The 18th verse of the Tao te Ching focuses on the idea of living without rules. From a very young age, we’ve been indoctrinated to follow rules in order to not face the consequences of breaking said rules. Growing up in a Christian household, I was taught the 10 commandments as a sort of guide to life - avoid doing any of those things, and you’re straight in the eyes of God. But as I got older, I realized that although the rules do make sense, it’s not enough to simply know the rules and avoid doing them ( so we’re not on God’s “naughty list”) - This whole Santa Claus theory is one that unfortunately rules the minds of majority of people in the world. As Laotzu suggests, “if you need rules to be kind and just, this is a sure sign that virtue is absent.”
It’s no wonder why the church and state hold so much power, they use their rules to control the masses and looking at where society is at the moment, it’s obvious that rules don’t effect change and bring harmony in times of chaos. Personally I’ve been working on unlearning a lot of things that no longer serve me. With my personal healing, I’m learning to open my heart more because I feel this is where real change begins. When we let go of our rule-based thinking and perceive life with a heart-based attitude, I think the power that the Church/State seem to have over the individual, will cease to exist overtime. In my opinion, one of the biggest problems is that we’ve lost our sense of individual responsibility as a part of the collective. Your reason for not killing another person isn’t because it’s against the law; rather, you assume personal responsibility for your actions. And if we preach about us all being from the one God, the one creator, then we realize that if we are one, then what I do to you, I consequently do to myself - The Golden Rule in so many words.
A lot of our problems today in the world ultimately comes from a lack of self-love. I think when there’s a genuine love for self, that changes our personal life and the world as a whole. When we shift our consciousness from the current fear-based norm to that of love, I really do think we can manifest heaven on earth.
Ai-Creo