The Art of Swimming
Lao-tzu and his students were standing near a waterfall. The water flowed over a ledge and dropped over three hundred feet below where the river continued to flow swiftly through a gorge over thirty miles long. Even the fish, turtles, and alligators would not go near these dangerous waters.

Suddenly, they saw a figure jump from the top of the waterfall into the foaming river. Lao-tzu thought this man might be attempting suicide. So, he told his students to get to the banks of the river and be ready for a possible rescue. But when they hurried to the edge of the river, they saw someone swimming leisurely to the bank. To their surprise, the man stood up in the shallows, shook the water off his long hair, and began to sing

The students couldn’t believe what they saw, so they walked toward the strange man and said, “When we saw you dive from the top of the waterfall, we thought you wanted to kill yourself. Then, when we saw you swimming in those treacherous waters and enjoying yourself, we thought you were a ghost. But coming up close, we can all see that you are alive and human. How did you manage to swim through such dangerous waters?”

The long-haired man replied, “I have no particular method of swimming, except that when I am in the water, I do not fight the water. I float with it and sink with it instead of trying to force my way through it. You can say that I started my learning with what was given to me at birth, and continued with what IS my natural ILK for me to do, and completed it by trusting what was meant to be.”

The students said, “Tell us what you mean.”

The man replied, “It means following the natural course of things. If I were born in the mountains, it would be natural for me to feel comfortable in the high mountains. That’s starting out with what is given in birth. If I were born by the sea, it would be natural for me to grow up playing in the water. That’s continuing with what is natural to do. When I do something, it never occurs to me to think about how I do it. That’s trust in Being, hence what is meant to be.

I am never afraid. I live in what is meant to be through BEINGNESS.”

The Way of the Seeker
If you are a true seeker, you will welcome every hardship required for your awakening. To awaken is to stop living from the reactive impulses that usually dominate us—chief among them, the state of conflict.

The Illusion of Comfort
We are often paralyzed by a specific conflict: the mistaken belief that our spiritual path should make our outer lives more “suitable.” Our biology craves comfort and demands security, but clinging to these desires is pure folly. In reality, what we want inevitably obstructs what we seek.

Most people eventually abandon the search, retreating into the familiar internal landscape of insecurity and fear.

The Example of the Masters
Consider the great spiritual masters. By modern standards, their lives were often “undesirable.” They endured hardships far greater than our own, persevering through famine, injustice, and violence. Their external world was chaotic, yet their internal world remained untouched.

The Foundation of Goodness
Spiritual awakening depends entirely on the goodness of our nature. If we allow the harshness of the world to erode that goodness, we leave room only for hate. We become a battlefield of internal fights, governed by the erratic whims of emotional impulse.

The Authentic Seeker
The true seeker is not driven by desire or the motivation to “gain” something. Instead, they are governed by Humility—the quiet clarity required to distinguish what is from what is not.

To take your journey deeper, you must honestly observe what motivates your efforts. Stand back, view yourself in the third person, and recognize what needs to be done. To find the “Silence that reveals Love,” you must allow only three things to prevail within you: Simplicity, Solitude and Silence.

Simplicity – Keep your life simple; give up what you desire for what simply IS
Solitude – Do not allow distractions to divert your attentions away from your practice; let Love be your ALL
Silence – Say little; give up personal opinions based in the logic of genetics

Prevail as Love.