“He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day's work.”
-Tao Te Ching, 50

This does not mean to exhaust yourself, to force things or to interfere; rather, just the opposite. Consider the text that comes just before this:

“The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold onto:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn't think about his actions;
they flow from the core of his being.”

To hold nothing back is, therefore, to flow through life with a heart and mind as open as the sky; instantly and fully accepting everything that comes and goes without resistance. This is the undoing of illusion, the settling toward truth, the experience of ongoing joy and the alignment with true strength.

“When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way.”
-Tao Te Ching, 48

We may believe that we have the power to change the world—and that it can be done through attacking evil, by not accepting that which feels wrong, by not forgiving the wrong-doers, by judging, by hiding our true selves and by conforming. This is weakness.

“Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done. The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.”
-Tao Te Ching, 29

The problem is not that people don't care enough to save the world; rather, the problem is that too many people are messing things up by believing they can.

When you think of “I”, what exactly are you referring to? Are you the name assigned to you by your parents? What significance is found in those letters and sounds?

Does “I” refer to your life situation or possessions? What happens when this changes? Are you no longer you?

Does “I” refer to your body, your looks, or your image? If so, what happens when you age—when every cell in your body is replaced by new cells every 7 to 10 years? Everything about your physicality will be different, so who is the “I” that remains?

Are you the voice in your head? Doesn’t this voice mostly repeat the words, expressions, and beliefs of your society? What percentage of your thoughts are original, and who creates your original thoughts?

Are you your memories or plans? Who then is the entity observing those memories and making those plans?

What remains after the recognition that “I” is none of these things?

You are consciousness itself; otherwise called the soul, spirit, or awareness. “I am” is beyond physical form. What is true, real, and therefore unchanging about you dwells in the realm of empty space. Your mind and body emerge from nothing in birth, you will return to it in death, and all through this dream of life, inside your cells, you are filled with empty space (99.999999999999%).

You are the incomprehensible mystery of life, pure being, perfect love, consciousness, spirit—and so am I. It is in this recognition of truth that we are one, just as everything is one. Form is not the ultimate reality; merely consciousness playing—a beautiful illusion which can be enjoyed by infusing it with the truth about who you are.

The mind believes that by labeling something, you understand it. But as soon as something is labeled, the full reality is no longer seen.

By labeling someone as a role such as “colleague”, you attach all sorts of concepts and expectations to the person. Now you lose awareness of the depth of the person beyond the concept. The same is true when you label a flower, a tree, a situation or circumstance, or anything at all.

The egoic mind is racing with words, ideologies, thought systems and concepts to find order and meaning in the world. The mind tells you that, by doing so, you are seeking lasting happiness. This never works because lasting happiness is love, joy and beauty. This is experience from beyond the mind (not within it).

Human society is largely insane and lacking beauty because it has been made by minds who have lost awareness of the full reality present in this eternal moment. That which we most deeply want, on the level of the soul, lies present all around us in the gap between perception and thought. To access it, stay aware of the inner dimension, notice how you feel, and embrace beauty each moment in all of life—not as words and concepts but as an experience.

Now you are awakened and connected to the fullness and oneness of things. Rooted in truth, your sane mind can now be used to extend words, concepts and creations that will be infused with beauty and value which points others back to this awareness of the infinite reality beyond thought.

The collapse of institutions is the collapse of ego. Why? Because ego is the rigid, unquestioning identification with ideologies and institutions. The more rigid a thought system or institution, the more brittle. The more brittle, the more vulnerable during times of crisis or dramatic change. Eckhart Tolle explains, “The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.”

The collapse of ego is always from within because any attack from the outside would only strengthen it. Furthermore, it happens from within because the ego’s way of thinking and doing is what causes crisis to begin with. The virus is an illusion of ego, and its identification with a confused healthcare system. This began the fall of a house of cards. As they are put to the test by reality, the governments, corporations, and religions will be exposed as rather impotent and helpless. The ego is panicking, and yet nothing real is being destroyed because none of it was ever real to begin with.

“When faced with the realm of crisis, when the old way of interacting with the world and the realm of nature fail to work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life form or a species will either die or become extinct—or rise above the limitations of its conditions through an evolutionary leap.”

