Taoist Thoughts...

I need to settle my heart and my mind on these thoughts.

“You can trust everyone to be human, with all the quirks and inconsistencies we humans display, including disloyalty, dishonesty and downright treachery. We are all capable of the entire range of human behavior, given the circumstances, from absolute saintliness to abject depravity. Trusting someone to limit their sphere of action to one narrow band on the spectrum is idealistic and will inevitably lead to disappointment.
On the other hand, you can decide to trust that everyone is doing their best according to their particular stage of development, and to give everyone their appropriate berth. For this to work, you have to trust yourself to make and have made the right choices that will lead you on the path to your healthy growth. You have to trust yourself to come through every experience safely and enriched. But don’t trust what I am saying. Listen and then decide for yourself. Does this information sit easily in your belly? You know when you trust yourself around someone because your belly feels settled and your heart feels warm.”
― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior    


“Who you are is always right.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony


“For a few moments, attune your mind to the idea of harmony and peaceful coexistence flowing among all peoples and nations.
The source of this idea is deep within your heart.
As you calmly breathe in and out, picture it radiating from you like a fine, colored vapor gradually covering the face of the earth.
See it enter the hearts of everyone, especially those stuck in the mad zones.
Feel it circulate everywhere until it comes all the way round and back to you.
This is love in action.
The source of this love is the Tao.
Savor this.”
― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior    


“When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.”
― Hsin Hsin Ming


I had discussed with the therapist that I felt like I was in perpetual limbo. And that when I went up north by myself and asked the universe what I was supposed to do, the answer I got was "you don't have to decide today." The more I'm looking into Taoism and the principles that surround it, maybe I'm not so wishy-washy and "in limbo" after all - maybe I've just been a Taoist my whole life and didn't even know it. It drives my spouse CRAZY when he asks me for my opinion/suggestions on a decision (dinner, for example) and I tell him that I have no preference. For years I would make suggestions only for him to turn around and choose something completely different, leaving me feeling unheard and invalidated. Now when he asks, I have no preference - not because I'm spiteful and no longer want to participate in the decision making process, but because I truly have no preference any more. It's not to say "I don't care," it's more along the lines of letting go of things I ultimately have little/no control of anyways.

I'm rambling...