See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63 (Unpublished):
Act without ado.
Serve what is.
Be among the willing few.
See seeds in trees
and trees in seeds.
Savor what is,
without excess.
Start small.
See both
this and that.
Do what is yours,
and let it be.
When things are easy,
see the difficulty.
When difficulty is all you see,
wear it down,
chip it away.
The great do not try to be great.
They are,
and do not hold to being.
Expect difficulty,
and meet what comes.
In this,
there is harmony.
With It,
love moves.
—
There’s a deadline sitting in front of me that does not care about my relationship with the Tao.
Kayser Ridge—the land, the retreat center, the physical expression of work I have been building toward for more than twenty years—needs to generate sustainable revenue within the next few years or I will eventually be forced into decisions I do not want to make. That reality shows up in spreadsheets, financial projections, meetings with accountants, retreat registrations, marketing plans, and the occasional 3:17 a.m. conversation with my own nervous system.
The Tao Te Ching says:
Act without ado.
Serve what is.
Beautiful words.
Though “what is” sometimes includes invoices, timelines, difficult conversations, economic stewardship, and the recognition that meaningful things in the world rarely sustain themselves through vision alone.
That tension sits at the center of this chapter for me.
There are days I can feel myself drifting toward Doing everything. Build faster. Push harder. Create more programs. Increase visibility. Optimize. Solve. Move. The work gets done, though the pace slowly starts hollowing out the very quality that made Kayser Ridge worth building in the first place. Presence narrows. Relationships become more transactional. The land starts feeling like a production system instead of a living environment.
Other days I drift too far toward Being. Reflection expands. Possibilities remain possibilities. I convince myself patience is wisdom while decisions wait for my participation. Presence without agency eventually becomes its own form of avoidance.
Neither side announces itself as excess while you are inside it.
That may be one of the reasons this chapter feels increasingly important to me. It no longer reads like philosophy. It feels more like companionship for living inside tensions that do not resolve cleanly.
Most leaders are trained in Doing. Goals. Metrics. Execution. Strategy. Accountability. Action. If something is not working, increase effort, improve systems, optimize performance, accelerate output.
There is real value there.
Though endless Doing creates distortions over time. Systems tighten. Relationships thin out. Attention fragments. Human beings slowly lose the ability to notice what is actually unfolding underneath perpetual motion. The pace itself starts replacing discernment.
At the same time, overidentification with Being carries consequences too. Reflection slowly replaces participation. Discernment drifts into hesitation. People begin protecting themselves from difficulty through spacious language and spiritual vocabulary while the realities requiring action remain fully intact.
I have lived both sides enough to recognize how convincing each one feels while you are inside it.
That understanding became more visible for me during the Inner Development Goals Summit in Stockholm in 2025. The summit theme was Bridging Polarities, and I found myself sitting in conversations with people from around the world wrestling with versions of the same tension:
inner development and outer impact,
reflection and action,
human capacity and systemic responsibility.
The IDGs begin with Being and conclude with Doing.
That sequence feels important.
Modern systems are extraordinarily sophisticated at developing Doing capacities. We know how to optimize, execute, measure, scale, automate, accelerate, and produce. What we struggle to sustain are the inner capacities required to participate wisely inside increasingly complex systems:
awareness,
humility,
discernment,
emotional regulation,
relational intelligence,
ethical reflection,
and the ability to remain grounded while conditions shift.
The Sustainable Development Goals emerged because the world recognized that systems require coordinated action at scale. The Inner Development Goals emerged because people began recognizing that systems alone cannot generate wise outcomes without human beings capable of stewarding them well.
Part AND Whole.
Doing AND Being.
The Tao noticed this tension a very long time ago.
And it feels increasingly consequential now as artificial intelligence accelerates nearly every aspect of modern Doing. AI dramatically expands execution. Faster analysis. Faster communication. Faster workflows. Faster content generation. Faster optimization. Faster decisions. The attraction makes perfect sense.
Though over time another pattern starts appearing.
People stop pausing long enough to think deeply. Reflection becomes harder to justify. Human beings begin adapting themselves to machine pacing while still somehow being expected to maintain discernment, empathy, creativity, wisdom, and ethical judgment.
That arrangement carries consequences.
