The force that centers us, grounds us, balances us, harmonizes us, directs us, guides us, has been called the Tao at work in our life for thousands of years.
We can think of the Tao as the flow of life and being. As that which moves all life and every thing. As “circumstances begetting circumstances,” as the old Taoists put it.
Being at one with the Tao is being at one with ourselves, and each other throughout the planet. But. We cannot achieve oneness with Tao by thinking about it. By striving to realize it. To make it happen. Realization is simply waking up to it. We roll over and there it is.
In this sense, Oneness with the Tao is like waking up without the aid of an alarm clock. In this sense, Tao is like Enlightenment in that both can be realized but they cannot be attained. They can be realized but not acquired. They are like seeing what we are looking at. Looking does not produce seeing. I can look at my watch to see what time it is, but I may not see what I am looking at, and have to look again.
We become enlightened, awakened by relaxing into our life, into life. Not-wanting, not-striving, not-trying, just breathing, just walking, just sitting, just being. Just doing what is called for, where, when and how it is called for.
When chopping wood, we chop wood. When taking a shower we take a shower. We meet each situation as the situation needs to be met, situation after situation. When we read the paper while eating breakfast, we read the paper while eating breakfast.
And life carries us along through the day without our being deliberately conscious about shifting roles throughout the day, now I am reading the paper, now I am eating breakfast. And we do what needs to be done by meeting the day as the day needs to be met.
No striving, no forcing, no making anything be more than it is, out of place, out of time, out of step. Tao. Enlightenment. Awakening. Here, now.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 
That is as stunning as some of your magnificent sunsets and, the more I ruminate on how that structure came to be, the more breathtaking it becomes.
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I would like to have witnessed the evolution of matter over the long stretches of time it has taken for everything to be as it is, and will be. Everything is becoming something else as we watch. The Buddhist have a word, “Bardo,” for the space between stages of events, or “circumstances begetting circumstances.” To attach “meaning” to any of it is to ignore that all of it is changing before our eyes but we are only seeing the briefest blink of how things “really are.” And, for me, this realization is breathtaking, and sad, in the sense that my idea of things that are good and worthy ought to last as they are forever, and I am left with cherishing them as though they will, knowing they won’t. Nostalgia is the closest I can come to “forever.”
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Yes, you captured my wonderment exactly!
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