That word ‘journey’, much like that other word ‘meditation’, is a bit of a buzz word these days. Everyone is on a journey apparently, and perhaps its true.

But what does the Tao have to say about such things?

It might say that any true journey requires a clear destination, and also that that end place is both superficial and yet absolutely necessary at the same time.

A strong direction, and a brave commitment to that path, allows for the fun stuff to emerge as well as the somewhat serious stuff also. Furthermore, a Taoist’s journey is concerned with not only WHAT happens but HOW it happens; both the practice and the ‘practicing’ of that practice.

This requires a certain distance (or reflective self-observation) in order to adjust and improve one’s path AS one walks it, and is no easy talk.

It is difficult for the yogi to question the yoga mat, to replace the mantras or to scrap certain tried and tested postures. Yet without the ‘killing off’ of one’s former self, and one’s outdated practice, the rightful path cannot emerge.

Such true authenticity is like ‘leading a camel through the eye of a needle’ (a wise person once said). It is infinite, endless, impossible even. Compassion is therefore required. For without the compassionate acceptance of one’s human limitations, one’s ‘failures’ and one’s lack of ultimate potential, the human journey would be a frustrated one, a desperate one, a tragic one.

It is the beings that can laugh humbly at their own inabilities and shortcomings that last; for only through such self-compassion can the human journey be sustained.

Those highly disciplined experts out there may emerge, and for some time impress us and conquer their realm of expertise, but it is their strictness and self-importance that will ultimately be their demise.

The real journey, always quietly whispering beneath the surface, is to be absolutely ordinary…

…the more ordinary the individual, the more extraordinary the journey.

It is a paradox, and yet it’s true.

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