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The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. Chapter 8, Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Miller Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Chapter 78, Tao Te Ching, translation by Stephen Miller Life force- made up of our ki, our blood, our heart-mind essence, our spirit- is what gives us aliveness, health, life itself. How we care for our life-force determines the quality of our lives. Our blood is mostly water. Our bodies are between 65-75% water. How we care for our inner waters determines the quality of our health. We are born out of water and when we die our spirit leaves through the water (body fluids). The waters within us flow in the same way as the waters on our Earth that nourish us. Wind moves and shapes the movement of surface water. The Earth’s rotation, the natural flow of gravity, the wind and the depth of the water all together shape the ultimate flow of water. The wisdom offered us in these Taoist texts is to flow/be like water, to allow ourselves to soften our body and mind well enough to be guided by the deeper currents of the Great Life that ultimately leads us to the ‘ocean’, our true destiny. When I travel through New York State, I love to go to Watkin’s Glen at the bottom of Seneca Lake and hike the Glen/gorge. It truly is a marvel of Nature. (The dramatic gorge was carved by receding glaciers and flowing water over roughly 10,000 years, revealing rock layers formed 400 million years ago). The Gorge is 3+km through to Seneca Lake to Seneca River, eventually flowing into Lake Ontario. From Lake Ontario, this water continues to flow into the St. Lawrence (which travels through several provinces and finally joins with the Atlantic Ocean. The math that has been done for this journey suggests that it takes this water from Watkin’s Glen to the Atlantic Ocean 25 years. A quarter of a century journey. On a hot summer’s day walking through the Glen, the water gently flows, creating sweet music while flowing over the rocks and glistening in the sun between the shades of trees growing out of the rock. (That’s another whole story!). I can imagine it would take a long time to reach any destination at this speed of gentle flow. And yet when the rains fall and the wind blows, the higher water flows swiftly through the Gorge and just beyond, Seneca Lake can get quite rough. I’ve travelled alongside this river and lake to Lake Ontario several times. At other times, I have travelled along the St. Lawerence and I imagine driving alongside the water that I know has come from Watkin’s Glen. Similarly, when I travelled to Perth, Western Australia, I imagined connecting with droplets of water that had come from this local Grand River watershed. The millennial journey it must have taken. We won’t be here for a millennial like water. But imagine the depth of love and the power of its original nature to flow and nourish everything along its path without ever forsaking its responsibility to sustain all beings here on this planet. Thus, water is like the Tao, the text affirms. Water never travels back from the Atlantic, back down the St Lawrence, through Lake Ontario, back through Seneca River, etc. It’s journey is forward, towards the Atlantic. The water surrenders to the deeper gravitational rotation of the Earth. It flows away from the mountain tops and peaks to the lowest valleys and places. And along the way, its yielding, soft, ever-flowing nature, rounds stones, cracks rocks, can sink boats and cause colossal damage to manmade structures. The invitation in this text to live in the way of water is rather challenging and yet provides a map of beingness that can help us stay hopeful, fed with faith, be full of love and generosity, and reach our destinies. Yield. Surrender. Stay soft when flowing. I once had a client who taught white water rafting. She told me that one of the first things she learned was to surrender to the water if you go overboard. When you surrender to the water (rapids), she said, it will save you. Fight water/rapids and you will drown. When you surrender, you open to the natural laws that can save you, she shared. Natural Laws such as: Conservation of energy: Fighting a powerful current drains your physical strength in minutes. The “Whitewater Float”: Staying on your back with feet pointed downstream allows you to bounce off rocks and stay buoyant. Working with the river: Rivers have natural exit points like eddies; yielding to the water eventually carries you to calmer areas. When we yield and surrender while in the flow of life, we accept life’s flow rather than resist it. We know that resistance to life’s flow creates significant suffering. Fighting the water is like trying to control the water while you are simultaneously expending your energy. Little good will come of this attempt to control. Releasing the illusion of control and surrender to the actual flow of water will eventually lead you beyond the eddies and rapids to calmer areas. Recognizing all the fantasies and illusions we carry and believe about our control of life’s flow, rather than surrendering to the flow can truly take 25 years of lessons to learn. When we surrender to the flow of life and trust it, we will more readily be able to navigate difficult circumstances and transitions. Our inner waters often carries our feelings. When we allow our feelings to flow with our inner waters, our feelings move through us. When we hold in, fight with, hold onto, block the flow of our feelings, we block the inner flow of our waters. Over time, stagnation of our inner waters becomes a breeding ground for health imbalances and eventually disease. Staying aligned with the Earth’s rotational gravity, staying grounded to Earth that is, helps us to calm and steady our inner waters (our emotions). Stories that we tell ourselves about our feelings (ie. I can’t handle my grief and sadness) is like the surface wind that can add to rough waters. What happens in Nature, happens inside our bodies, our being. We are feeling beings. The way we soften and surrender to the flow of life and the feelings that arise determines the quality of our lives and relationships. When we allow our inner waters to flow and carry our emotions in a calm and steady way, we discover what really matters to us, what we truly value and how we therefore choose to move in the world. Next month I will offer you a working example of “be like water” and what I learned from 8 years helping and walking in the Grand River Water Walk ceremony led by Ojibwe, Anishinaabe, bear Clan Elder Mary Anne Caibaoisai. For this month’s reflection:
Peace to your inner waters, ©️Shirley Lynn Martin, August 2026. |
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