Although now considered a spiritual handbook for a general audience, the Daodejing was originally written for Ancient China's ruling nobles during the waning years of the Spring and Autumn period. This was a socially and politically unstable time that was marked by widespread warfare between the Middle Kingdom's most powerful states. Laozi describes how personal ambition and material desire had caused many of the ruling nobles to forsake their natural place in the spiritual order of things, thus bringing misery and hardship to themselves and the people they ruled. He believed that if these ruling nobles would stop and look at the larger picture, they would see how their authority fit within the chains of authority that govern "all under Heaven."According to Laozi, all authority originates with a timeless mystical force called "The Way." Although the Way cannot be directly perceived, its effects can be observed in nature. While everything in nature spontaneously follows the Way, a ruler who is a "sage man" must move ahead cautiously as he constantly feels his way through the paradoxical flow of yin and yang [darkness and light, passive and active, feminine and masculine] that emanates from the Way.This is a fairly literal translation of the Daodejing. It doesn't project later philosophical or religious beliefs back onto the 2500 year old text. Instead, it approaches the text from an anthropological perspective and retains all of Laozi's allusions to the social norms, animistic beliefs, and religious practices of the Ancient Chinese during the Spring and Autumn period.