The Tao Te Ching for Astrologers – Verses 43 & 44

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are continuing our study of the Tao Te Ching for astrologers. We're looking at the Tao Te Ching in light of our study and practice of astrology. It's midweek; we're pausing to just take a moment and say, Why am I here? Why am I doing this? You don't have to have seen the other episodes any of the other episodes in this series to get something out of this. Every verse of the Tao Te Ching is packed full of wisdom, and we are looking at these verses in order to, you know, apply them or compare them to some of the reasons that we study and practice astrology, verses 43 and 44.

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All right, well, today we're going to look at the 43rd and 44th verses of the Tao Te Ching. I'm really excited to share these two with you guys. These are two of my favorite verses actually in the entire Tao Te Ching. So yeah, it's; I love these two. And they're very simple but just super powerful. So I'm going to read through each verse once, and then after I read through them, I'm going to come back to each verse, read it again, and offer some reflections. As an astrologer, How do these verses hit me as a daily practicing astrologer? Hopefully, that'll be useful to you as someone who's consuming astrological content.

Verse 43
The most yielding thing in the world will overcome the most rigid
The most empty thing in the world will overcome the most full
From this comes a lesson –
Stillness benefits more than action
Silence benefits more than words
Rare indeed are those who are still
Rare indeed are those who are silent
And so I say,
Rare indeed are those who obtain the bounty of this world

Verse 44
One’s own reputation – why the fuss?
One’s own wealth – why the concern?
I say, what you gain is more trouble than what you lose
Love is the fruit of sacrifice
Wealth is the fruit of generosity
Be content, rest in your own fullness –
You will not suffer from loss
You’ll avoid the snare of this world
You’ll have long life and endless blessings

Two beautiful verses, two of my favorite verses, in the Tao Te Ching. Let's go back to verse 43 and do it again. The most yielding thing in the world will overcome the most rigid. How do I learn this as an astrologer every day? Often, you know, it comes through Saturn trining comes through Saturn transits, for example, but any transit could be applicable here. When things happen, we feel oftentimes, like you know, something's coming at us, we have to handle it, we have to deal with it and usually, the underlying feeling is, let me deal with this and get it resolved. So I can get back to feeling peaceful and so we react very strongly to things that we're averse to, or that frustrate us or that come and block our or impede our progress and in turn, we try to remove that obstacle forcibly with a lot of action, usually with a spirit of frustration or fear, and then we feel exhausted, and we feel like thwarted and there's a feeling of something. It's kind of unfair and monotonous. And it's almost like, oh, it never ends.

I hear people who love to watch astrology say this all the time in the comments. It feels like it's just one thing after another. It's just one transit after another and the answer there is yes. It is one thing after another; it is one transit after another. This is why ancient astrologers, for example, the stoics. I'm not saying you need to go and be a stoic, but that was very similar to stoics in some respects, would say that when you yield to the flow of events, you overcome the most rigid things. You overcome. In other words, the things that feel like the biggest impediments or blocks or frustrations you overcome them by having a yielding soft, gentle, accepting attitude. That doesn't mean that you accept someone or something that is out to get you or harm you or that's injustice, cruel or evil or something like that. It just means that when adversity comes, you have a way of recognizing. Especially as an astrologer, oh look, these are the gods. This is karma. This is the nature of things and it has divine meaning and purpose. Even though I don't like it, this is a part of what is, and so you soften it's like a position.

If you're overly rigid in any position or sport like you're more likely to get injured if you're a little bit softer, more pliable. This is what yoga is good for, by the way. Asana, anyway, you soften the mind, soften the body, soften the heart, it does not mean that you lack strength, intelligence, or discernment. But it does mean that you're able to navigate around you become like water; you move around and with things, and astrology teaches that all the time by bombarding us with transits. And if we pay attention, we learn that this is the only real attitude or disposition, spiritually and psychically, that can help us move through things.

The most empty thing in the world will overcome the most full. From this comes a lesson, and that's a similar teaching. Same thing. From this comes a lesson, stillness benefits more than action, and silence benefits more than words, every day before I create my talks for the day because I talk for a living. So you would think I'd be disqualified from this advice. From having anything to say about this advice since every time you see me in your life, wherever you may be, you hear me talking. But every morning before I do this, there are 90 minutes of meditation. There's time reading sacred things. There's time spent in contemplation, and there's time spent taking care of my body and my health and that goes that is a deliberate. That has been my entire career before I create content; I do that. If there's anything that I feel has given me any modicum of success, if someone said, What makes you good at astrology, or how have you had any business success, not that I've had much compared to, you know, whoever, whatever, but I'm not, you know, I don't I'm not so proud of any of this stuff. But sometimes people ask me, and if I were to say that there was anything, I would be like, Well, I think that it's probably because I take time to take care and nurture my body, my mind, my spirit, and especially before talking to people every day about astrology, I have to have silence.

