care about exhibits a pattern, and you know that if they just address that, they can get what they want. How do I give this feedback? It usually starts with a question, because I can’t give something that someone is not ready to receive.

Hence:

1. I notice something that you do, which seems to me to be an obstacle in your path to receiving what you want. Are you ready to hear me out? If they say yes, then speak it, or else, keep mum until they ask, or maybe they will never ask. But that is their choice.

2. If they say yes - I still remember that, that is MY PERCEPTION, not the truth, so if it resonates with them, they can receive it however they want to.

3. And if that were me, I would try to address my blindspot in A, B or C ways.

That’s it. And there can be no attachment to what they want to do about it, or any judgment about it.

3. I AM TRAINING SOMEONE IN A TECHNIQUE: (E.g., Dance, Writing, Code, Management, etc.) The problem usually here is respecting the human with you, and still teaching them something. Teaching someone always topples the equation, hence it is really important for the person in the trainer position to remember to engage with respect.

An example in yoga, let’s take Adhomukhashwanasana: The final requirement of the pose is a spinal stretch with elevated sit bones (or Ischia). But to achieve it, one needs arm and leg strength. There are trainers who will ask the trainees to do this pose and say, “No, no, not that way”, without ever assessing if the trainee has the arm for feet strength or without ever preparing their body for holding the pose.

This requires the trainer to have such intricate knowledge of the body, such that when they spot a person in the pose, they are able to recognize the weaknesses and the strengths, and enable the trainee with exercises to build that strength. Again, having done the job of assessing and communicating, there can be NO ATTACHMENT to how the trainee receives it. Sometimes repetition becomes key in enabling the mind of the trainee to receive feedback.

But we start with questions:

1. Where are you feeling pain or pressure in your body when you hold the pose?

2. How do you feel in it; do you want to release it immediately?

This allows the trainee to analyze their own posture and helps them get into a receiving mindset. When they respond with I feel pain or pressure in such and such place etc., it can help clarify my assessment as a trainer. Sometimes the trainee has no idea, because they have never looked at the body that way, so then the trainer can convey their assessment, ask the trainee to practice it for a week or so, and let them know if anything changes.

This is literally the way to give feedback in any scope that needs technique, of course, with a little modification in the context of the field.

4. I WANT TO GIVE PERSONALITY-BASED FEEDBACK: Someone said something or did something that isn’t in sync with you or the organizational direction. How do I give this feedback?

It still starts with questions:

1. I saw that you wrote/said/did this. I am not sure I understand the context fully. Could you explain the reason for doing it the way you did it?

2. Considering the worst-case scenario, the person says, “I have always done it that way, and hence I did it.” OR “I think that is the right way to do things.” Then I say WITHOUT JUDGMENT (because I don’t know that person’s experiences which have led them to believe that, that is the RIGHT way), “Okay. Would you be open to considering another way of doing things, and present that way?

3. Also, present the pros and cons of the person’s “RIGHT” way, and the pros and cons of the new way.

4. Give them a set time like a few weeks or a month or two to experiment with it and come back to you.

5. Then, assess if the person is the right fit for the organization or the team.

6. Sometimes, we are not in a position to decide who we work with, and we might encounter some unhealed egos who present themselves in direct opposition to us. At that point, it is best to resort to healing oneself. Either practice “Ho'oponopono” or go to a Reiki healer, pray, or meditate. The karmic energies between that person and me might be so strong that it is beyond the material mind to heal us.

5. I WANT TO GIVE FEEDBACK IN A RELATIONSHIP: This one is really tricky, and I haven’t figured out a way to engage with it with my material mind, because the unhealed ego is too intense in these scenarios to speak with compassion. I would just leave it at the healing step and try not to let the unhealed ego get into the mode of “fixing” things, which it itches to do.

Finally, I would like to state that most feedback comes from unhealed egos, from people who want to fix you and fix things. So most people will not be following the methods described in this article. But now that some of us have had a chance to read this, let us heal ourselves so much that we don’t NEED TO GIVE FEEDBACK and are able to GIVE LOVE to whoever or WHATEVER presents themselves or itself.

But then, how do we receive feedback from our unhealed selves and egos? (Coming soon! 🙂)

Disclaimer: This article only deals with “Criticism” as feedback. I, as the author, would like to note that people have made careers out of becoming critics of sports, arts, tech, etc. So in the world of material mind, such professions exist. And in popular parlance, the way to do it is to appreciate first and then criticize, the sweet-bitter-pill, or whatever it is called.

I remember the author Beatrice Culleton saying about their critic that her critics saw the writing as feminist, but she never intended her work to be read that way. Therein lies my personal opinion of the role of the critic, they see things not intended, hence most of the time it is the result of the unhealed ego going bonkers. And by writing this, I realize that I have dissed a profession! But kudos to those who make a living off it. Hopefully, the profession will die when we step into healing.

Secondly, our mind-body also gives feedback through pain, pleasure, moods, emotions, etc. It goes through phases and tries to communicate to us. That is feedback one must pay heed to, but to recognize that feedback and act from the healed ego, we again need to HEAL. And I don’t mean that we are broken, we just have memories, and like I said earlier, it takes some really deep breaths to gather one’s scattered self!

Love! Metta!

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A funeral

In a small town outside of Seattle, a funeral was announced and held, like so many that day. This one was for a boy, a boy of 19 years, who came from Colorado. A boy I knew.

Vik was a neighbor's son, whom I met after moving into the neighborhood several years ago; he was a freshman in high school then. I had only met with his parents a couple of times, initially when the 18-wheel moving truck showed up in front of our new-to-us house on a quiet street in Colorado Springs. Vik’s dad walked across the street, was friendly enough, and noted he was a Navy veteran. Our conversation resulted in us discovering we had served at the same hospital in Bethesda, albeit at different times.

Chores

Vik was responsible for snow shoveling his driveway and that of the neighbor, an older man with a wife who had suffered a stroke and, much of the time, attended to her needs. I was always out early with the snow since I had to get to the hospital early, and would see him out with a similar shovel pushing piling flakes from the sky off to the side. I’d occasionally help him with the neighbor’s driveway, which he’d acknowledge with a smileless nod, not turning off his headphones, which were constantly in his ears.

A couple of years after moving in, Vik’s parents separated, with a difficult and contentious divorce. I saw Vik at different times, when he was staying with his mom across the street, or when coming back from his father’s place, 15 miles away. There was strain on his face that year, and you could see he was haggard, with his long brown hair pulled back underneath a green baseball cap faded and frayed at the edges, and an omnipresent brown, stained Rolling Stones sweatshirt. I felt incredibly bad for him, but never had the chance to intercept him to see how he was doing or how he was faring with the stresses only youth endure, inflicted by elders.

Changes

However, several months later, I noted Vik was different. I saw him leaving his house early, with a white cook’s shirt on, blue Dickey pants, without the Stones sweatshirt. His mother had apparently moved back east, leaving Vik, now a junior in high school, alone in the house. A neighbor who knew his mother relayed that Vik was now working as a short-order cook at one of the local restaurants and was planning to go to a culinary academy once he finished at the local high school. I was happy for him, for finding something he could both enjoy and look forward to in the coming years. And indeed, the next time I saw him, he was dressed in the cook’s shirt and Dickeys, but had abandoned his hat, and had an intensity of expression as he got into the Chrysler minivan, which served as his transport.

The snow

One morning in January, we had gotten about six inches of snow the night before, and I dutifully had arisen to clear the driveway of the wet, not-so-usual Colorado champagne powder. I noticed Vik’s van was covered in snow, and then saw him come out of the garage, creating a silhouette of a cross from the outside lights, as he trudged to his car holding a shovel. He didn’t acknowledge me as he arrived at the back of his minivan. He shoveled only where the tire tracks would be, barely cleared off the windows, and got in, starting the car.

I watched him, anticipating he wouldn't make it past the tire tracks. And indeed, his small 15-inch tires began to slide once he hit the deeper snow. I walked over and saw Vik, his eyes staring straight ahead, almost in a trance. I knocked on the window twice, and finally, he turned his head, looking at me with wide eyes.

“I have to get to work. I don’t know what to do,” he said flatly.

“Ok, let’s get you some traction. Don’t move and I’ll be back,” I noted.

I grabbed some kitty litter from my garage and brought it back to the minivan. Vik had gotten out of the car and stared blankly at the front wheels. As I shoveled out the wheels both in front and back, I showed Vik how to lay down the kitty litter to provide traction both forward and back. He didn’t say a word, and continued the almost catatonic state, not moving. After finishing, I heard him almost whisper, “I don’t know what to do...I don’t know what to do...I don’t know what to do.”

I gently instructed him to get in the car, which was still running, and told him to shift the car in reverse to get him out of the rut he’d created in the snow. Once he’d done that, I told him to put the car in low and then accelerate to get momentum that would hopefully get him past the biggest drifts and subsequently into the main street, which was already somewhat plowed. Without response, he gently accelerated and then picked up speed, getting to the street and was on his way.

Relief

I was, of course, pleased I could help Vik, but was certainly concerned about his reaction to the stress. The Colorado sun came out later in the day, and by the time I’d come back from the hospital, the roads were easily passable. That evening, there was a knock on the door, and it was Vik. He’d never come to our house before, so I invited him in, but he only stood in the foyer.

“I wanted to thank you for your help this morning. If it hadn’t been for you, the restaurant wouldn’t have opened. My boss said I was the only one who made it in.”

I brushed off his thanks, and just noted I was happy he was able to get to his job.

“You don’t understand. I didn’t know what to do. When I don’t know, I freeze up; sometimes it can be like that for a long time. I was scared it was what was going to happen.”

“Vik, now you know how to handle these types of situations,” I said, gently. “You can think your way out if you give yourself a chance. If you run into things like this again, we’re just across the street.”

He shook my hand warmly, thanking me once again. All I could think about was he was a kid, alone in a world where his parents were miles away, dealing with issues that he might or might not be able to handle despite any outward appearance.

I only saw Vik a couple more times, and only in passing, but he’d smile and wave at me from his minivan; after his parents had sold the house, I never saw him again. I found out he’d moved to the Seattle area to attend culinary school, the choice of which was due to a girlfriend who was going to college in the same area.

Fruition

I had gotten back from work, from a day where it had been particularly challenging; within the last couple of hours before leaving, I had to treat three patients with significant substance abuse disorders who were continuing their usage despite being in the hospital multiple times from kidney failure, liver failure, stroke and the like.

My neighbor stopped me as I was walking into my house, and almost blurted out that Vik had died, and there would be a memorial service the next weekend for those who knew him locally.

I was stunned. The flood of memories came back, and I felt a pit in my stomach.

“What did he die of?” I asked, with my clinical facade.

“He died by his own hand,” said my neighbor. “He was depressed. It’s so sad.”

I thanked her for telling me, and went into my house, and stood in my foyer where Vik and I had stood months ago.

I was sick, so I had noted his state when he was stressed that time in the snow, and should have pursued this further to be sure his psychological state was being cared for. I was angry; I had treated patients that day who had abused drugs and came into and left out of the hospital countless times, only to come back in for self-inflicted pathologies. I was depressed that such a young life was snuffed out, for what reason or what fate that could have caused it unbeknownst to us.

