Te and Seeing Clearly

Daring to live authentically and fulfilling our greatest potential. Ahhhh, I like the sound of that. Being flexible, spontaneous, and optimistic. Centered, creative, dynamic. Living in faith and loving service. All sounds good to me! These are aspects of “the Tao person,” and cultivating Te is how one becomes a person of the Tao. (Dreher, p.12-13)

One thing Te is about is seeing clearly, without illusions about ourselves or the world. Part of this is about admitting to what we do NOT know.

“Those who know they don’t know
Gain wisdom.
Those who pretend they know
Remain ignorant….” (TAO 71)

I’ve always loved that message. The first thing it reminds me of is when others impose what they know onto others, in a narrow-minded way. Drives me a bit crazy in some situations, with some people. But what a great opportunity for me to practice compassion when I am on the receiving end of other people’s knowing. It’s also an opportunity to look beyond the trigger and decipher if the other’s “knowing” is knowledge worth adopting, or if it’s more of an opinion or maybe not an opinion but not the whole story either. (perhaps a bit of a tangent….)

The other thing this speaks of is the opportunity to learn in the absence of knowledge.

There’s a lot I don’t know, and I usually don’t hesitate to admit to it. But sometimes I remain quiet; my silence and/or head-nod and/or “uh-huh” implying that I DO know. Typically it’s not out of embarrassment or pertaining to ego; I am comfortable with not knowing. Typically it’s out of not wanting to disrupt the flow of conversation, and I’ve assessed that the person or thing being mentioned (that I don’t know about) really doesn’t need to be explained for me to understand the general topic of conversation/presentation/etc. And sometimes that assessment is what serves me best. There’s not always time, or a genuine desire, to ask for clarification about (i.e.) who some supposedly famous author is (who I’ve never heard of) if whatever’s being said about him or her makes sense anyway. Does that make sense??

But sometimes it would be good for me to say (and sometimes I do), “Who/what is that? Could you explain? I don’t understand.” Sometimes it would be better for me to say, “huh?” instead of “uh-huh” while nodding my head in false understanding (really just indicating that I’m listening, not that I’m understanding!).

Reading about this in The Tao of Inner Peace motivates me to pay more attention to this matter. Although Dreher focuses more on the ego’s role in this, and my tendencies have more to do with presence, time, and authentic interest (or lack thereof), I do feel I’m being asked to raise my awareness and raise the bar, both in one-on-one conversations and as a student or workshop/lecture-participant.

Perhaps this extends beyond conversation as well, such as taking the time and interest to research/read about things that I don’t fully understand but that pertain to some of my passions and interests. Like Qigong. And CranioSacral Therapy. And Continuum Movement. Time for a more well-rounded understanding of these things. Although I’m a big advocate of experience being a great source of knowledge, it might be nice to be able to explain some of these things to other people, especially some of the science. Or not…. ☺

The focus in Dreher’s personal exercise here (asking for clarification next time presented with something you don’t know) is to abandon pretense and open up to seeing more clearly. I like it. And I have a feeling I’ll be presented with the opportunity to practice this tonight and/or tomorrow, as we wrap up this Continuum Movement depths retreat. And then perhaps I will be better able to explain what it is I’ve been doing here all week! ;)

I'd also like to explore how the various aspects of Te mentioned in Chapter 2 support each other. Interesting to see my tendency to break things down, focus on one thing at a time, and then see more clearly how they all go together (i.e. self-acceptance allows us to admit to what we don't know which allows us to see more clearly, etcetera, etcetera....)