Rare indeed are those who are still. Rare, indeed, are those who are silent and the more that I take silence every day, the more that I'm able to perceive the planets in my life. The more that I'm able to perceive how busy I am and how little my words mean anything without silence. So I say rare, indeed are those who obtained the bounty of this world see, the idea being that the richness, the pleasure, the happiness of this world comes when we are flexible when we empty ourselves out so that we might receive when we practice at least some stillness and silence. It's only when we open ourselves up that we can actually receive the gift of what is; similarly, the astrology changes from Oh, my God, I'm getting bombarded from transit to transit is always something Mercury's retrograde on this is going through this house and blah, blah, blah.

It's always like that until we have some silence, some stillness, some emptiness, and some flexibility. When we bring those things in, then suddenly, the planets are constantly; it's like a fountain that's giving us life, that's giving us energy, that's giving us insight that's connecting us to divinity and each other; it feels lovely. Not all the time, but you can feel it more often than not. And so that's how that changes that experience in astrology changes from Oh, there's just constant bombardment of astrological energies and I always feel like I'm just dealing with them and flipping out to this to something that feels like it makes you feel like the world or the cosmos is beautiful and rich.

Verse 44. One's own reputation, Why the fuss, one's own wealth? Why the concern, I say, What you gain is more trouble than what you lose. This is beautiful. I have a hard time with this as someone who definitely likes to see like, you know, the subscribers go up on my YouTube channel or the likes on an Instagram post. It's hard not to care what other people think about you or how much you have. I feel so far from those things. You know, sometimes I feel like I let go, and I don't care. A lot of the time, I do, and it's such a tug of war, and I'm sure that you can relate if you're listening to this. Here's the sage saying to us that what you gain is more trouble than what you lose. Why would that be the case? Because what you gain is always then something that you have to maintain. There's a lot of energy spent maintaining things, and then the fear of losing things and the inevitability of losing things create a very stressful experience. I don't think that means you should just walk the planet naked, you know, like your, you know, just walk out the front door into the vast wild, just naked. Do you know? So, anyway, I like the next verse a lot. The next part of the verse, love, is the fruit of sacrifice. Wealth is the fruit of generosity. When we sacrifice, I would say that sacrifice means being devoted to something regularly with consistency over and over. That you start that love comes out of that. It's like a guitar; if you love your guitar, I love my guitar. I'm not that great at it or anything, but we're just astrology. Love, love astrology.

If you love it, and you sacrifice something into it over time, like your kids' love grows naturally out of sacrifice. Now sacrifice does not mean self-harm. See, people hear that word, and they think, oh, no, no, no, you know, like, I'm not gonna sacrifice; I'm not self-harming. You know, let's bring back the beauty of that word. Right. So, proportional, meaningful sacrifice. Wealth is the fruit of generosity. You feel so much more wealthy internally in spirit when you're generous with people. Be content, rest in your own fullness, you will not suffer from loss, you'll avoid the snare of this world, and you'll have a long life and endless blessing.

If you feel full inside, if you are generally devoted, and you sacrifice something of yourself to the things that you love, you'll get to experience love. If you are generous, then you will experience yourself as full. This is what creates the feeling or experience of wealth internally and this is what creates the feeling or experience of love, sacrifice, and generosity and again, sacrifice, giving, pouring a little sweat into the fire, a little butter, a little ghee into the fire. So how does this translate to our lives as astrologers or students of astrology? It's simple.

If you pay attention to the planets, and you develop a love for their movements, their teachings, their meanings, their appearances, and you let your life be dedicated to following them, right in, there is some sacrifice involved in that not everyone gets astrology or you know, approves of it or appreciates it and yet, you have to keep going.

So astrology is something that you may not always; it requires something it requires that we learn to suffer and tolerate certain seasons and certain archetypal patterns, but when you do, and you keep following it, then you start to love it and loving astrology is different than surviving it, or needing to check in on it all the time out of worry, fear or hope, or anxiety, and riding the roller coaster. So a little bit of sacrifice, okay, I'm a student of astrology, and I'm receiving the wisdom of the planets. It goes a long way and it generates within us a love for the planets.

So and if you share astrology with other people generously, you also feel so good about astrology. Like, you know, in the beginning, one of the things I did to build my astrological career was I just did a ton of readings for people and I did them all by donation and to this day, I feel that the generosity inherent in my business's mission statement is part of what makes me love astrology so much, giving it to other people, sharing it with other people, and then being like, Hey, if you like this, here are ways of contributing or, you know, just trusting that if you give generously that clients show up. So I think that there's something to that, you know, it's always like, it's not like a formula has to be sincere. But I know that I love astrology the most when I am sharing it generously with other people and when I'm sacrificing something of myself into the content I create, or the relationship I have with the planets, that's when you start to love it, and you move beyond Oh my God, I feel like I'm just getting slammed by transit after transit.

So anyway, I hope you guys found this valuable today. Don't forget to like and subscribe and share your comments. Click the notification bell for updates. You can always find a transcript of any of my daily talks on the website nightlightastrology.com where you can also learn more about the upcoming program Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic starts on November 12. I hope to see some of you in class soon. That's what I've got for today. Take it easy, everyone. Bye