This is a corollary to my post What if the universe is like a vision board? Or what if you could live your life without struggling, striving or opposing?

Struggling is resisting… what is.
Striving is resisting… what is.
Opposing, by it’s very nature, is resisting… what is.

I believe that you can live a life of resistance or at least begin working towards it right now. I won’t sit here and say it’s anything that I’ve mastered. I’m on the path, just like everyone else, to try to make life better, to make life worth something to show up for. There are teachers, gurus, authors, and the like who want to sell you on their enlightenment, but I’ve got nothing to sell here, only some experiences to share, because I believe through sharing we can commisterate in the human condition.

Lately, I’ve come to see common threads in my own life. For instance, there’s a clear delineation between what I’ve thought would be a good idea, and that which I didn’t think about very much, but felt right, and did. The former are things that made a lot of sense, the latter are things that just made sense to me, emotionally, or in my “gut” and I went for it. Surely, a nod to the post Kill Your Good Ideas is necessary here.

However, the story doesn’t end there.

Those things that I did with my “gut” vs. those things that were good ideas, I’ve realized, have had some interesting outcomes. For instance, things that started with a gut reaction, that made emotional sense, that I just jumped into doing, are not only still going strong in my life, but they’ve had the longest lasting impact on me and others. Whereas those good ideas that I had, mostly, lasted until inspiration and ideaness dissipated and then they fell to the wayside.

So what I’m saying here is contrary to the Cartesian idea of Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am, and rather I would say it’s more like I am; and from there becomes a point of departure for all things in the universe.

Let me explain, I think that we in the west, and elsewhere (as we’ve become more “civilized” and lost our connection with our source) have moved towards worshiping a god of thought in a sacred temple of ideas. Whereas as a people more connected to the source we had to rely more on experience, emotion and gut or our connection to our being to make decisions. We weren’t so invested in “thinking things through” or letting our thoughts dictate our lives.

As hunters and gathers, when the food was gone, we knew that we had to move on… and we did. I doubt that hunters and gathers spent a lot of time contemplating which direction to move in, or which direction would provide the most sustenance. They didn’t have to “think” about it, they knew instinctively.

Finally, I guess that’s what this comes down to: If you want to have a life where you’re not constantly resisting what is, then try to live instinctively. The vision board, in some way I can’t explain, plants seeds in your being, and as you move through life, the seeds are being cultivated by the decisions you make. The danger is when we start “thinking” about shortcuts to achieve things on the vision board and reach those places in our life. As the Tao Te Ching says, “when you rush a project to completion, your ruin a fruit that was almost ripe”…

Note to self:
See things through.

It’s easy to walk, and give up what you’ve been working on, especially when it starts to stagnate. It’s easy to rationalize why something sucks, and why you shouldn’t continue. It’s easy to just be done with and move on because you dread it, and  it’s really a drag.

These were the things I was thinking, then I had this crazy simple idea to see things through.

See things through to their natural and organic conclusion. Like the Tao Te Ching says ‘when you intervene, you pick a fruit that was almost ripe’. Let stuff come to it’s own head. It’s easy to get up in there and mess with the junk and try to end it, but it’s more rewarding to just wait and let things take their time, and let things come to their own conclusion. That’s not to say that it doesn’t suck to wait, but it’s even possible that if you just see things through and try to find a positive attitude, that things might just flip themselves totally around, and that which looked like it was taking a crap and going south is actually better than ever. I’m just saying, it couldn’t hurt, if the thing is destined to end, then why rush it, let it happen on its own without struggle and resistance. It can’t hurt to just give it a try.

Yesterday, in this post, I talked about how if you want to be successful you have to create value, stay centered in the Tao and the rest will follow. Almost immediately after posting that I saw a New York Times alert that announced that Google was launching an operating system. An operating system! Really!!! They’re a search and advertising company, right? Well, not exactly, they’re quite diversified into applications, and cloud computing in general. Anyway, with yesterday’s post fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but think there was Google yet again stepping out of their niche.

This is a brilliant move, here’s why:

People want an alternative to Microsoft – If all netbooks are running some flavor of Microsoft OS then susceptibility to viruses is a huge problem, and a netbook, by it’s very nature is on the Web all the time, so that means you might as well sign up for a life (of the machine) membership with McAfee, Norton, or whomever’s playing that game these days, because with a Microsoft OS you’ll need all the help you can get.

The Mac alternative – for netbooks, there isn’t one.

Linux or something – Nobody wants to buy a netbook with no OS… command prompt takes us back 15 years to when nobody wanted to use computers precisely because of this daunting reality, and native Linux netbooks, so far, haven’t gotten great reviews.

The release of Google’s OS is a case study in what it means to deliver value, keep to the center and be successful. Their following what people need, but not in the classic ‘find a niche and exploit it’ kind of way, rather through  organic means they’re putting it out there opening the code to the open source community, and letting anyone have access to it for free. The value is not just that it’s free, the value is that it’s freely available, and available to be built upon and further refined; as they say on their blog “we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.” This statement is what it means to be at the center and also illustrates that they know what it takes to be a success.

As the Tao Te Ching says, ‘whether you go up the ladder or come down it, it’s still shaky and better to be on the firm ground’… another illustration of the center. Google knows the center, and we need more companies like them.