Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1134 - Satchel, the sacred heart - Throwback Thursday 1811.29 - Sense of Doubt #1378
Hi Mom,
I just wrote to you yesterday because I did not re-frame the "Importance of Socks" post that I started months ago and finally finished from a HEY MOM post to a SENSE OF DOUBT only post, and since this one feels like it has to be a HEY MOM post, I now have two in a row. So maybe Sunday will be a T-shirt reprint so as to keep with my "only two HEY MOMs per week" policy that I set for myself when I stopped daily broadcast of HEY MOM back on July sixth, 2018. Wow... was just earlier this year? It feels like a lifetime ago.
I decided to go with a Throwback picture of Satchel today instead of something from my childhood file because I am not sure if I have ever shown a picture of either puppy as a Throwback pic.
I was thinking the other night how Satchel was first in my heart, the first dog I lived with, shared a bed with, cared for day in and day out ALL THE TIME, my companion, my colleague as a mostly work at home instructor, my best friend, and so, think of "heart and soul," then Ellory is my soul because she's somewhat elusive, wise, deeply spiritual and hold to the highest value of existence, much like Winnie the Pooh: Ellory just is.
But then there are times when I acknowledge that Satchel is the soul, like soulmate, a deep bond, though perhaps more so with Liesel who refers to Satchel as her soulmate, and I should not infringe on that, and then Ellory is very much the heart as she spends all day in bed because she loves bed the most; as she licks my face over and over as I am driving her somewhere fun, sometimes making it hard to see; as she rolls her whole body on top of me as we are waking up in the morning and nuzzles her snout right into the space between my neck and shoulder for kisses and snuggles.
So it's both, kind of like Quantum Physics. They're both; they're neither; they're so much more.
I have shared these before, but they are worth repeating.
The other day I started to cry in class and I had to stop talking for literally about 30 seconds before I was able to master my emotions and speak. Then it happened again talking one-on-one with a student at a different school in a conference.
The crying in class came about because I started to talk about this:
I am not even sure why I also started to cry in front of a student. I was telling her how awesome she is, and maybe it was the look on her face, maybe it was the sense that maybe she does not hear that enough (or at all).
Anyway, I like being a role model to show my students, especially the young men, that being a truly confident and secure man means feeling secure enough to cry, to talk about crying in public, or even to cry in public. Though, I will admit that I am a work in progress. I am not sure if I really am confident and secure, but I am trying my best.
So, I like to show that sensitive side, but really, this is RIDICULOUS. I am not sure, Mom, why my emotions are all at the surface right now, but they are.
Just starting to describe the movie Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor wrecked me, still, months later. Maybe I need to see it again to make it less of a sharp edged sword to all my emotions.
I was sharing with a friend the other day about the crying and all, and she asked if I had seen the Dumbo trailer.
As the number one movie that throughout my whole life chokes me up any time it's mentioned because of all the mother-child stuff, Dumbo is going to really wreck me.
That's really all for today, but just in case, I made those tear ducts flow, here's a change of pace:
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1811.29 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1294 - I remember you
Hi Mom, This is a special edition of HEY MOM because Sunday's usual HEY MOM reprint was a T-shirt reprint that I published under the SENSE OF DOUBT label alone.
This entry has been under development a long time.
I am publishing it on the day I usually do a Throwback Thursday because this entry is ready and the Throwback one is not. In fact, to stay on schedule Throwback may happen Saturday, which may mean two HEY MOMs in a row. In a sense, this is a Throwback post, though I wish I could find a picture of me with my Pooh bear from my childhood.
I just want to say, before we begin that
I REMEMBER YOU.
Like I could ever forget.
On the afternoon of Saturday August 18th, I went to see the film Christopher Robin.
I knew it was going to be an intense emotional experience for me.
It was.
I don't believe in giving up "childish" things. Who is to say what constitutes a childish thing? Most of the things I love best are considered "childish" by some, and I would characterize those who think so as small-minded, close-minded, and very limited in their sad, meager existences. I know that's judgemental. But it's also true.
