I was having a conversation the other day with a young man (he is 40 years my junior) about what “Let it flow” has meant over the course of my lifetime. He is newly married—they just had a baby—and is a visionary, a brilliant marketer, a community builder, and a psychonaut who has for years researched and experimented with all the consciousness-altering substances that he could find.
Currently he has found himself at the center of a community, a tribe really, that wants to manifest … something … to take positive part in the obvious spiritual evolution happening today in our world. He is frazzled. Not only is he in the sleep-deprivation circumstance of being a new father, but he has clients and people gravitating to him, relying on him to help corral a vision of a transcendent community. Skeptics might say, “pretty woo woo” stuff, but to my friend the pull is as real as the need to eat or use the bathroom.
There is plenty of evidence, if one is paying attention, that our world is demanding change, and change always happens through individuals who are called into that service through their dreams or circumstances or synchronicity. It is, at times, a perilous endeavor. One has to learn to distinguish between what wants to happen and what one’s ego wants to happen. Not an easy task sometimes. We tend not to realize what’s happening until we are exhausted, feeling like we’ve replaced Sisyphus in the task of pushing a rock up the hill for the thousandth time.
Our egos are too small to carry the weight of cosmic transformation. However, if something truly is wanting to be born into consciousness and action in this world, the needed energy must come from something outside of our sense of self. If the urges are truly a “calling,” this is where understanding is crucial. The term wu wei comes from ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. It is the perfect embodiment of the term “Let it flow” that entered my life and seduced me in my late teens.
It means living within the natural flow of life rather than trying to make something happen. It is sometimes translated as “doing nothing” or “effortless action.” It is the recognition that if a life force larger than “I” wants to birth something into our reality, by putting myself in tune with it, the energy necessary to midwife something is made available to do so.
One experience I had many years ago taught me about this. I very much wanted to start a men’s group, a regular meeting between mature and spiritually evolving men to share their personal struggles, triumphs, emotions and other life experiences, and by doing so, help and encourage each other to live more confidently and to feel supported. I sent out invitations every week, prepared food and the space in which to meet, suggested themes for conversation,
and so on. A half dozen weeks into the project I began to feel like it was becoming a burden. So, I asked if some other man in the group would volunteer to host the next meeting. Zero response. The whole project collapsed. I understood then that my sense of pride, of wanting to be a leader and creator of something—my ego’s desire—couldn’t manifest something that didn’t want to happen.
And so, my advice to my young friend was this: Make sure you’re not being caught up in your own egoistic desire to be a leader and manifester of this new community you’re caught up in creating, even if everyone else projects upon you that vision and responsibility. One must separate one’s pride, one’s hope for a specific outcome, and find out if something larger than yourself wants it to happen. It won’t happen by force of will alone. This is the art of wu wei.
Learning to live within the boundaries of this ancient wisdom takes practice, intuition, and a willingness to surrender, like learning to swim with the river’s current rather than against it. It requires developing trust in the unseen forces that lie within, emerging perhaps when we feel the little electric current that runs through our torso, raising goosebumps on our arms and neck when we’re introduced to an idea or a project. Our body has a direct connection to the vast reserves of knowledge lying beneath our conscious mind.
As we learn to mine those reserves, to listen to our body and become aware of how synchronicities often present us with a mirror of our inner world, our life can become a continual adventure that leads us in ways of which we never could have imagined.
So, remember these three words, Let It Flow. They are key to opening doors unseen by the conscious mind.
Happy trails.