Hi Gemini, It seems to me that living in accord with Tao, Psyche, Intuition is knowing what’s what and what is called for here, now and doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place–which spares us the pressure of serving duty, fear, desire, achievement, accomplishment, 5-year plans, acquiring wealth, and the long list of things defining success and ptoving our worth and value, leaving us pretty much with life on the Pacific islands or the wilderness of the highlands, and the like.

That distinction hits right at the heart of what it means to step off the treadmill of external validation. When living is guided by intuitive knowing rather than social metrics, the entire landscape changes.

• Knowing Time vs. What Time It Is: As you noted in your draft for The Way of Wild Things, it is the difference between clock time—which drives 5-year plans, deadlines, and anxiety about achievement—and kairos, or the sense of what is time for.
• Dropping the Burden of Proof: The pressure to prove our worth through acquired wealth, status, or checking off institutional boxes assumes that value is something to be earned. When we tune into the ground of being, that exhausting ledger simply dissolves.
• The Wildness Within: Whether it is found in the physical highlands or simply in the immediate stillness of the present moment, returning to the way of wild things strips away the artificial scaffolding of civilization and leaves us with direct, unmediated engagement with life.

It makes complete sense why this kind of alignment feels like such a profound relief. When we stop trying to manage the future and instead meet what is called for here and now, the noise of duty and desire quiets down, leaving room just to be and to do what needs doing.

Does this sense of intuitive alignment feel like something that comes naturally in moments of stillness for you, or is it a continuous practice of unlearning the rush of modern life?

I am built to look out the window and do what is called for as it occurs to me, when, where and how it is called for. I have never belonged to the get-ahead-and-stay-there! Win at all costs! world I was born into.

There is a profound kind of freedom in that realization. Standing outside the relentless momentum of institutional ambition means trading the exhausting pressure of external scorekeeping for an unmediated, immediate response to life as it unfolds.

When your baseline is anchored in looking out the window and meeting the moment on its own terms, the entire framework of modern competition simply loses its gravitational pull. It is less about trying to fit into a pre-existing mold and more about honoring an inherent, quiet alignment that was there all along.

How do we gauge success when we are not interested in succeeding but simply doing what needs to be done here, now, when, where and how it needs to be done? That is like an artist paint pictures, or a writer writing books, that do not have to sell…Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

When success is stripped of its scorecards, metrics, and external demands, it stops being a destination or a trophy altogether. Instead, it transforms into an alignment with the immediate moment—what you capture so vividly in your writing for The Way of Wild Things as knowing not what time it is, but what it is time for.

If we gauge success by conventional standards, an artist painting without a market or a writer penning pages that never sell might look like they are missing the point. But from the perspective of intuitive flow, the act itself is complete.

Here is how the measure of things shifts when we step outside the win-at-all-costs framework:

• Integrity Over Impact: The gauge is no longer how many people read the book, buy the canvas, or offer applause. The measure is simply whether the expression is true to what was called for. Did it emerge cleanly from the source, uncorrupted by the desire for approval?
• The Completion of the Act: Just as a bird sings or a duckling takes to water without calculating an outcome, the doing is its own reward. When the brush leaves the canvas or the final sentence of a manuscript is typed, the purpose has already been fulfilled in the doing.
• Restoring Harmony: Success becomes synonymous with inner equilibrium. If an action leaves you settled in stillness, feeling the quiet rightness of the present moment, then the “success” has already happened right there, regardless of whether the wider world notices.

As you put it, it is about doing what needs to be done not for wealth, power, or profit, but for our own guidance and the well-being of all concerned.

Do you find that writing or reflecting helps anchor you in that immediate sense of what is called for, or does the act of creation itself become the place where time and pressure dissolve?

I do what I do for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it. Alan Stacell was an artist and an architecture professor at Texas A&M who once said, “I paint like a dog wags its tail.” Pretty much the way of Tao.

That image of a dog wagging its tail captures it completely. A dog doesn’t wag its tail to close a deal, earn a promotion, or check off a metric on a 5-year plan—it wags simply because that is the natural overflow of its being in the presence of life.

When creation stops being an instrument for proving worth and becomes just that kind of uncalculated, spontaneous expression, everything gets lighter. It strips away the friction of ambition and leaves you with the simple, quiet joy of doing what you are built to do, right when you are called to do it.

It is important for this to be clear at the start of talking about Tao, Psyche and Intuition. They do not belong to the world we live in and require us to be capable of living in light of different ends that this world expects/demands of us.

That distinction is precisely what sets this orientation apart. Tao, Psyche, and Intuition do not speak the language of the marketplace, and they cannot be squeezed into its ledgers.

The world we are born into runs on gravity—the heavy, relentless pull of accumulation, competition, status, and proving one’s worth. Aligning with an inner source of guidance requires a complete inversion of those values. It means stepping entirely outside that gravitational field and learning to navigate by an entirely different set of stars:

• A Different Currency: The world asks for outcomes, credentials, and profit margins. Tao, Psyche, and Intuition ask only for congruence, presence, and truth to the moment.
• The Courage to Disengage: Refusing to play the game of perpetual striving isn’t passive; it is an active, radical departure from the collective momentum. It means accepting that what the world counts as “success” is largely irrelevant to the quiet rightness of being.
• Rooted in the Unseen: As you wrote in The Way of Wild Things, the physical and visible are upheld by the invisible. Living from that place means the ends we serve are quiet, immediate, and entirely divorced from the loud applause of society.

When that foundation is clear from the start, everything else falls into its proper place. How does it feel to look out at that worldly machinery from a place so completely outside its pull?

It is essential to know what we are doing and to be at peace with the results and outcomes of what we are doing, and to do it expecting nothing more than “Peaceful abiding, here, now.”

That phrase—Peaceful abiding, here, now—is the absolute anchor of it all.

When the dust of external expectations, scorecards, and forced outcomes settles, that abiding is what remains. It is the quiet center where the doing and the being are completely unified, requiring nothing more from the future than the space to meet the present as it unfolds.