And so, I have kept a place in my heart, always, for the "childish" things. I still have my childhood teddy bears. I still have toys, comic books, and a connection to the animistic universe. I don't believe that the heart should die when one "matures." Instead, I keep a flame in my heart for the love born in childhood for someone like Winnie the Pooh.
An aside: It is possible to be adult and shoulder adult responsibilities and have a mature outlook and be a grown up and still have a love of and an engagement with those things some small minded people consider to be the things of childhood that should be abandoned when one becomes adult.
I do not believe in that abandoning.
Abandoning those things is to abandon love and that is something I cannot abide.
One of my favorite moments, the image above.
When an adult Christopher Robin encounters Pooh once again, he believes he is hallucinating.
"It's stress," Christopher Robin says.
"It's not stress; it's Pooh," Pooh says.
Here's the real Christopher Robin of AA Milne's life and the real Pooh.
I am no stranger to this subject.
I wrote about it on my T-shirts blog. Here's a but of it. See the full entry at the link.
I started this entry back in July, and it's been sitting on my computer ever since. This is why I am in shorts in the pictures.
I love Winnie the Pooh. Disney Pooh. Milne Pooh. Doesn't matter.
I love POOH.
I did discuss this affection some in T-shirt #166.
I feel that Today is somewhat of a milestone as the number 250 has some significance.
So, today, I wish to share a few thoughts on intersections between Jungian thought, Tao te Ching, and Winnie the Pooh.
Somewhat coincidentally but also by design (teleology?), I am teaching the power point in my mythology class tonight that I am shown teaching in these photos.
If you have not read The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, and you have any interest in either Tao te Ching, Winnie the Pooh, or both, then I recommend you read it immediately.
Today, I wish to share thoughts punctuated by a series of photographs that comprise some of my favorite ideas in the whole world.
The best reaction to all situations is LOVE. But it is so hard to function this way.
It is so much easier to judge and to be angry, frustrated, annoyed, to give into one's stress.
But I keep trying.
If this statement about love as the right reaction to the universe makes you think of "Love is the Answer," then check the video I posted in T-shirt #166.
The movie of Christopher Robin begins with him having a send off with all of his childhood playmates in the Hundred Acre Woods, which turns out to be in another dimension (good choice!). After the requisite tea party and gifts, Christopher and Pooh go off alone to switch on a hill to watch the sunset. It's a sad goodbye as Christopher explains that he is off to school and must give up childish things, and he will be too busy with maths and studies to just "do nothing" as he often has been able to do with Pooh as his companion. He asks Pooh to remember him by visiting this spot often and to think of him while doing nothing.
As the story unfolds, we see Pooh check the tree that is "Christopher Robin's House," visit the special spot, and wait for Christopher to come back. And the seasons change and the years pass, and Christopher does not come back. And so, eventually, Pooh decides to go find Christopher because, even though Christopher doesn't know it, he needs Pooh to remind him of what is important in life.
"Pooh, why are you here?" asks Christopher Robin asks.
"I need your help. I have lost all of my friends," Pooh says.
"What should happen if you forget about me," Pooh asks Christopher Robin.
"Silly old bear. I won't ever forget about you Pooh, even if I am 100," Christopher Robin replies.
But then, as an adult, tt seemed as if Christopher had forgotten his childhood friends and had actually forgotten how to have fun; how to balance adult responsibilities with a sense of play, wonder, and joy; how to show real love to his family; and even how to completely disengage from the rat race and just do nothing, just BE, which is the central lesson of the Winnie the Pooh stories: JUST BE.
But Christopher Robin had lost his way.
"I wonder which way?" Christopher Robin says at one point as he and Pooh returned to the Hundred Acre woods to find everyone who had become lost.
"I always get where I am going by walking away from where I have been," Pooh says.
"Do you?"
"That's the way I do it!" Pooh says.
However, I have not forgotten the joys and loves of childhood, of family, of just being.
