MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

if you become lost between heaven and earth

you will have no root
you will have no core
you will have no motive force
you will have no life force to extend into living

you will not be luminous
you will not be able to ingest life
you will not be able to think properly
you will not be able to see clearly

showing yourself off
seeing yourself as always correct
passing off information as knowledge
forcing your ideas on others
disturbing the peace of another person’s home

these are all symptoms of a cancerous existence
in which your heart spirit is not straight
it is like an arrow shot into the sky
and lost forever

these are distortions and misrepresentations of the virtuous truth of the tao way of life
these are distortions and misrepresentations of the virtuous reasons for living the tao way of life

they are repugnant to us all
so we avoid them

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey

Chapter Twenty-Four describes the tragedy that Chapter Twenty-Three warns against: do not become like an overly-filled cup, too full of your preconceived notions to receive any wisdom that is not already your own. Indeed, such a path can lead only to disaster—and you’ll never see it coming, for you’ll have blinded yourself to everything you haven’t already seen.

Life will hold nothing new for you. No matter what you do, progress will feel as though it has ground to a halt. You will begin to feel disconnected with the rest of the world, apart from your family, your friends, your community. Even your home will seem foreign. “no root . . . no core.”

Nor will your motivation survive the stultification of your mind and vision. If the only ideas you can entertain are your own, then you will be alone and without purpose. There will be no one nor anything worthy enough to serve—not even your potential self, for he too has been banished. After all, a tyrant can stand nothing less than his own ideal visible before him, a light of constant judgement.

Perhaps you’ve seen it in others. Or perhaps, like me, you’ve seen it in yourself. The sputtering of the inner fire, the darkening of ambition. A deep depression and a consequent turning away from life. A turning against life, even. Under possession of ideological apparitions—dark amalgams of dead-men’s presuppositions—the world take on a hue of the demonic. It becomes something worthy of punishment, of revenge.

In the words of Mephistopheles from Goethe’s Faust:

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
’Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element. (Goethe, translated by Kaufmann)

This is the archetype of the hostile brother, of the biblical Cain. It is the instinct which drives you to attempt to force the world to conform to your will, or to be destroyed if it will not. It is the same instinct which drives you to force others to conform with your ideas. Those who refuse, you will slander as evil, and you will take petty vengeance upon them. Those who accept will drag themselves down with you. Thus does the disease spread, like a cancer, aimless consumption toward some far-flung, dark end.

Let us borrow some words from Dr. Jordan Peterson. Let us define the evil triad which distorts and poisons the Tao: The Spirit of Deception (especially Self-Deception) births the Spirit of Arrogance—and from Arrogance is born the demon Resentment. He is Spirit of Destruction and Spirit of Revenge.

In small or large part, these consequences manifest in each and all of your choices. You can either embrace life with humility, or you will work subtly to destroy it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Goethe’s Faust. translated by Walter Kaufmann, Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Twenty-Four”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. p.46