Day of the Sidestep, 28th of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): One day many, many years ago, the Chinese monk Jōshū (778-897) asked his teacher, Nansen (749-835), "What is the Way?" 

Nansen famously answered, "Ordinary mind is the Way."

Jōshū then asked, "In that case, how do we find it?," and Nansen told him, "The more you seek after it, the more it runs away." So Jōshū asked, "If I don't seek after it, how will I ever know it?," and Nansen instructed, 

"The Way does not belong to knowing or unknowing. Knowing is illusion. Not knowing is blank consciousness. If you truly arrive at the Great Way of no trying. it will be like great emptiness, vast and clear. How can we speak of it in terms of this or that, yes or no?"

Jōshū understood. 

Tell someone to "just act normal," and the first thing they usually do is freeze up, stifling themselves with indecision on how to proceed. In other words, they're as far from normal as can be.  You can be normal, but you can't "be" normal, if you know what I mean.

In this manner, the Way is like being cool. The more "cool" you try to be, the more uncool you appear. The more real we try to be, the more unreal we are. And as for those who try to be "holy," don't even get me started . . .  

But we all remember that one super-cool kid from school, the one who was effortlessly cool without even trying, without following fashion or using the code words that everyone else dropped in an attempt to prove their coolness. That odd kid who not only didn't care they were odd, but fully embraced their oddity. Cool doesn't mean fashionable; cool means truly not giving a shit about the little things. In my opinion, the coolest kid in the 80s movie The Breakfast Club, wasn't the jock or the rebel or the princess, but Ally Sheedy's Allison, the loner and outcast.      

Ordinary mind is the Way. We don't need to learn anything, to acquire anything, to believe or disbelieve anything. It's our everyday life, here and now. 

Sit with it and it will arise. Don't sit with it and it will still arise, you just won't notice.