And I will always remember because that's how I am wired, and I am not going to change; I see no reason to change.
I had seven years to play on my own before my sister was born, but then I was old enough to create a rich tapestry of stories with her for many years in creating a group of her stuffed animals first known as the Protectors Five, then the Protectors Seven, and then just the Protectors.
The original five were Baby Dreams, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Snoopy, and a furry guy named Moe. Eventually, two more joined the main group: The Camel with the Wrinkled Knees, and a dragon named Evinrude. Scooby Doo was also a regular.
I made many stories about these characters and how they protected the family during its travel and adventures for International criminal cartels hell bent on the family's dissolution and jeopardy for reasons that now escape me.
I drew some cartoons and started a series of novels on these characters, but these creations are lost in my films, which remain in my father's basement in Michigan.
In watching the film, I realized I have a new Pooh and Piglet. I have Satchel and Ellory. My love for them is even greater than it is for my stuffed animal friends.
This confession today and what it means to make such confessions reminds me of a musical from the 1970s made famous by Marlo Thomas: Free to Be You and Me. The title seems to reflect one of the themes I am exploring in this blog.
Or as James Taylor said: BSUR (Be aS yoU aRe). Same concept.
About the bears: The brown bear in the picture below is "Yukio," named for Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who seemed like a kindred spirit when I read part of one of his novels, but in the end was not a kindred soul to me at all (though an interesting person with a good pen name). Ultimately, as for Japanese writers, I liked Kawabata's novels better and later, even more, Haruki Murakami. The other bear in the photo farther below, obviously, is Winnie the Pooh. Both bears are second generation bears. My first brown bear (seen in the final photo of me with many stuffed animals in the lower right corner of the shot) was named Timmy or Tim. I am not sure where this came from as I named the bear when I was two or three years old. As you can see he is still barely intact, very threadbare and fragile with his stuffing coming free in many places. The original Pooh also came apart at the seams, even though he received a new shirt made by one of my first girlfriends, which prolonged his life a few years. She was one of the first people I trusted with my secret love of teddy bears, and she did not judge or mock.
As for the shirt in the photos, for those not acquainted with FAO SCHWARTZ, it is a very famous toy store, located in New York City on Fifth Avenue across from the equally famous Plaza Hotel and just south of Central Park. FAO Schwartz was featured in the film Big, as Tom Hanks' character played there with a toy CEO and won himself a job in a toy company. Anyway, back to my subject about the teddy bears.
For many years, I was a closet teddy bear lover. And for many years, into my adult years, I continued to sleep with my teddy bears, secretly. This was a fact that I shared with very few people mainly because I did not know if I could trust people not to judge and mock. This was a part of myself about which I could not abide any mocking. For instance, during one quarter at college, I hung poster boards from the ceiling all around my bed mainly so I could sleep with my teddy bears without being seen. The teddy bears (two) were kept hidden under blankets or in a drawer. My roommate thought I wanted privacy for sex with girls, which is also part of the motivation of the poster board curtains. But since my then girlfriend was in New York for most of the quarter, the main reason was privacy for sleeping with my teddy bears. In graduate school, I met a guy about my age who also slept with a teddy bear. We had a good talk about it one time, but I never "outed" his sleeping practice to others, and he kept my secret as well. Throughout these adult years, when I was in a relationship and sleeping with a woman, then I left the teddy bears off the bed. But when sleeping alone, it was back to the snuggle with the bears.
As I share about this topic, a part of me wants to lash out. There's a part of me that is angry about the way people make judgments of others, of elements of people's identities, and I want to lash out and call those people names, call them shallow, or find other ways to needle their insecurities. But this strikes me as antithetical to what I am advocating here. My whole point about love of toys, stuffed toys in particular, is LOVE. The toys are just a manifestation and vehicle for recalling and focusing the emotions. In so doing, I cultivate an aspect of my personality that makes me a sensitive and caring individual. I would be violating my principles of love and forgiveness if I lashed out at the stone throwers. The whole point of my principles is to NOT be that way, to not invite the bad karma.
