April 28th

Guidance

Worship with your conscience,
Receive grace with humility.
Guide with awareness,
Lead with modesty.

The altar is a tool. If we kneel before it and say we have done wrong, we are really telling that to ourselves. If we give thanks for our good fortune, we are expressing our modest appreciation for good luck. There is no outside force listening to us. There is no divine retribution for our wickedness. The altar is merely symbolic. Those who follow Tao use it to focus their self-awareness.When we step away from the altar, we should not lose self-awareness. We should not take the fact that worship is symbolic to behave in immoral ways. Instead, we still have to act with a conscience and lead others without manipulating them or taking advantage of them.
It takes maturity to grasp that there are no gods and yet still behave as if there were. It takes insight to know that you must be your own disciplinarian. Only the wisest can lay down their own "divine laws" and find guidance as if they were truly heaven's word.

Personal Interpretation


Altars, prayer, and other artifacts and acts of supplication are tools, nothing more. The real trick is to live as if there were gods, to direct our conduct so that it reflects some higher wisdom. The ability to proceed in this fashion comes with spiritual maturity. We must learn to find ourselves when we are lost, comfort ourselves when we feel that the world has forsaken us, and guide ourselves when the path forward is anything but clear. When we are capable of doing these things, we will truly know what it means to live in the presence of Tao.