The OM Collective: Find Your Calm

Sometimes the spiritual journey asks us to seek. And sometimes… it asks us to stop seeking. After eight years of sharing my voice, my spiritual journey, meditations, reflections and teachings here, I have felt a quiet but unmistakable invitation to put down the microphone. I didn't expect 81 Days of Tao to end at Door 30. I thought we would walk through all eighty-one doors together. But perhaps this is the most Taoist ending of all. Lately, life has been showing me the same message again and again: Let go.Do less.Receive. For much of my awakening journey, whenever I experienced something I couldn't understand, I searched outside myself for answers. YouTube. Podcasts. Books. Spiritual teachings. Conversations. AI. I searched for clarity, meaning, confirmation and sometimes simply comfort. And those things have helped me enormously. I don't reject any part of that journey. But something has changed. I feel the Divine inviting me to stop searching for someone else to explain every mystery of my life…and instead deepen the direct relationship between myself and the sacred. To ask…and become quiet. To pray…and listen. To experience something without immediately interpreting it. To allow some questions to remain unanswered. And to trust that perhaps some mysteries aren't meant to be solved. They are meant to be lived. I have also realised that I no longer want to share every sacred part of my inner journey. Some experiences don't need an audience. Some prayers don't need to become content. Some synchronicities don't need to be explained. Some love doesn't need to be defined. Some things can remain quietly between ourselves and God, the Universe, the Divine, the Tao. And so this isn't really an ending. It is a change in direction. From seeking to listening. From explaining to experiencing. From projecting my energy outward to allowing it to return home. From doing… to being. Perhaps receiving requires empty space. And perhaps I've been filling every empty space with another question, another answer, another teaching, another search. So now I want to leave some space empty. To tend my life. To create. To walk. To make tea. To sit in the sun. To love. To pray. To listen. To experience the sacred ordinary without needing to turn it into something else. And to create enough space… for life to come toward me. To every person who has listened since this podcast began in 2018, and to everyone who joined somewhere along the way—thank you. If something I shared helped you through a difficult season, made you feel less alone, or simply gave you somewhere quiet to rest for a while, then this little space has served its purpose. I used to end these Tao episodes with: Another door has opened.I'll meet you here tomorrow. But this time there isn't another episode waiting on the other side. There is simply life. And perhaps that's where the Tao was leading me all along. One final breath. One final door. And instead of meeting here tomorrow… let's meet life wherever it finds us. With love,Claire 🤍 #TaoTeChing #SpiritualAwakening #TheTao #LettingGo #Surrender #Stillness #SpiritualJourney #SlowLiving #InnerPeace #

Welcome to Day Twenty-Nine of 81 Days of Tao. Today we're exploring something that sounds incredibly simple…but can be one of the hardest things we are ever asked to do. Let go of control. And this verse arrived for me on a morning when I found myself wishing I could go backwards. Back to the life I had before my awakening. Before so much of what I believed about myself, love, happiness and the direction of my life began to fall away. For a moment, I wanted the certainty of my old life back. So I placed my hand on my heart…closed my eyes…and imagined myself back inside that life. And I asked: Do I really want to go back? The answer came immediately. No. Because when I looked more deeply,I remembered something. Even when life looked successful from the outside… even when I travelled, achieved, made money and experienced beautiful things… there had always been a quiet feeling inside me that something was missing. I couldn't name it. I just knew there had to be something more. And although my life todayis still rebuilding… that feeling is gone. What awakening took from me was certainty. But what it gave me was connection. And perhaps this is one of the great paradoxes of the spiritual journey. We don't necessarily receive a map showing us where we're going next. Sometimes we're simply asked to release the life we've outgrown… without yet knowing what will replace it. And that requires trust. Not the kind of trust that says, Everything will happen exactly the way I want. But the kind that whispers… I don't know where this is going… and I don't need to control it to keep walking. And this is where Verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching meets us today. In the space between control and surrender. Between the life we've known… and the life that is still becoming. So take a breath… open your hands… and let's step throughDoor Twenty-Nine.