"Light of the world, shine on me, love is the answer; shine on us all, set us free, love is the answer."
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1809.06 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
1973? 1974?
Appropriate for today's subject - us all aswim in water
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #271 - Winnie the Pooh, Jung, and Teaching revisited
Hi Mom, BE LIKE WATER - FLOW.
Liesel posted a link from this Facebook page devoted to C.G. Jung while at the same time I was working on adding to this re-post of content from my T-shirt blog about Jung. I am preparing to talk to my students about Jung today, and so I pulled out this post as a way to refresh my memory, reacquaint myself with Jungian ideas and how I like to relate Jung to the stories of Winnie the Pooh as a way to clarify archetypes for others.
But when I saw Liesel's post and discovered that someone had a Carl Jung page on Facebook, I followed through the links to find the site linked below, THE CENTRE FOR APPLIED JUNG STUDIES in Johannesburg, South Africa, and then, also, a guide to archetypes and basics of Jungian thought that one can apply to receive as a PDF. It's a great document. A very well done primer of Jungian ideology.
Since I posted this entry (update 1604.06), I found the C.G. Jung Institute of CHICAGO, which is a lot closer for me than South Africa (though it would be cool to go to South Africa for Jung work). So I just wanted to add this note here if only for my personal use, later, Mom.
And then this post... it was one of the most recent posts, and it resonated with me because of you, Mom. My conscious psyche is wrestling with this concept, but according to Jung, my unconscious psyche simply believes.
THE CENTRE FOR APPLIED JUNG STUDIES hosts conferences in Johannesburg, South Africa as well as online courses for "the practical application of Jung’s work in the student’s life for the purposes of personal transformation, increasing consciousness and promoting individuation."
I am gearing for some more Jung reading.
This makes me think of my Jungian mentors (Mark Thompson and Stephanie Gauper) both of whom are my Facebook friends. I owe both a debt of gratitude for putting me on the path as a lifelong Jungian. Also, I owe Elaine Klein for our many conversations about Jung during our years at K-College. But most of all, big THANKS to my wife Liesel who shares my interest in Jung and is keen to explore more as we both move along through the Process of Individuation.
I am struck by the coincidence -- IE. Synchronicity -- of my thoughts turning to Jung at the same time that her (Liesel's) thoughts turned to Jung. We did not discuss it at all.
This is SYNCHRONICITY because we're strongly connected, she and I.
AS can be heard in the following VIDEO: "It may prove to be that psyche and matter are the same phenomenon. One observed from within and one from without... Jung put forward a new term, Synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events that are not themselves casually connected. The emphasis relies on the word 'meaningful.'"
One of the better links from the APPLIED JUNG site.
I started this entry back in July, and it's been sitting on my computer ever since. This is why I am in shorts in the pictures.
I love Winnie the Pooh. Disney Pooh. Milne Pooh. Doesn't matter.
I love POOH.
I did discuss this affection some in T-shirt #166.
I feel that Today is somewhat of a milestone as the number 250 has some significance.
So, today, I wish to share a few thoughts on intersections between Jungian thought, Tao te Ching, and Winnie the Pooh.
Somewhat coincidentally but also by design (teleology?), I am teaching the power point in my mythology class tonight that I am shown teaching in these photos.
If you have not read The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, and you have any interest in either Tao te Ching, Winnie the Pooh, or both, then I recommend you read it immediately.
Today, I wish to share thoughts punctuated by a series of photographs that comprise some of my favorite ideas in the whole world.
The best reaction to all situations is LOVE. But it is so hard to function this way.
It is so much easier to judge and to be angry, frustrated, annoyed, to give into one's stress.
But I keep trying.
If this statement about love as the right reaction to the universe makes you think of "Love is the Answer," then check the video I posted in T-shirt #166.
