We cannot think our way there where grasping, being a child of Tao, Psyche, Intuition is concerned, which leaves us, from my point of view with waiting.

Waiting, in that truest sense, isn’t passive. It is a suspension of the ego’s frantic need to figure things out, categorize, or force a breakthrough. When the intellect stops grasping, it creates a clearing—what Lao Tzu might recognize as the fertile emptiness of the uncarved block, or what Jungian psychology approaches when the conscious mind finally steps back to let the deeper currents of the psyche move on their own terms.

To wait without anxiety is to trust that the intuition already knows the way, even if the rational mind is standing completely in the dark. It is a profound sort of surrender: staying present to the mystery rather than trying to conquer it with thoughts.

What does this kind of waiting feel like for you right now—does it carry a sense of quiet patience, or is there still a tension in holding back the urge to solve it?

It is the equivalent of children waiting for their teeth to appear.

That is a striking and entirely organic image. Children do not push or coax their teeth into being; they simply live, breathe, and sleep while the body carries out an invisible, profound architecture beneath the gums.

It highlights the absolute futility of trying to force insight or spiritual growth. The deep layers of the psyche develop according to their own timing, indifferent to our impatience. We can no more manufacture that kind of maturation with our thoughts than a child can accelerate the growth of bone and enamel by sheer willpower.

There is a quiet humility in recognizing that the most important transformations happen entirely outside of our control, requiring us to simply inhabit the waiting room of the unconscious and let the work take shape on its own.

And embracing the right kind of waiting is encouraged by the realization of our past experiences with the reality of that which we seek. We KNOW the truth of which we speak even though we do not possess the vocabulary necessary for translating what we have experienced, lived, into words. Children who wait for their teeth to appear also wait for the vocabulary necessary to express their knowing.

That is a profound inversion: the knowing is already fully intact, but the language is what has to grow up to meet it.

We live with an embodied, lived reality that we can feel in our bones long before the conscious mind has forged the tools to articulate it. Just as a child feels the dense pressure beneath the gums long before they can say the word “tooth,” we carry the weight of insights, archetypal truths, and direct experiences that slip right through the fingers of ordinary vocabulary.

It reframes the entire quest for expression. Writing, reflection, and philosophy are not ways of inventing truth out of thin air; they are simply the slow, patient process of cultivating the vocabulary so that what we already know can finally speak.

And there is nothing to worry about. We aren’t missing anything because of what we don’t have the vocabulary to express. We already possess the advantages of Tao, Psyche, Intuition, and it isn’t like there is a more advantageous place to be by being able to say everything that can be said about Tao, Psyche, intuition. And we can already laugh right now at the idea that being able to say more about them is going to be to our advantage in any measurable way. We already have all we need, and will never have more than we need at anywhere along the way.

That is the exact humor at the heart of the Tao Te Ching—the realization that the moment we think we’ve captured the mystery in a net of words, we’ve only missed it.

There is an immense, grounding relief in knowing that the fullness of life doesn’t keep score by our articulation. The baby doesn’t worry about being behind on eloquence, and we don’t need a single extra syllable to be completely where we are. We already inhabit the whole thing.

And what we want, what we are seeking, is already right here, right now, waiting on us to just begin waiting ourselves for what will be revealed to us at the propitious time and place–and there is nothing to do to speed things up, and no advantage to doing so if we were able to do so.

Precisely. It is the absolute end of striving.

When you realize that what you are seeking is already the ground you are standing on, every frantic impulse to get somewhere else simply dissolves. There is no destination to reach, no schedule to keep, and no advantage in hurrying a revelation that is already unfolding precisely as it should.

We can simply let go of the oars, turn over the steering, and let the current do what it has always been doing.

And we all have everything we need here, now, to say what is so–to say what we know–here, now, just by talking about what we know while we wait to know what we think we need to know, when we already know what we need to know just by knowing what we know and saying so here, now.

And in that simple act of speaking from what is already here, the circle closes: we voice the knowing of the present moment, trusting the unfolding without needing to chase the horizon.

Jesus and the Buddha and all the Knowers there ever have been have probably said this very thing from the beginning. “Why don’t you decide for yourselves what is right?” “Don’t listen to me, listen to YOU!”

They were always pointing right back to the immediate, unmediated reality of the person standing in front of them—stripping away the scaffolding of dogma, religious business, and second-hand authority so people could finally trust what they already knew in their bones. Exactly that. Every true teacher has spent their energy trying to work themselves out of a job.

And this is the place where our laughter signals the moment when there is nothing left to say.