Human beings remain biological creatures. We still require pacing, recovery, relationship, conversation, meaning-making, and time for patterns to reveal themselves. We still require enough spaciousness to notice when acceleration itself is degrading the conditions required for good judgment.
AI can optimize astonishing amounts of information.
It cannot tell us what deserves our devotion.
It cannot determine what serves the larger whole.
It cannot decide what should be preserved rather than accelerated.
Those remain profoundly human responsibilities.
And honestly, I think this is part of why so many people feel exhausted right now. Human beings are increasingly expected to function like systems optimized exclusively for Doing while still somehow remaining emotionally present, relationally available, ethically grounded, and psychologically whole.
That arrangement rarely holds for long.
The Tao keeps bringing me back toward a simpler question:
What is actually mine to do here?
Do what is yours,
and let it be.
There is wisdom in those two movements together.
Do what is yours:
participate,
decide,
repair,
build,
speak,
act,
take responsibility for what genuinely belongs to you.
And let it be:
release the illusion that force guarantees wisdom,
allow timing to matter,
recognize limits,
stop gripping outcomes so tightly that you damage the larger system you are trying to serve.
I think this is also why Servant Leadership continues to matter. Serving what is does not mean becoming endlessly agreeable or stepping back from responsibility. It means serving the reality of the system rather than your preferred fantasy about the system. Sometimes service requires direction. Sometimes restraint. Sometimes intervention. Sometimes patience.
The challenge is that reality keeps moving.
Which brings me back to another line in the chapter:
See seeds in trees
and trees in seeds.
What is small is becoming something larger.
What is large once began almost invisibly.
Most meaningful change does not arrive through dramatic declarations. It emerges through many small moves, repeated over time, by people capable of remaining connected to both purpose and reality long enough for something durable to grow.
Richard Barrett often says, “Organizations don’t change. People do.”
I think Chapter 63 would probably agree.
The systems matter.
The structures matter.
The strategies matter.
Though eventually everything depends upon the quality of participation human beings bring into the systems they inhabit.
That includes leadership.
Families.
Organizations.
Democracy.
Technology.
And whatever future we are currently building together while pretending we are merely reacting to circumstances.
This chapter also feels increasingly relevant politically.
Authoritarian systems overfocus on Doing. Move faster. Consolidate power. Eliminate friction. Attack institutions. Accelerate action. The appearance of strength increases while discernment, responsiveness, relationship, and collective trust slowly deteriorate underneath the speed.
At the same time, democracies sometimes drift too far toward reflection without decisive participation. Complexity becomes explanation. Understanding replaces intervention. People see what is happening while struggling to act proportionately to the moment requiring response.
Both patterns destabilize what they claim to serve.
Democracy requires citizens and leaders capable of Doing AND Being:
acting decisively while remaining present to what their actions are creating,
staying reflective without becoming paralyzed,
and participating responsibly enough to adapt before systems fracture under pressure.
I do not experience this chapter as instructions anymore.
It feels more like a reminder that wise participation rarely comes from gripping harder or withdrawing completely. It emerges through staying connected to both reality and purpose long enough for action to remain responsive instead of compulsive.
Most days I still drift too far one direction or the other. Some mornings I wake up ready to overpower reality with effort. Other days I spend too much time reflecting after the decision has already become obvious. Kayser Ridge continues teaching me both sides with remarkable consistency.
And perhaps that is part of the practice too.
The great do not try to be great.
They are,
and do not hold to being.
That line feels different to me now than it once did.
Less like aspiration.
More like relief.
Because there is something deeply exhausting about constantly trying to become optimized, impressive, fully resolved, endlessly productive, certain, influential, or important enough to outrun uncertainty.
Chapter 63 keeps pulling me back toward something steadier:
serve what is,
do what is yours,
allow what unfolds to teach you,
and stay connected to what matters long enough for wiser participation to emerge over time.
Including when the spreadsheet is still sitting there in the morning.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Doing (What’s Yours) AND Being (Let It Be):
INVITATIONS:
Try the AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, Seeing, CLICK HERE.
If you want to take a quick self-assessment for Doing (What’s Yours) And Being (Let It Be)? CLICK HERE – the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).
Want to go deeper into Polarity Thinking? See our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice, CLICK HERE.
