Our original nature is like clear water. Born again into a world of wildly changing forms, though having no essential form of our own, we take on the shapes of the containers we are poured into. We become sons or daughters and are told to think of ourselves in that manner. Acculturated, we bend to the curves of that arbitrary modality. Slowly we freeze into that shape. The straighter and harder the edge the more we are praised as being someone of merit….

But water is water. Melting, it remembers; evaporating, it ascends. When you let go of control of the universe, when you let go of everything, only the truth remains. Your actions come out of the present. There is no force. Fully present. Able to respond, not out of personal desire, but out of a sense of the appropriateness of things. You respond from the flow itself, or perhaps better stated, the flow responds to itself. Letting go of the little mind, of your suffering, is simpler than you think, though it’s the hardest work you will ever do.

Stephen Levine,  A Gradual Awakening