Tao
Science is fact
Religion is faith
Magic is perception
Know these boundaries to discover what lies beyond.
What is Tao?
The Tao cannot be described, yet a person will express it simply by being alive.
It is possible to list definitions from the dictionary, from various documents. Each definition: a set of words echoing reality. Living to the Tao is not a summarization found within the mathematics of word play. Poetry, philosophy, literature all offer only helpful guidance but never the actual Tao. A simple analogy would be swimming under the water. It’s possible to read about snorkeling or diving, but until diving under the water, feeling the pressure, experiencing undersea life, having lungs squeeze outside-in yet feeling inside-out from pushing down as deeply as you can dive, only to resurface to feel a sudden gasp of wet air… all of this is an idea approximated by a reader but only grasped by the experiencer. When the last line was read by a friend of mine, she said: “but when you snorkel the pressure doesn’t feel like that”. Surprised, I asked her if she ever dove to about 25 feet while snorkeling, she said no, at which moment we both realized how personal the experience becomes due to differences in the path taken. This example touches why discovering the Tao is a personal, living experience.
The key to writing and reading this comes down to the following chain of thought: Words are never about the Tao, words are always about us. Sometimes to understand ourselves, we need to write aloud a personal truth as it is human nature and hence the Tao to do so. Reflections in this document become one possible outline to help myself be… myself while giving others a chance to comment and contemplate their own personal situation. This then becomes a circular process between author, reader, and everyone involved to help define and discover their own Personal Tao.
So
Move, tumble, stumble, spin poetry, swirl, dance.
The Personal Tao is about self-discovery.