the kongdan foundation

Just as Confucius, Sidhartha, and Lao Tzu from the East, and Plato, Aristotle, Emerson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus, in the West, plus many others, have taught us. With traditions that are universal and all-encompassing to be shared by all.

It is our virtue that continues after we are gone that makes us immortal. It is through us, as living history, we keep watch over those things we have learned to care about. For many enlightenment means rising above our thoughts to distant horizons. To places we often go in meditation, have been and will be again in the future.

In the coming year, when asked where we live, we are to say that we live in the state of becoming our highest aspiration and helping others to do the same with our virtue intact.

We may think doing so is “above us”, but we are what we think, and how we live decides who we are.   

I am reminded of the song by Joni Mitchell saying we are stardust we are golden; we are one. That we are simply stardust going home as a part of an expanding universe was also made popular by astronomer Carl Sagan.  

That we are to embody, i.e., become the embodiment of what we want to transmit…  To become the face of virtue and the transcendental ourselves.

Knowing this – meditation and living each moment following our innate true self is key. Just how do we do this but to become symbols of the highest aspirations of humanity.

Remembering who we really are is the first step in awakening to our spiritual path.

Throughout the journey from birth to death, many people choose to question life, strive for improvement, seek out knowledge, and search for the divine. Simply put, this is the essence of spirituality. 

In the past I have highlighted on both my posts and pages books and authors I have followed over the years. One, I want to expand throughout 2024 that broadens our spiritual connection with the universe is the book ” The way of the White Clouds”, by Lama Anagarika Govinda, that shows us the way to personal liberation.

Over the coming year of 2024, I plan to spend time with many people throughout history who have served to influence our actions and thinking in a positive way looking to the stability of tradition. Speaking and writing to what we see that takes us to our highest endeavor as our goal and to what inspires us.

It has always been spending time with our mentors both past and present that connects us to the future and our role we are here to play.

Letting go of what is non-essential to the way forward is the paradox that we follow.

Acknowledging that re-birth is neither a theory nor a belief, but an experience found in all things in nature – including us. When what appears can be our truth as though the fate of all depends on us.  

It is when we devalue our roots that we look to the security of the herd and not the consciousness of our past. There is a continuum of a richer consciousness that I have spoken to and from here on this website and foundation for many years now. That we each have a role to play.  

In the words ascribed to the future Buddha Maitreya, when he roamed the world as a wondering monk:

“Alone I wander a thousand miles… and I ask my way from the white clouds.”

I too rejoice that I will see him and clouds from atop many mountains in the times to follow.  

I also want to expand on thinking first expressed by Albert Einstein in the coming year, who relayed that the religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. Not in a traditional sense as something outside of ourselves.

To that which honors what we find in nature as universal. To what Indigenous peoples have followed over the centuries.

To the cosmos, the stars, and distant galaxies. Looking to the present and what is found beyond that seen here on earth.

It transcends a personal God and avoids dogmas and theology as Einstein stressed. It expands the sense of connection with nature and Taoism, the spiritualism found in Buddhism, as well as many paths as what resides and comes from within us. I would add trouble arises when people get stingy when they think God belongs to only them.   

To look to the white clouds and blue sky above and to do all that we are empowered to do this time. It is as the saying goes that we are to leave no stone unturned in a quest for our own peace of mind.

To go where we are meant to go, and to do what we are here to do.

To what makes us see our experience expressed as the eternal in all things as meaningful.

As we come to know and honor the origins of all things found in nature, especially our own. And yes, it is a journey of both the heart and eternal soul or spirit – as though we are truly star stuff…

What we now begin to understand as quantum physics and that all things everywhere exist as this continuum – including us.

Not only in some scientific sense, or formula, but in a spiritual context that has a personal connection with us and to what takes us there with vibrations we have always known and related to. Rather we decide to discount or not believe, our origins are universal and never-ending.  

Why seeing ourselves within the realm of who we are yet to become with an institutional memory along with consciousness is meant to be transformative. Opening doors seeing things in a new way in a new year.

Why we look to a new year and an opportunity for new beginnings.

Why the oldest Indigenous populations make a show out of sweeping out the old and ushering in the new. Why celebrations and rituals become reminders of what has come before us that we are to innately follow. As we investigate the unknown with the wisdom of what we consider we already know in or as good conscious. Often to what is seen as beyond us that we are here to acknowledge, experience, and learn from.

As we honor this stability of tradition and those who have come before us. With this we live as a microcosmic center replica of the universe.

As a spirit that has never lived within the confines of a physical space/or place as though living in virtue and wisdom in the State of Becoming.

Living as if continually transformed as a mirror – reflecting from within our intent to act as the confluence of eternal energy that we have always known and been.  

Not tied to a particular philosophy or religion – but energized as the highest endeavor of all that comes before us. To be humbled by the gifts of others as they in turn, become humbled by our own. What greater wish could we have in the coming year.