"Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao" is a book written by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, published in 2007. The book is based on the ancient Chinese text known as the Tao Te Ching and offers guidance on how to live a more fulfilling and peaceful life by aligning your thoughts and actions with the natural flow of the universe. In the book, Dr. Dyer encourages readers to let go of negative thoughts and beliefs, and to cultivate a positive and compassionate mindset in order to bring about positive change in their lives. The book has been well received and has become a best-seller.
Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses, which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of our existence. The classic text of these 81 verses, called the Tao Te Ching or the Great Way, offers advice and guidance that is balanced, moral, spiritual, and always concerned with working for the good.
In this book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer has reviewed hundreds of translations of the Tao Te Ching and has written 81 distinct essays on how to apply the ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu to today’s modern world. This work contains the entire 81 verses of the Tao, compiled from Wayne’s researching of 12 of the most well-respected translations of text that have survived for more than 25 centuries. Each chapter is designed for actually living the Tao or the Great Way today. Some of the chapter titles are “Living with Flexibility,” “Living Without Enemies,” and “Living by Letting Go.” Each of the 81 brief chapters focuses on living the Tao and concludes with a section called “Doing the Tao Now.”
Wayne spent one entire year reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them each day and ultimately writing down these essays as he felt Lao-tzu wanted you to know them.
This is a work to be read slowly, one essay a day. As Wayne says, “This is a book that will forever change the way you look at your life, and the result will be that you’ll live in a new world aligned with nature. Writing this book changed me forever, too. I now live in accord with the natural world and feel the greatest sense of peace I’ve ever experienced. I’m so proud to present this interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, and offer the same opportunity for change that it has brought me.”
So says the cover page.
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" - George Bernard Shaw
Tao Te Ching is believed to be authored by Lao-tzu, a propht who was also the keeper of the imperial archives in the ancient capital of Luoyang. The Tao is the supreme reality, an all pervasive source of everything. The Tao never begins or ends, does nothing, and yet animates everything in he world of form and boundaries, which is called, "the world of the10,000 things." Word Tao is interpreted to be 'The Way'. Te - 'The shape and power' and Ching is 'book'
Deng Ming Dao, in '365 Tao: Daily Meditations' says, 'If you spend a long period of time in study and self-cultivation, you will enter Tao. By doing so, you also enter a world of extraordinary perceptions. You experience unimaginable things, receive thoughts and learning as if from nowhere, perceive things that could be classified as prescient. .......simply stay quite......If you meet someone who can profit by your experience you should share. But if you are merely a wanderer in a crowd of strangers, it is wisdom to be silent.
It's simple and natural.
Of birds I know that they have wings to fly with,
Of fish that they have fins to swim with,
Of wild beasts that they have feet to run with.
For feet there are traps,
for Fins nets,
for wings arrows.
But who knows how dragons surmount wind and cloud into heaven?
This day I have seen [Lao-tzu] and he is a dragon
- from The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner
Right from the first chapter there is so much food for thought:
At some point today, notice an instance of annoyance or irritation you have with another person or situation. Decide to do the Tao (or practice the Way) in that moment by turning inward with curiosity about where you are on the continuum between desire and allowing. Permit the paradox of wanting the irritant to vanish and allowing it to be what it is.
‘Force’ is never effective, in any circumstance.' So true. A person can plan, prepare and pursue, then you just got to let things play out as they are supposed to.
I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.
Such watchful nurturing may do it harm.
Let the soil rest from so much digging
and wait until it is dry before you water it.
The leaf is inclined to find it's own direction;
give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.
Much growth is stunted by too careful prodding, too eager tenderness.
The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.
Naomi Long Madgett
If everyone lived by these simple guidelines and wisdom, there would be no war, no crime and a unity that is unfathomable based on our current world.
This I would be reading over next 90+ days, slowly as the author has asked to do.
Another gem
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