The leap forward is the awakening to consciousness, enlightenment, salvation. We will honor all the technological and learning advances that the human race has made in the past thousands of years, and we will carry it forward rather than going back, but we will also leave behind the cancer of ego as we create a new Earth, a new Eden for all the world to enjoy.

As the world's insanity escalates and systems begin to fail, what is already emerging is the Consciousness Revolution. This is the only viable response to today's challenges, a total release of fiction and error, an awakening to a beautiful new world and a healing of ourselves and the planet. Enjoy the video podcast or find it wherever you normally listen to podcasts. 

In 100 years, we have now learned that Communism does not work, nor does Fascism, nor does Capitalism, and nor does Socialism. The utter childishness and insanity we are seeing from the panicked media, the clueless governments, and the scared corporate heads can only mean that the world as we knew it is ending.

The social contract between the institutions and the people is broken. The promise of human rights and freedom is gone. The belief that our leaders and institutions are basically sane is incorrect. With the economy at a stand-still, capitalism will collapse. When that happens, socialist programs will also end because tax revenue dwindles. We, as individuals, must adjust to survive.

All ideologies fail because they cannot account for the complexity and totality of reality. External authority fails because authority is not external to us. Let us lose all faith in ideological thinking, in authorities to lead us, and in man-made systems of greed to save us.

As these end times play out, what is simultaneously emerging is the consciousness revolution — the massive spiritual awakening which reveals that truth is true, and that perfect love is truth. Everything about this world which is not loving is now to be corrected in love.

Upon our own authority, we will decide for no more fear. No more attack or violence. We will accept one another unconditionally and without judgment. In perfect love (which is the same thing as “God”), we are eternally safe, our life is abundant, eternal, and filled with joy.

Love is beyond ideology, beyond debate, it is the only true thought system. It is total and it is our salvation. With this simple shift toward truth, all the world’s problems will dissolve. I will be doing an in-depth Abscondo Podcast on this tomorrow.

"The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish."

-Tao Te Ching

Nothing is as it seems. What we have been taught by the world is out of accord with nature, with the truth.

There is a way of truth and honesty which is beyond opposites and absent of confusion. It is a way which knows of no struggle and no conflict. 

In the world, but detached from it; entirely safe and healthy in the eternal present moment.

I believe we can do better than this old, obsolete system where we spend 20 years of our youth being forced to learn irrelevant lessons in school…where the next 40 years we are forced to work most our days in jobs we do not enjoy to pay debt and taxes for the privilege of that education, for the healthcare system uninterested in real healing, for the military that causes death and destruction around the world, for the prized pension so that (if we’re “lucky”) we get to spend our final 20 years idle and useless to anyone, hoping only that the healthcare system can extend the suffering just a bit longer. This is no life.

Call this capitalism or call it socialism, the differences are minor. It matters little whether we pay the government or corporations to be tortured in this way. The story is the same in every country in a world that lacks any real imagination, a world where our pop stars and celebrities never smile and somehow think that looking nauseous is cool, a world where nobody has the courage to tell the truth or the time to appreciate beauty, where people are afraid to open up or love because they “might get hurt”, where we are meant to spend an entire lifetime following rules that were set before we were born only to end up lost, confused, self-centered and irrelevant. Meanwhile, this entire system of misery and sacrifice is destroying the natural world—a cancer on God’s creation. I believe we can do better.

This nightmare existence which always felt so inevitable is now starting to crack, starting to crumble from within the thought-system of endless sacrifice and fear-based illogic. Now we can begin to look honestly at how badly off course we have gone in this past many decades. Yet the real truth is that, no matter what is going on in this insane world, each moment we have a choice to escape from this and to heal.

By withdrawing attention from this insane system, we can allow passion and intuition to guide a lifetime of true learning and creating. We can be valued and useful from the day we are born until the day we die. Our lives can mean something because we can tell the truth, we can reach our destiny and live up to our potential, we can spread our perfect love, we can heal ourselves and others. We can seek, celebrate, and create beauty. We can stop sacrificing everything for an empty promise that never quite materializes in a future that never quite arrives.

We can choose love, freedom, and truth instead of bondage. This can be done now, without any struggle or danger, without anyone having to agree or give us permission. No matter what happens in the external world, the life you want is the life you can have if you simply choose to be happy—and mean it enough to change.