Let's face it, each and every one of us lives in a bubble. Next comes the bubble we share collectively with our 'group' - the group's paradigm I guess I'd call it. Words are the bubble juice from which we make language; language enables us to form and retain our bubble's shape. Simply put, the shape that has no shape make us feel too uneasy.

Taoism is like that little boy who told it like it was ? "the Emperor is wearing no clothes". Taoism's unique contribution lies in how it stabs right to the heart of our bubble - words - and gives us a glimpse at this 'shape' outside our bubble.

It is fascinating how ignorant we are of how hoodwinked we are in this way. We are certain our bubble is real. Deep down though we feel that it isn't, which drives us all the more to prove it is real. "Me thinks thou dost protest too much" reflects what is below the surface. Yak, yak, yak, words are conceptual bricks we use to build our case layer by layer until it is too convoluted to see anything other than the 'proof'. And, I suspect that the more civilized we become, the more convoluted our proofs becomes. Opps, I'm running out of bubble juice, be back soon...

PS, ('personal side') Do you sometimes think "he must be dreaming" when you read the stuff I post? You'd be right much of the time. Curiously, many of my serious thoughts, including this one, bubble up from the murky depths of my sleeping mind (don't ask me why). When they 'pop' into consciousness, they wake me up and I jot them down. Doing so gets them out of mind and onto paper so I can return to sleep once again. My, how strange this bubble blowing mind of mine.