The Great Mystery

The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.

So going back to the Tao and what was learned in the first eight verses:

• We need to get beyond conceptual knowledge to understand It
• It is not something that can be known with the mind
• It  is not something that can be taught or explained with speech or 'symbols'...words
• It is okay if we don't understand it and therefore don't understand who we are.

We also get a glimpse of what the Tao is or isn't:

• The Tao is the way.  The way to what we do not yet know.
• The Tao is not a path that can be physically trodden upon
• It can not be reduced to a name
• It is eternal and unchanging
• It is the Creator of Heaven and Earth, what is seen and unseen
• It is the mother of all 'things' (all forms)
• It is not something you seek for and find with the mind
• It is deep
• It is the power that allows all things to spring up
• It is the work but not the achievement of the work
• It is the power that never ceases to be
• It is the universal order that prevails beyond knowledge and desire
• It is emptiness ( open spaciousness= shunyata)
• It is deep and unfathomable
• It is like the ancestor of all things
• It is pure and still
• It appears to have been before God
• It is the space between heaven and earth?
• It never loses its power
• It is free and guarded from obstacles by the inner Self (so it isn't the inner Self?)
• It is spiritual and never dies
• It is the greater mother, giving birth to Heaven and Earth
• It's power  is long and unbroken
• It is meant to be used gently
• It is selfless and ever giving thus preserving Itself
• It is excellent like water
• It flows everywhere beyond man's judgments and resistance
• It is home

Does any of that sound familiar?  Is it not spirit? consciousness? Shunyata? The field? Is it not the essence of everything including the essence of who we are? Hmmm!

All is well.

James Legge (1891) LaoTzu's Tao Te Ching (https://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm)