The Way of the Tao is the way of water seeking its own level, which has nothing to do with what water wants. Water doesn’t want anything. Water just does what its circumstances call for. This is the First Lesson of the Tao: What does wanting know? What is being asked of us? Here, now? What is called for? Where is the flow of our life taking us? What does that have to do with what we want? Where does wanting come from? What is the source of our wanting?
To what extent is wanting driving our boat on its path through the sea? How does our path through the sea exhibit its own drift and flow? Are we aligned with the drift and flow of our life? Or, are we engaged in a daily struggle to force our life to go where we want it to go? Who is in charge of our life?
Does our life know more about where it needs to go than we do? What are we built to do? What is our life designed to do? Are we following the Way that is natural for us? Are we imposing our way upon the Way of life that is natural for us? Who is in charge of our life? Are we aligning ourselves with our life’s drift and flow or imposing our will upon our life?
The Tao requires us to be aligning ourselves with our own drift and flow and not imposing our will on the how, when, where, what of our life. How are we doing with that? Are we here, now on the strength of our own will and desire, or through being led by the drift and flow of our life? And, if it is by way of a mixture of the two, what is the ratio of the mixture? We are here, now by virtue of our saying yes or no to the choices that brought us here. Were those yes’s and no’s the product of will and desire or of drift and flow?
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