I closed my eyes and breathed heavily. I realized this was Vik’s karma and my own coming together. That the universe was telling me that our compassion needs to extend to everyone in all circumstances, from repeat substance abusers to boys of 19, for all who suffer, including ourselves. And that perhaps some of our efforts need to extend further, particularly for those of us who might be trained to know our mental states can be fragile, and that we might be able to intervene. And while Vik had made a choice because he could no longer tolerate the strain of his circumstances, those of us who knew him might be able to live better because we can appreciate that we create our own fetters in this world, that we hold the key to release, and that we are lucky enough to know this.

And that we might see Vik in the clouds in the sky, or in a mountain flower, or in the champagne powder of Colorado, with a shovel in our hands.

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bohdi svaha.

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I recently lost my father. He died from metastatic bladder cancer, which progressed rapidly. One day, we were told he’d fallen in the middle of the night and couldn’t get up, and that he was in the hospital. I imagined a short stay until he stabilized. Within a few days, we were hearing he was transitioning into “comfort care” (hospice), and we’d better come as soon as possible.

In addition to the cancer which we were unaware of, he had also begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s over the last year or so, but other than some aphasia, grasping for words, and some memory lapses here and there, it wasn’t apparent how quickly it was progressing, at least from the remove of living in another state with the busy family life and often hectic schedule which comes with being married to a physician and raising two teenaged daughters. In hindsight and in closer proximity, it was clear his dementia was becoming more pronounced than we realized.

After the initial conversations, I’d booked a flight for a few weeks out, when family responsibilities and schedules aligned. When the next call came, we dropped everything and went. We made it in time, in a manner of speaking. He was still conscious and relatively aware, at least for brief periods.

What “making it in time” looked like was brief flashes of recognition of who was present, followed by his awareness inexorably drifting back to the soothing nature scenes playing on the television in his hospital room. He’d pretty much lost the ability to speak beyond a few mumbled phrases, mainly in response to his nurses’ questions. But what he lacked in words, he seemed to be trying to make up for in his facial expressions.

When he saw my eldest daughter, his eyebrows rose and he seemed to communicate, mainly through his expressions and gestures, “You’ve grown so tall!” After which his focus drifted back to the nature scenes in short order.

By the next day, he wasn’t really conscious anymore. We’d gone to dinner with my brother and his family, and then I’d returned to the hospital and sat with my father for several hours as it seemed his time was getting short. I was torn about staying with him that night. I vacillated until about 11:30 before deciding to get some sleep and return early in the morning. As I was getting ready to go the next morning, I got the call that he had just passed. I hadn’t made it in time.

In Daoism, death isn’t regarded as an ending, but simply the last visible change in a series of natural transformations. However, this doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. Grieving is also a natural part of life. As the book of Zhuangzi acknowledges, we all naturally mourn the loss of a loved one, but it also reminds us that when we reflect on their lives, we realize that we all go through many transformations that follow a natural course, like the seasons.

We are born and grow through the Spring of our lives. We reach maturity and our prime physical years in Summer. We reap the rewards of wisdom and experience gained over many years in Autumn, and we enjoy our hard-earned rest in the Winter of our lives when we leave our legacy and prepare for our final transformation back to the formless state we enjoyed before our birth. This isn’t necessarily seen as a leap of faith into the great unknown, but as a return or a homecoming.

We have a series of ponds in our neighborhood. I’m not sure if they have always been there or if the creek, which now flows mostly underground, was integrated into the storm drainage system in the area, or used to flow above ground in their place. I walk our dogs around them frequently and stop often, looking for wildlife. Especially for the otters, which took up residence last fall.

We spotted a family of four a few times in the waning days of autumn before they seemed to have disappeared over the winter. I’ve spotted at least one of them again this spring. Otherwise, I keep an eye out for the occasional muskrat or mink, blue or green heron, great egret, or painted turtle. From the woods around the ponds, a deer or three, or an owl, either great horned or barred, will sometimes appear. Recently,, I’ve been walking the ponds around sunset when the great egrets have been returning to the island they take up residence on for a few weeks every spring.

One evening at sunset I was struck by the silhouette of an empty bench facing the brilliant display of color reflected in the pond and the overwhelming wish that I could sit on that bench with my dad and have just one more conversation.

The conversation that so many of us wish we had. The one that we missed out on, whether because we didn’t arrive on time or that we simply didn’t take the initiative to have on countless occasions throughout our lives, or theirs. The one about what mattered most to that person who is now gone. The one that seems like it might somehow fill the hole left in our hearts.

Of course it wouldn’t. It is their absence that we feel, and that won’t be filled. And yet, as with so many things in life, their absence also brings them back to us in the form of long-forgotten memories. Somehow, the idea of them becomes more and more vivid after their departure. We inevitably take people for granted when they are still with us. Especially our parents.

For as long as we can remember, they’ve always been there, and so naturally a part of us assumes they always will. In a sense, they are, but not in a way we can see, hear, or touch. The Daode Jing says the Dao is invisible, inaudible, and formless. We understand it by observing its patterns and manifestations in the natural world around us and within us. This is also how we attempt to understand the impact of a life when someone we love has returned to the formless, through the patterns and manifestations they’ve left behind in the many lives they touched.

My father always loomed large in my consciousness. Both physically and mentally. He was a relatively tall man at six foot three. Only a couple of inches taller than I am, and yet for much of my life, his presence seemed much larger. But by the time we saw him in the hospital, he’d grown gaunt and spare, despite how his long frame filled the length of the bed.

He was born in 1940 and grew up in the small towns of the sagebrush and rimrock country of Eastern Oregon, playing basketball and football in high school and hunting deer with my grandfather. On the other hand, I have practically never met a team sport or activity I would participate in. He joined ROTC in high school with an eye on getting out of his small town and seeing the world, joined a fraternity in college, and ended up as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne. I grew up skateboarding and listening to punk rock, alienated and aimless. On the surface, we couldn’t have been more different, or at least that’s how I felt growing up.