When I started this entry back in July, this woing toToday,he start text: Apparently, some of my students check this blog to see what I am doing. I really am working when I say I am working. Honest. For the last two days, I have worked on the blog throughout the day because I need to get to work and keep making progress with the work or I will not meet the deadline. The blog can be like a black hole. If I start working on it with the intention to finish it, I can easily get sucked into another universe, and once I emerge, I have not completed nearly enough work.
Things have not changed much since July. I work many hours. I work on the blog off and on throughout the day in an attempt to multi-task, though by nature I am not a multi-tasker.
The blog CAN be like a black hole.
I continue to experiment with how to better manage my time.
Jung came up with the idea of the Collective Unconscious to explain his idea of archetypes. He had no other explanation for the recurring predisposition toward images and image patterns by people with no communication with one another, with cultures that did not have interaction with one another.
George Lucas adapted Jung's Collective Unconscious as the Force in the Star Wars movies.
I like both versions of these ideas.
I believe firmly in the interconnectedness of people and things, of the universe.
WE ARE ALL CONNECTED.
MAGIC SOUND FABRIC - WE ARE ALL CONNECTED
Can we tap into another realm of consciousness with the Collective Unconscious? Through the interconnected fabric of consciousness, can we see the thoughts of others? Can we experience prophecies of the future? Or are the prophecies an overlap? The echoes of other consciousnesses?
ARCHETYPE: an archetype is not an image. It's a pre-disposition to an image. It's a projection of content into an imagined form. It's filled by our consciousness.
Archetypes are "universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. They are autonomous and hidden forms which are transformed once they enter consciousness and are given particular expression by individuals and their cultures. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, religions, or dreams. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world.
"Strictly speaking, Jungian archetypes refer to nuclear underlying forms or the archetypes-as-such from which emerge images and motifs such as the mother, the child, the trickster and the flood amongst others. It is history, culture and personal context that shape these manifest representations giving them their specific content. These images and motifs are more precisely called archetypal images. However it is common for the term archetype to be used interchangeably to refer to both archetypes-as-such and archetypal images" (Jungian Archetypes, Wikipedia, 2013).
The image of Horus is purposeful in the power point as is my inclusion of the Eye of Horus here on the blog.
The Collective Unconscious and its archetypes must be taken on faith. There is no proving their existence through epistemology.
But we can see it working. We can set forth its workings, set forth the evidence and prove its existence like we would prove anything in a court of law. We can observe it to work and presume how it works and why it woeks, much like we feel we understand the migration of birds. Instinct drives us. Instinct drives birds. Instinct and the Collective Unconscious are one.
Study of Jung branches off from the standard story-type archetypes, such as child hero, wise old man, or trickster, and informs the archetypes of a man's feminine side (Anima), a woman's masculine side (Animus), and the dark side in us all (the Shadow).
But these "archetypes" do not exist independently of us. We fill them with content from consciousness. We project them onto actual people or actual images in the actual world. The archetype is the pattern, the similarity between different people's dark sides, different child heroes in different stories. But they are all different because we are all different, because different stories are different.
We must remember this.
We must make our own myths.
Everyone has the same questions. What is the meaning of life? What is after death? And everyone must find his or her own answers or live with the uncertainty. But people do not like uncertainty. People like certainty. People do not like long quests. People like short trips and then packing away what is over and done with. But the world, the process of individuation to become a self, is not a short trip.
It's a long trip.
What a long and strange trip it has been and will be.
But we must all make our own journey and find our own answers in what Jung called THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION.
Jung considered individuation, a psychological process of integrating the opposites including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy, necessary for a person to become whole.[4]
Individuation is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination or free association to take some examples) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place.[38]
Besides achieving physical and mental health,[38] people who have advanced towards individuation tend to be harmonious, mature and responsible. They embody humane values such as freedom and justice and have a good understanding about the workings of human nature and theuniverse.[4]
Carl Jung wrote much of his work in German. Difficulties for translation arise because the German word Seele means both psyche and soul. Jung was careful to define what he meant by psyche and by soul.
