Rob: Welcome Lao Tzu. My question is, how do we reconcile this idea of not getting wrapped up in external events, almost to the point of not caring. But it’s not really not caring. Of course we care. So how do we care without caring?
Lao Tzu: Greetings, all. It is my honor to be with you today, in this setting, within your circle, as you contemplate the deeper experiences of life, the meaning behind all that you experience. These are questions that everyone must grapple with at some point in their journey. So of course, all of us are so proud of the progress you are all making.
It is an interesting question, is it not? How do you go through life, filled with compassion for others, while at the same time recognizing it’s not your role to be involved in all that others are experiencing for themselves. And I would suggest to you that it is, in fact, an act of very deep caring [and] compassion to allow others to experience what they came to experience.
It may not be your path. You may look upon the events as something you would never choose for ANY society that would experience love and ask yourself, “Why would you do that?! How does that make the world a better place?”
But it is all for a purpose, so your act of compassion is to allow others to experience what they came to experience. Let them choose for themselves. If you go through life trying to control how others behave, how others think, what others believe, where is the caring in that? That would be you trying to impose your will on another. That’s not exhibiting a care for them. That’s, again, you trying to exert your control based on YOUR beliefs, based on your understanding within your own journey. They have theirs; you have yours, so allow them to be.
As your teammate said, let it be, not in an uncaring way, but with the mindset that you care enough for them to let them be who they are. Approach all events that occur to you in your life from that perspective. THAT is the loving response.
The only force in the universe that truly matters is love. Ask yourself every day, what is the loving response to anything that you see? If it does not feel like love, whatever it is that you witness, and you say to yourself, “I don’t see the love in that,” then choose, choose that that is NOT the way that you want to go.
And as you constantly come back, within your own heart, to that feeling of love for ALL that you see, exhibiting that caring enough to allow it to unfold as it must, then you will find that all that you see will change. It will morph. It will transition … perhaps slower than you would desire, but again, let it be. Let it proceed at the pace that it needs to proceed to bring as many along as the Divine Plan calls for.
A Lighthouse for the Soul 