As I’ve aged, and dare I say, matured (a little), I’ve come to see us as more alike than not. Our differences had more to do with the circumstances we grew up in rather than a difference in temperament. We both rebelled in our own ways. He rebelled against small town life and mentalities, and I rebelled against the corporate world he was a part of after the military, and which was all I could see growing up.

My image of him from childhood was of a man in a suit going off to catch the BART train to his office in San Francisco, or later driving his sports car off to work in one of the many places we lived. I caught glimpses of his childhood mainly through stories told by my grandmother or aunt, but never really connected with it through him.

That said, some of the decisions I made later in my own life, such as working on an organic farm, owed at least a little bit to the knowledge that he grew up in a farming and ranching community and that many generations of my family on both sides had done the same. We both forged our own paths in unexpected ways.

He also served as an example in many ways in which I’ve since come to emulate consciously or unconsciously. He was a voracious reader and the consummate lifelong learner. After leaving the corporate world, he returned to academia, getting a PhD in his fifties and starting a new chapter of his life as a college professor, teaching in various places in the US as well as a decade in New Zealand, before semi-retiring to the Oregon Coast. He had begun teaching online classes for colleges in the US while still in New Zealand, and continued to teach until just a few years ago.

In the early seventies, around the time I was born, we lived in Montreal. In the era of singer-songwriters like James Taylor, Jim Croce, and Gordon Lightfoot, he began writing songs as well. He was never the world’s greatest guitar player, but he learned to play well enough to play what he wanted and often brought out his guitar in the evenings after dinner or when friends came over to visit.

The soundtrack of my childhood is equal parts hearing those records on the big seventies turntable and my dad singing and playing his guitar. He even managed to get a song on the radio when a neighbor in Montreal introduced him to Marty Butler, the Canadian pop singer. The result was a song called Once Loved Woman, Once Loved Man recorded by Butler, which made it to number 27 on the Canadian pop charts in 1973. I didn’t follow in his musical footsteps, but both of my daughters love music, and one has recently started to learn some of his songs on piano from the sheet music we found tucked away in an old wooden chest my parents bought in Abu Dhabi in the mid-seventies.

I’ve never had his same discipline or focus or sense of direction in life. I’ve often felt like I’ve been wandering through life, for better or worse. As the only one of my siblings not to spend some time in the military, I sometimes think I might have benefitted from the discipline of it, but that shipped sailed long ago and I was more likely to have ended up in a monastery than the military, but an ill-conceived first marriage in college changed that early trajectory.

That said, my father did try to impart a sense of determination in us all, a sense that we could accomplish whatever we set out to do. He had a favorite quote which hung in his home office, long before the inspirational posters of rock climbers with quotes about reaching the top or cheesy pictures of mansions with three Lamborghinis telling us that, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Before the pervasiveness of search engines and social media, and the endless inspirational memes we have available now. It was a simple framed printout on plain white paper of a quote from Calvin Coolidge, entitled Press On.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

And really, if we are to boil life down to its essence, what else is there to do? Whatever life throws at you, persist. Press on. Keep going. Everything else is built from this simple lesson.

I’d forgotten about that quote for many years, only reminded of it after his passing, and yet I now realize I’ve spent much of my life searching for different ways to learn that same simple lesson over and over again. It’s a universally understood truth which many traditions have expressed in their own ways. In Daoism, one of the ways this lesson is taught is called the Three Hearts (sanxin). These three attitudes or mental qualities are trust, sincerity, and perseverance.

In Daoist practice, these are interpreted in terms of following our spiritual path. We must have trust in our teachers and the teachings; we must be sincere in our learning, and we must persevere in our practice. Of course, one of the keys to spiritual practice, whether we are following the Daoist path, the Buddhist path, or any other, is to bring our whole lives onto the path. In other words, we recognize that our daily lives and our spiritual practice are one and the same. We realize that we will be following our path in each moment, in each situation we find ourselves in, until we take our last breath.

When we extend these virtues to the rest of our lives, we trust in our families and communities, we are sincere in our interactions with others, and we practice perseverance in dealing with our daily responsibilities in life, whether that be dealing with the interpersonal drama of middle-schoolers or coworkers, or digging ourselves out of debt. Not to mention anything we hope to achieve beyond that, like building stronger community relationships, adapting to a changing climate or responding to the specter of fascism.

Life requires perseverance.

If we were able to have that conversation on that bench, I can’t imagine he’d have much more to add, other than to leave the world better than you found it, live a life you can be proud of, and spend it with those you love.

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In today’s world, we lost the concept of what makes us human beings

To me, a human being is a person who exists

Exist being, love

Love being, compassionate

Compassionate being, weak

Weak being, strong

Strong being, remembrance

Remembrance being, purpose

The purpose being, nature

Nature being, creation

Creation being, human

Human beings, existent

~~InYah~~

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If life were an Instagram reel, we would all be millionaires by 25, in perfect relationships, drinking green smoothies on Mediterranean balconies.

But the real world usually tells us to slow down and wait. We wait for recognition, for results, for meaning. The notion of ‘scrubbing a lot of debris to extract gold’ is not just a mining metaphor; it is a universal principle that applies to every domain where greatness is pursued.

In a world that celebrates instant gratification, the virtues of patience and persistence often feel antiquated…like dial-up internet or fax machines.

Yet, just as gold miners must separate through mounds of dirt to find precious metal, individuals must endure setbacks, boredom, and dead ends to achieve lasting success.

This article explores the psychological, behavioral, and even evolutionary underpinnings of patience and argues that enduring the debris of life, uncertainty, failure, and discomfort is necessary for transformation. Along the way, we examine scientific research, real-life examples, and toss in a few philosophical chuckles for good measure.

So why are we so impatient? And how can we reclaim the power of patience in a world built for speed?

The Science of Patience: More Than Just Waiting

Patience is not just a moral virtue handed down by stoic grandparents; it is a cognitive and emotional regulation skill that influences decision-making, goal achievement, and mental well-being.

According to research published in the journal Emotion, patient people experience lower levels of depression and have better life satisfaction [1]. From an evolutionary standpoint, patience was crucial. Our ancestors who could delay gratification, waiting for prey, seasons, or the right conditions, had higher survival rates. Today, the prey may be a book deal or startup funding, but the biology remains.

There is a famous quote: “Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active. It is concentrated strength.” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton.

The Modern Dilemma: Microwave Culture, Crockpot Rewards

We live in an age where buffering for more than two seconds makes us consider switching Wi-Fi providers. Apps promise six-pack abs in 30 days and language fluency in 10 minutes daily. While these promises are tempting, most meaningful accomplishments come with a more extended gestation period, often messy and nonlinear.

In a landmark study known as the Marshmallow Test, psychologist Walter Mischel found that children who could delay eating one marshmallow to receive two later tended to have better life outcomes as adults, higher SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, healthier relationships, and lower addiction rates [2], i.e. eat one marshmallow now, and you get sugar. This means that you wait a bit and get a metaphor for success.

Scrubbing the Debris: Real-World Applications of Patience

1. Creative Work: The First Draft is Usually Garbage

Ask any author, artist, or composer; the first attempt is rarely gold. Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The first draft of anything is [expletive].” Creativity is an iterative process that involves sorting through clichés, weak ideas, and false starts. Only through this debris do the original insights emerge.

2. Relationships: From Awkward Small Talk to Deep Bonds

Whether friendship, marriage, or professional collaboration, meaningful relationships require uncomfortable conversations, vulnerability, and time. If you want gold, you have got to endure the dirt of miscommunication and misunderstandings.

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3. Innovation: The 10,000-Hour Rule and Beyond

Malcolm Gladwell’s popularization of the “10,000-Hour Rule” is based on research by Anders Ericsson conducted in 1993, emphasizing that mastery comes from extensive, deliberate practice. Whether in chess, music, or programming, you cannot hack your way to brilliance; you can only practice your way there.

Why Patience Feels So Hard and How to Get Better at It

Impatience often stems from uncertainty: What if I wait and there is no reward? This anxiety triggers the amygdala (the brain’s fear center), making patience feel like a gamble.

But here is the twist: studies show that believing in the process improves endurance. A paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people with a growth mindset (believing effort leads to improvement) were significantly more persistent in long-term tasks [4].

Strategies for Cultivating Patience:

• Reframe the wait: See it as preparation, not punishment

• Chunk the process: Break long-term goals into micro-tasks

• Track progress: Visibility over time increases motivation

• Celebrate small wins: Because gold dust still counts as gold

The Humor in Hustling: Laughing While You Wait

Life’s ‘debris’ moments, failing a test, losing a job, burning dinner, are universal. And often hilarious, in hindsight. Humor researcher Rod Martin points out that laughter helps regulate negative emotions and sustain long-term goals [5]. So, when your life feels like you are scrubbing endlessly with no glint of gold, remember, even the best comedy comes from painful buildup.

Case Study: Thomas Edison and the Invention of the Lightbulb

Edison tried over 1,000 different materials before finding a filament that worked. When asked if he felt like a failure, he famously said:

“I have not failed. I have just found 1,000 ways that won't work.”

That’s the gold miner spirit; keep digging, even when you are knee deep in metaphorical mud.

Delayed Gratification is the Gold Standard

We often want life’s answers in a tweet, its success in a viral post, its meaning in a meme. But the reality is: the gold is buried. It takes effort to scrub through distractions, disappointments, and doubts. Yet those willing to keep going, those who see value in the process, not just the prize, are the ones who ultimately succeed.

So, keep scrubbing. Not because the work is glamorous, but because the glitter you seek lies just beneath the grit.

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References

[1] Eysenck M. W., Derakshan N., Santos R. and Calvo M. G., “Anxiety and cognitive performance: attentional control theory.” Emotion (Washington, D.C.), vol. 7, issue 2, pp. 336–353, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.336

[2] Shoda Y., Mischel W., and Peake P. K., “Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions.” Developmental Psychology, vol. 26, issue 6, pp. 978–986, 1990. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.26.6.978

[3] Ericsson K. A., Krampe R. T. and Tesch-Römer C., “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.” Psychological Review, vol. 100, issue 3, pp. 363–406, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363

[4] Walton G. M. and Cohen G. L., “A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 92, issue 1, pp. 82–96, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.82

[5] Mayer R. E., “Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning.” In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning, Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–48, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816819.004

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A Beginner’s Guide to Taoism by Patrick Stewart

Format: PDF

Date of publication: 2024

Size: 113 pages, 6.11 MB

Genre: Faith and Spirituality

REVIEW

“A Beginner’s Guide to Taoism” by Patrick Stewart is just that. This fascinating perception of the way of the Dao, also referred to as the Tao, is easy to read and an introduction to Taoism or Daoism. Patrick gently weaves wisdom from Lao Tzu’s works about the Dao with his personal memoirs. Everything is always changing, and that is the nature of things.

The Guide looks at the phrases “Tao” and “Dao.” For me, the word “Dao” has always resonated. This Beginner’s Guide practically illustrates the way of the Tao / Dao through being open-minded, trusting the natural flow, and through very useful breathwork.

It is a short read at about 100 pages of text, but is invaluable by capturing the flowing eternal essence of the Tao or Dao.

The Tao / Dao is sort of a template or blueprint for manifestation. Patrick makes it clear that it is about potential, possibilities, deep acceptance, positivity, and the realisation of choices for unity.

The author reveals real personal physical trials and takes us through his own story from being a boy to adulthood. Finding a Yin – Yang symbol and then the “Tao of Pooh” were tools teaching him the importance of softness. Strength comes from acceptance, a zoomed out perspective, a mind that is clear and neutral, and is about positive-minded resilience.

