"The fates guide him who will; him who won't, they drag." — Ancient Greeks
Wu Wei means "The Watercourse Way," another way of saying "the path of least resistance," or "following the Tao." While your inner refraction of the Tao may cause you to have to overcome great resistance in the outer world, at other times following the Tao does, indeed, involve taking the path of least resistance and adapting to outer circumstances.
The way Taoism is presented almost everywhere gives a false impression that following the Tao means passively adapting to the vicissitudes of the outer world. But the aspect of the Tao that is most important to follow is your inner refraction of it, which can appear as what Aleister Crowley called your "
True Will." You need to follow your deepest inner enthusiasms and intuitions, and sometimes this may mean overcoming fierce resistance in the outside world.
You can tell when the ego is trying to lead (rather than the True Will) when there are annoying thought tape loops in the foreground of consciousness —
But what if I do this?, but what if this happens?, but what if that happens? The ego-led mind keeps ricocheting back and forth like an overheated ping-pong match. When the ego and mind work together without the leadership of global intuition you get this sense of restless strain and anxious effort. Another way to tell that the ego is leading is when you are caught up in any of the following gerunds: fearing, hoping, dreading, desiring, wanting, wishing, doubting, pre-structuring, envying, supervising, lifeguarding, complaining, comparing, self- pitying, pleasure-seeking, self-aggrandizing and glorifying, indulging, anticipating, expecting, contriving, hedging, clinging, identifying, rationalizing, pushing, straining, and imagining negative possibilities. This list should give an idea of how much of the time the ego is seeking to dominate our process. Each of the gerunds is a function of doubt, the supervisory ego does not accept that the universe is unfolding as it should and is straining like a white-knuckled driver to wrest control. When you are following the Tao you can sense yourself in congruent alignment with your path, which may still have difficulties, but you know from the depths of your being that you are on the path. The ego wants to push for progress, and wants to clear up ambiguous and ambivalent situations by making some permanent, decisive choice. The way of Tao is to accept that you are in a state of ambiguity and ambivalence and wait in non-action until things become clear before going forward.