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Last Updated on May 6, 2025 by The Unbounded Thinker
“Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.” – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu’s quote, “Free from desire, you realize the mystery,” exposes an ancient spiritual truth: a sacred formula for experiencing the Divine. It is a deep metaphysical teaching that reveals that too many desires drown your awareness in the sea of illusion.
When you are free from desiring – which involves wanting, craving, and clinging – you allow life to lead. You go with the flow of life rather than trying to control it. You surrender the illusion of control and begin to move in harmony with the Tao, the eternal Way.
This results in a state of stillness where the egoic mind merges with the universal mind, allowing you to see the true nature of reality and experience the divine presence within. Here, the mystery, the formless, the unknowable, that which has no name, form, or boundary, reveals itself. You stop looking for what we call ‘God’ outside as you directly realize that it is within. The illusions of separation and identity disappear and you no longer believe in God, you experience God’s existence within you.
This state is revealed in the Bible in the Book of Psalms in chapter 46 verse 10. “Be still, and know that I am God.” The Psalmist knew that if you become still by overcoming a restless, distracted, and constantly wandering state of mind, which mainly arises from desire, you will experience the sacred presence, the formless behind all things, that is always within you. The phrase “I am God,” therefore, does not imply an external deity separate from the self, but rather points to the “I AM”: the pure, formless awareness that underlies all existence.
When you are caught in desire, you will not experience the Divine within you. Instead, you’ll only see manifestations. In other words, you’ll only experience your ability to create reality because strong desires usually manifest. Although this impact will reveal to you your creative ability, it will strengthen the ego by reinforcing the illusion of power.
The more your desires manifest, the more you’ll believe that you are a powerful being. You’ll start thinking that your personal will is the source of power, reinforcing the illusion of separation and control. These desire-driven manifestations will only cause a sense of empowerment, which will ensure that you remain blind to the deeper, formless reality within. Instead of awakening from the dream of physical reality, you will be deeply enchanted by it.
You will fail to realize that the manifestations you are experiencing as a result of living a desire-driven life are illusions since they appear in the physical realm, which is illusory in nature. To say that your manifestations are illusory is not to say they are unreal, wrong, or meaningless. It only means that they are not the ultimate reality. They are impermanent expressions: momentary crystallizations of thought, emotion, and energy within the ever-shifting field of form. They arise, take, shape, and disappear as their reality is not absolute: they are not the final truth.
Excessively focusing on the manifestations will ensure that your focus is on the external world of form rather than the internal world of spirit. As a result, you will be deeply enmeshed in the illusion of physical reality, which will always appear absolutely real to you, and you will never realize that the ultimate reality that gives rise to all things is within you. In other words, you will gain the world, but you will miss the silent presence – the mystery – from which the world arises.
Therefore, the manifestations, while appearing spiritual, are distractions that reinforce your attachment to physical reality. True spiritual power does not lie in what you can manifest. It lies in what you can let go of until pure awareness remains and the mystery reveals itself. The mystery is the only real, eternal, and unchanging, everything else is an illusion. Free yourself from desire, and you will realize this mystery, the Divine within you.
Lao Tzu’s teaching is not a rejection of life and it’s not a call to withdraw from the world and deny experience. It’s an invitation to transcend the ordinary mode of existence, which is mainly desire-driven: to reduce unnecessary materialistic desires that arise from the egoic mind, which often result in negative states of mind and the constant need for comparison and validation. It is an invitation to return to simplicity by unburdening yourself from the restless pursuit of desire. It is a wisdom that exposes the spiritual enlightenment that occurs when you stop craving for things and trust that life knows what is best for you.
It is about stillness: a state of mind that arises when you stop wanting every material thing, every imagined lack, every temporary thing that the ego believes will complete you. A state of mind that is a gateway to the divine experience that shatters the illusion of physical reality. A state where duality collapses, and the boundaries between the self and cosmos dissolve as you experience your divine origin and sense of oneness with everything. A state where there is no longer a separate “you” trying to reach the Divine because, in this state of stillness, you meet the Divine.
In this state, you don’t learn something new, you only remember. The mystery – The Tao, The Absolute, The Infinite – reveals itself as what you already are beneath all layers of personality, memory, and form. It is, therefore, not a mystery to be solved. It is a mystery to be accessed through a state of inner peace, which only arises when you let go all after piercing the illusion of physical reality. This is the sacred wisdom of the Tao. It cannot be taught. It can only be revealed to those who are still enough to experience it.