Today's verse feels particularly personal to me… because long before I understoodwhat the Tao was teachingabout opposites… I was experiencing itwithin my own bodyand within my own life. My spiritual awakening beganwith a powerful activationof life-force energy… an experience that opened meto an energetic worldI hadn't understood before. And what followedwasn't simply peace and light. It was a dismantling. So many of the beliefsI had unconsciously built my life around… right and wrong… light and dark… strength and softness… masculine and feminine… attachment and freedom… began to break apart. And for a while… holding these oppositeswas incredibly destabilising. I thought one sidehad to be right… and the other wrong. One had to stay… and the other had to go. But over time… I began to understand something. Perhaps awakeningisn't about choosingthe light over the darkness… or the spiritualover the human. Perhaps it is about becomingspacious enoughto hold both… without allowing eitherto pull us away from our centre. And this is where Verse 28of the Tao Te Chingtakes us today. Into the paradox of opposites… and the extraordinary wholenessthat becomes possiblewhen we stop fightinghalf of ourselves. Take a breath… and let's step throughDoor Twenty-Eight.

Verse 27 of the Tao Te Ching offers us a beautiful and challenging teaching: Every human is exactly where they need to be. We are all somewhere on the path. Some people meet us through love and openness. Others meet us through their conditioning, fears, wounds, defences and the level of awareness available to them at that point in their lives. And sometimes… those encounters hurt. But what if spiritual maturity isn't about pretending that harmful behaviour was okay? What if it is learning to see clearly without closing our heart? This week, I experienced this teaching personally through a cord-cutting meditation. I chose to release the energetic attachment I still felt to five people from my life—not because I had decided they were bad people, but because I no longer wanted those experiences taking up space within me. Their energy was simply no longer aligned with the energy I am choosing to cultivate. And I realised something: Judgment can be a cord too. We can physically walk away from someone while continuing to carry them through resentment, imaginary conversations, anger and the belief that they should have behaved differently. True release can look different. We can acknowledge what happened. We can call harmful behaviour what it was. We can establish sacred boundaries. And still release the need to condemn another human being for where they currently are on their journey. Their becoming belongs to them. Our becoming belongs to us. In this episode, we explore compassion without self-abandonment, boundaries without bitterness, releasing the inner war, and allowing people the dignity of walking their own path. Perhaps our work isn't to force another person to change. Perhaps it is to become so rooted in our own truth that our life quietly says: This is where I stand now. This is how I choose to love. This is how I choose to be treated. And if you wish to meet me here, you are welcome to find your own way. Because we don't need another person to become different in order for us to become peaceful. Take a breath… and step through Door 27. ✨ Reflection:Can I allow someone to be where they are without abandoning where I am? 🌙 81 Days of Tao — ancient wisdom made living wisdom, one verse, one breath, one door at a time.

In this episode, we explore Verse 26 of the Tao Te Ching—a profound teaching on inner stability, emotional resilience, and finding peace that isn't dependent on what is happening around you. Life will always bring change. Unexpected conversations.Disappointment.Conflict.Loss.Moments that shake the ground beneath our feet. The Tao doesn't promise a life without storms. It teaches us how to become deeply rooted so the storms no longer define us. This week, life sent me two unexpected teachers. One was the woman who sold me my new car. The other walked into my tea shop to order a chai masala. Neither knew the other.Neither knew what I was recording for this series. Yet both shared the same profound message. One reminded me that beneath all the chaos, betrayals and disappointments, what truly matters is the relationship between you and the Divine—the quiet connection no circumstance can take away. The other gently said something that stopped me in my tracks: "It doesn't matter what the energy around you is like... what matters is the energy you hold within." Those words stayed with me. They felt like life reminding me of the very essence of Verse 26. Peace isn't created by waiting for the world to become calm. Peace is cultivated within us. In this episode, we explore: How to stay grounded when life feels uncertain Why your inner state matters more than your external circumstances Finding stability through your relationship with the Tao Becoming rooted instead of reactive Carrying peace wherever life takes you The deeper your roots... the gentler your life becomes. Take a breath... and step through Door 26. ✨ Reflection What if nothing outside of you has the power to disturb the peace you've cultivated within? 🌙 81 Days of Tao is a journey through the Tao Te Ching—one verse each day, translated into everyday life through mindfulness, nature, slow living, and gentle self-reflection. If these teachings are helping you slow down, breathe a little deeper, or see life through a different lens, I'd love for you to subscribe and continue walking this journey with me. One verse. One breath. One door at a time.