This is a parallel to humanity and groups of living beings growing up or changing over eons of time. I believe that humankind is realizing its connectedness more and will flow toward peace and unity, despite appearances. The natural ebb and flow of what can’t be defined, the Tao / Dao, lends to this.

What comes through this guide-book is the freshness and neverending energies of the Tao / Dao. Even as we age and the passage of time brings us challenges, we can still embrace the natural forces. The Guide encourages us to not to hold onto our worries so much, but to see and find opportuntities for growth.

Patrick explores some lines from the text of Lao Tzu’s “Tao de Ching,” bringing his own lived meanings to them. The true nuance of the famous saying, “go with the flow” is well illustrated by Patrick in this book.

It’s about being happy and safe “in your own skin,” and letting your true nature flow. It’s about finding yourself and making sense of things your way. It’s about allowing others to be themselves, and respecting Earth.

And it’s important to do this while accepting things as they are. The way of the Tao is about not overly pushing against something, i.e not resisting things you don’t want, in terms of ignoring them. Deep acceptance doesn’t mean agreeing with something. It helps you have a clear and neutral mind to take the next right faith step to fulfil a goal or move forward.

This little Guidebook is like water, gently flowing into the mind of the receptive reader, as you pay attention and digest the information in it slowly or re-read it.

The more times I read it, the more I get from it: about unity, working together, and ultimately about embracing that we are no-thing and every-thing at the same time. The Tao or Dao is truly a transcendent essence that one can feel with an expanded consciousness, if they want to.

Patrick’s journey and grasp of the Tao / Dao nicely illustrates how this transcendence is used in the practical lives of human beings. There are some pearls of wisdom in this book, which have changed my approach on how I live consciously. For example, the Tao / Dao is not moral. We are taught to brand people as either good or bad. But there’s another way. Treat people as well as you can.

In summary, the philosophy in the book and the groundedness of Patrick’s anecdotal illustrations of the Tao / Dao is satisfying and absorbing. This book is sure to support many readers, with great and enduring information for those who know nothing or little about Taoism / Daoism.

You can get a copy of “A Beginner’s Guide to Taoism” from the links below.

Buy the book on Gumroad

But the book on Amazon

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I watched a baseball game yesterday, and a player hit a home run. As he crossed home plate, he pointed up, and I would assume he was pointing up to God and thanking God for the home run.

I wondered if he’d been praying to hit a home run.

Of course, he may not have been thanking or acknowledging God at all. He might have been pointing to a family member or friend who had passed on.

“Hey, thank you very much, sis!”

“That one was for you, Grandma!”

“I will hit a homer every home game for you, dear cousin.”

But let’s assume it was a thank-you to God for providing the player with supernatural power to hit that home run.

Here’s a philosophical question:

Why did God favor the home-run hitter, not the pitcher?

Maybe the pitcher thought he could pitch 27 outs without divine intervention. Could that be?

Picture a scenario where the pitcher is an atheist and the batter, a devoted Christian, says, “God, you said ask and you will receive, seek and you will find. I am asking now for the power to hit a home run. Thank you!”

So, just like that, he hits one out of the park.

But wait, can you imagine a world where every person who believed in God and followed all his rules to the letter received every favor asked of God?

Would every person be rich and live to be 212? That’d be okay, I suppose, since everyone could pray for a never-ending food supply, no sickness, no war, and more land to build houses on for all the people who live 140 years past their life expectancy.

However, let’s raise the stakes in this batter versus pitcher scenario.

Suppose the pitcher, before facing the batter, prayed, “God, let me strike him out, so I can continue thriving in my career. I need to keep my salary so that I can support my family. Please allow me to strike this player out. Another home run means demotion; career’s done.”

What if, before that inning, the batter prayed, “Dear Lord, I must hit a home run to secure my spot in the lineup and thrive this season, to keep earning my salary and avoid being cut from this team. I need this for my family.”

Who does God favor?

“Okay, fellas, I’m giving you both a jolt of supernatural ability, but you must use your free will to execute that power better than your opponent. Got it? Also, I’d appreciate a show of humility!”

Maybe God favored both, but the batter focused more, resulting in success on that pitch. The players needed to supplement the abilities God gave with practice, determination, and faith.

God can’t control every aspect of our lives, can he?

If he did, we wouldn’t be human.

In summary, it’s terrific that the player thanked any entity. I think it’s wonderful that he doesn’t take all the credit.

Maybe he was saying, “I am not bigger than God, nor am I more significant than any other person. I am very fortunate to be in the batter’s box, wearing a Major League uniform on a beautiful spring day. I’m thankful I could see spin and movement on a 95-mph baseball. I appreciate that my skills enabled me to hit that ball with my wooden stick and make it fly over the fence. I thank God for that. I thank life for that.”

I like that idea. I like the idea that people give credit to God. Why not? I thank God every day for giving me a new day to live.

I’m grateful for my life.

Imagine if certain leaders, who don’t, showed humility and graciousness toward their position and the powers that come with it.

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Trust is something we usually associate with good judgment. We trust people because we believe they’re trustworthy. That seems obvious. It’s also wrong—at least, it’s wrong if we think that trust must always be rational.

In this recent paper, I argued that irrational trust not only exists, but also plays a meaningful role in how we live, relate to others, and make sense of ourselves. And, if we’re serious about understanding trust, philosophically or practically, we need to take these messy, irrational cases seriously.

A Quick Tour of Rational Trust

Something like the following is pretty widely accepted in the philosophy of trust.

• I trust you to do X.

• I believe that you will do X, and I have good reasons to believe that.

• My belief that you will do X is part of what makes this trust rather than mere hope or wishful thinking.

On this account, trust is a kind of rational gamble. I might be wrong, but my decision is backed by evidence, expectations, and a history of reliability. When it goes well, trust makes social life possible—at home, at work, in public. When it goes badly, we feel betrayed or let down.

But what if we sometimes trust in ways that aren’t backed by good reasons?

Meet Alex and Tarik

Consider the versions of the two cases I explore in the paper.

Alex is generous to a fault. He lends money to people who repeatedly fail to repay him. He trusts them anyway. His friends urge him to stop. He says things like “I just believe in people” or “I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.” But his belief isn’t backed by any new evidence. In fact, all the evidence points the other way. Still, Alex keeps trusting.

Next let’s consider Tarik, an imagined contemporary of Immanuel Kant. Tarik, we can imagine, believes that the philosopher Immanuel Kant takes a daily walk through the Königsberg park precisely in order to reassure him, Tarik, that all is well with the world. Tarik knows Kant doesn’t know him personally. He knows that Kant takes this walk as a matter of habit. And yet, Tarik believes that Kant’s continued commitment to this daily routine is for him. It reassures him. It grounds his trust that things are fundamentally OK.

Now, in this case, Tarik’s belief is clearly irrational. He has no good reason to think that Kant, living in a different time and place—and acting for his own reasons—has Tarik in mind. Tarik may even admit the oddity of his belief. But he still trusts in Kant’s walk. More precisely, he trusts in the meaning he has attached to it. The walk becomes a stabilising ritual. A signal of order. A personal anchor, however fantastical.

This isn’t trust based on evidence. It isn’t grounded in any realistic assessment of Kant’s intentions or capacities. But it’s trust all the same—shaped by dependence, expectation, and a kind of psychological or existential reliance. It’s irrational, but it plays a real role in how Tarik orients himself in the world.

In both cases, we’re dealing with what we can call irrational trust. Trust that persists in the face of the evidence.

But Is It Still Trust?

Some might say that what Alex and Tarik are doing doesn’t count as trust at all. It’s just misplaced hope, delusion, or naiveté. But I think that’s too quick.

At its core, trust isn’t simply the accuracy of the beliefs that support it. It’s the structure of the relationship. We can explore some characteristics of trust.

• A person takes a stance of dependence on another.

• They expect something from that other, and they base their behavior on that expectation.

• They open themselves to the risk of being let down, betrayed, or disappointed.

Both Alex and Tarik meet these criteria. They’re vulnerable, they expect, and they act accordingly.

So yes, it’s still trust. It’s just not rational trust. And that distinction matters.

Why This Matters in Everyday Life

This might all seem a bit abstract. But it has consequences because:

1. Because People Do It All the Time

One reason to take irrational trust seriously is that it happens more often than we’d like to admit.

Think of:

• Parents who keep trusting an adult child struggling with addiction, even when the evidence says not to.

• Employees who keep giving their employer the benefit of the doubt, despite repeated letdowns.

• Citizens who trust political figures against their own best judgment.

These aren’t fringe cases. They’re woven into the fabric of everyday life. People trust for reasons that aren’t fully justifiable. They still do it. Whether they should is another matter!

2. Because It Tells Us Something About Human Values

We don’t just trust because of rational calculation. We trust because we care. Because we want things to work out. Because we hope people can be better. Because we don’t want to give up on someone. And yes, because it’s easier than facing the pain of withdrawal.

If trust were always rational, it wouldn’t capture the full range of these human motivations. Recognizing irrational trust helps us see that trust is often an expression of values, not just a response to facts.

3. Because It Has Consequences—Sometimes Good, Sometimes Bad

Here’s the tricky part. Irrational trust isn’t just “bad trust.” It can lead to poor outcomes. But it can also sustain relationships that need space to heal or grow. Trusting someone again after they’ve hurt you is risky. It may not be fully rational. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to do it sometimes.

That means we can’t judge trust solely by whether it’s justified. We also have to look at what it enables, what it expresses, and what it risks.

Some Takeaways

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Here are a few things I think are worth holding onto, whether you’re in leadership, education, policy, or just trying to make better sense of trust in your own life.

Takeaway 1: Not all trust is rational—and that’s ok.

Understanding that trust can be irrational doesn’t mean endorsing every instance. It means acknowledging a fuller picture of how trust operates in real life.

Takeaway 2: Irrational trust is still real trust.

It carries emotional and moral weight. It can be betrayed. It can backfire. But it also reveals what matters to people, even when the odds are against them.

Takeaway 3: Pay attention to what irrational trust is doing.

Ask: What purpose is this trust serving? Is it preserving hope? Avoiding pain? Holding space for something better? These questions help us respond with empathy—not just critique.

Wrapping Up

Irrational trust may seem like a philosophical curiosity. But it’s also a psychological reality, a social force, and a source of both risk and resilience. In a world where trust is easily, understanding the full range of how and why people trust is more important than ever.

If you’re interested in exploring these themes further, then let me know. I’m a trust-nerd, through and through and happy to take requests!

And if you’ve ever trusted someone even when you knew you probably shouldn’t—you’re in good company. I think we all have.

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I’ve got a Substack newsletter, and I publish five articles every week for free (of course, you can pay if you’d like to).

Monday-Wednesday - Spirituality/Psychology.

Thursday - A short story.

Friday - “Good News Friday,” a round-up of the good news stories over the last week.

Today, though, I want to look at the paradoxical nature of Wu Wei, that great cornerstone of Taoist philosophy/spirituality. I hope you enjoy the article.

Wu wei.

Two wee syllables, soft as a rumored rustle through rushes, and yet it’s enough to confound your average overcaffeinated productivity guru into a frothing existential naval-gazing session.

If this so-called “non-doing” is meant to be easy, why does it feel like pulling teeth with a tuning fork? Why does relaxing feel like death warmed up when you’ve spent your life chasing tail-lights and to-do lists?