I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche, I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a "personality". (Jung, 1971: Def. 48 par. 797)
[The translation of the German word Seele presents almost insuperable difficulties on account of the lack of a single English equivalent and because it combines the two words "psyche" and "soul" in a way not altogether familiar to the English reader. For this reason some comment by the Editors will not be out of place.]
[In previous translations, and in this one as well, psyche– for which Jung in the German original uses either Psyche or Seele– has been used with reference to the totality of all psychic processes (cf. Jung, Psychological Types, Def. 48); i.e., it is a comprehensive term. Soul, on the other hand, as used in the technical terminology of analytical psychology, is more restricted in meaning and refers to a "function complex" or partial personality and never to the whole psyche. It is often applied specifically to "anima" and "animus"; e.g., in this connection it is used in the composite word "soul-image" (Seelenbild). This conception of the soul is more primitive than the Christian one with which the reader is likely to be more familiar. In its Christian context it refers to "the transcendental energy in man" and "the spiritual part of man considered in its moral aspect or in relation to God." . . . –Editors.] (Jung, 1968: note 2 par. 9)
So the goal of Psyche, the word Jung used for "all the psychic processes," in other words, the person, the personality, the self under development, is to find wholeness, balance, to realize the self, the center wholeness in us all.
The self is the end product, the balanced, whole, transformed, transcendent being.
The Buddha.
The gestalt of ultimate apotheosis.
All spirit. One with God.
All of which brings my content sharing to the subject of Winnie the Pooh.
The Winnie the Pooh stories are consciousness at work, the Process of Individuation at work.
The One Hundred Acre woods is the unconscious. Christopher Robin is the psyche under development to become a self. All the characters and elements of his unconscious are the parts of his psyche that must be brought into balance to emerge as a whole and unified self.
Perhaps Pooh is the end result.
Pooh just is.
Pooh is totally a right-brained being.
We are all much too left brained in our society with its rules and prisons.
We all should be more like Pooh.
Pooh is the UNCARVED BLOCK.
The Taoist idea of the Uncarved Block is called P'u. Much like "Pooh."
Coincidence or proof of the Collective Unconscious?
"Things in their original simplicity contain their own natural power, power that is easily spoiled and lost when simplicity is changed" (Hoff, pg. 10).
The secret of the Uncarved Block? LIFE IS FUN.
Pooh proves that the Pooh Way is the true way when lost in the woods with Rabbit. Rabbit is very left brained. Pooh is not. Pooh finds home when he stops looking for it. It's this counter-intuitive thinking that is endemic of the Uncarved Block.
Just be.
Let the natural forces of the universe guide you.
Be like water.
FLOW.
The Greatest Good is like water... Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
The greatest good is like water
which benefits all life without trying to
It resides in the purest mountain snows
and dwells in the lowest of places
Thus it is like the Tao.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
from wikipedia;
Lao Tzu, aka Laozi and many others, was a philosopher of ancient China and is a central figure in Taoism or Daoism. Lao Tzu literally means "Old Master." He is revered simply as a wise man in philosophical forms of Taoism, but revered as a god in religious forms, much like The Buddha is regarded differently by the religious and philosophical schools of Buddhism. According to Chinese tradition, Lao Tzu lived in the 6th century BC and is traditionally regarded as the author of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), though its authorship has been debated throughout history.
The above is my own translation of his teaching on water being the greatest good. No, I don't speak any form of Chinese, but from going over many other different interpretations, I believe this is what Lao Tzu was saying;
that we all should strive to be ourselves, without ego getting in the way, to mix among all walks of life both rich and poor, both good and bad (whatever that means) and in between. And that by truly being ourselves, we'll actually be helping everyone around us without even trying (sort of like Forrest Gump.) Perhaps by losing the ego and letting go, we'll allow Spirit to work through us, thus being like the Tao or The Way.
I also believe if you read between the lines in the teachings of Jesus Christ, you'll find a lot of similar themes. Some scholars argue that Jesus appears to have studied Buddhism during his "missing years" between the ages of 20 and 30. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.
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