Because, dear reader, wu wei isn’t just “going with the flow.” It’s becoming the flow. And that’s not something you can workshop, whiteboard, or bloody well monetize, though plenty have certainly tried.

The Tao doesn't sell online courses. But, if it did, you can be sure the checkout till wouldn’t open and accept payment.

First: what the hell is it?

It ain’t idleness. It ain’t sloth. And it sure as sin isn’t that half-arsed, soy-latte version of surrender preached by burnt-out tech bros who fled to Bali after tax authorities started digging into their accounts.

Wu wei is the art of doing without doing. Action without friction. Deed without the stench of desperation. Like a cat landing on all fours, or your grandmother making stew without a recipe, every movement precise, yet not one ounce of strain.

It’s the opposite of micromanaging your own existence. It’s nature operating as itself, unbuggered by your anxious flustering and fiddling.

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Why’s it so bloody difficult?

Because we, the noble fools that we are, or at least think that we are, are addicted to interfering.

To control. To pluck at the strings of our petty little puppeteered lives. We're like souped-up drunks looking up at the starry sky and trying to steer them, hollering instructions at the moon in the co-pilot seat.

We don’t trust the current of the river, because we’re afraid of where it might take us. And so we row. Row, row, row your boat, row against the flow.

We row with bleeding and callused hands and call it virtue. And when the boat flips, we blame the river, call in the lawyers, and try to sue it.

The paradox? The more you strive for effortlessness, the more you make a pig’s ear of it. It's like trying to be spontaneous with a checklist. Like scheduling an epiphany for next Thursday, sometime between the dog’s vet appointment to have his ears waxed and the eldest kid’s karate lesson would be optimal.

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Your ego wants no part in this

God bless its sweaty little mitts, the ego wants to “achieve” wu wei. It wants credit for surrender. It wants to humblebrag its way into enlightenment with a LinkedIn post, a smug grin, and maybe even a Udemy course.

But the Tao, you already know this, don’t you, cannot be captured. Not in language, not in strategy, not even in curvy Instagram captions with cherry blossoms and fake Lao Tzu quotes.

It mocks your schemes. It dashes your formulas. It whispers, “Cease.” And then, it flows on regardless.

The way I see life now, I tell myself that I’m not the author. I’m the ink. And the Tao’s pen has no master.

“Grindset” meet Tao-set

Let us pause for a moment to address the cult of hustle, the 21st-century apostles, monks, and nuns of burnout, those weary-eyed prophets of YouTube, complete with ring-lights-reflected-in-their-pupils, manifestation vision boards, and sleep deprivation.

To them, wu wei is heresy.

You mean don’t optimize your mornings like a military operation? You mean don’t crush it, kill it, hack it, slay it, scale it, or whatever testosterone-addled verb is trending?

No. You don’t crush the moment. You coincide with it. You meet the world as it is, not as your marketing deck says it ought to be.

The Tao doesn’t hustle. It meanders and wanders and rambles with the sublime confidence of a drunk poet who knows he’ll still end up exactly where he needs to be.

How to not-do wu wei (badly)

Try this tonight.

Lie on your back and attempt to “let go.” Really go for it. Grip your jaw. Frown. Yell “I am letting go!” at the ceiling like the absolute lunatic you know you are. Observe how your very effort gums up the gears of grace.

You cannot will yourself into spontaneity. You cannot schedule surrender. Wu wei arrives when the scaffolding of the studiously structured self collapses. When the actor forgets the role and becomes the character. When the dancer disappears, and only the dance remains.

And no, try as you might, you can’t fake it, either. The Tao sees through performance the way a flame sees through paper.

What does it look like, then?

It looks like:

• The blacksmith who’s forged so long he no longer thinks, only swings.

• The child who builds a sandcastle, then laughs when it falls.

• The lover who listens instead of preparing their next quip.

• The heron that lands without calculation, and startles nothing.

It’s not about doing nothing. It’s about nothing doing you. It’s a surrender so complete that even the word surrender dies of embarrassment.

So why bother?

Because the alternative is madness.

Because the cult of self-exertion will wring you dry and call it success.

Because if you don't unshackle yourself from the tyranny of effort, you will die measuring your worth in imaginary metrics, chasing horizons that recede as you approach.

Wu wei is not a technique.

It’s a remembering. A peeling away. A coming home to the strange and ancient rhythm that was there before you even had a name.

And here’s the greatest paradox of them all: while you were brooding for it, the Tao, like silence, was never absent. You simply couldn’t hear it beneath the bluster and blathering of your bewildered brain.

Paddy's Daily Newsletter

I’m Paddy Murphy — a counselor, teacher, and writer with over twenty years of experience helping people face the world without losing their soul. If this piece stirred something in you — if you’re tired of being told to switch off your feelings in order to keep up — I can help you reconnect with what matters. Not as a guru. Not as a brand. Just as someone who believes empathy is still worth fighting for.

If you want to talk things through, I offer a free 30-minute discovery call.
If you want more of this kind of writing — psychology, mental health, technology, philosophy, and the occasional digital heresy — you can sign up for my newsletter.

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Greetings!

My name is and I’m the creator of ‘The Daoist Online.’

As children, we learn everyone is different, but that’s only half true because we are also the same. Everybody struggles and overcomes and everyone has a unique story to tell. The Daoist Online (TDO) is for everyone.

If you have ever suffered through heartache, struggle, or loss I want TDO to be where you find answers. A friend told me to celebrate the small victories in life, so I want this to be where we can all celebrate those victories together. A community where politics, race, religion, and faith doesn’t matter.

A safe haven where everybody listens, communicates thoroughly, and is interested in answers that don’t match theirs.

To all of you who have been with us since the beginning in 2022, thank you for sticking with us. For those of you who are new, welcome! But remember, this a community-written newsletter so we need your help to make TDO amazing!

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