Lao Tzu teaches that we are all destined to return to our source. In May and June of 2000, I authored a book titled “Thoughts on Becoming a Sage: The Guidebook for Living a Virtuous Life”, which was published in China in 2006. Within this work, I presented my own interpretation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. The book is here on my website. Lao Tzu was revealing the way for us to transcend our own boundaries, encouraging the exploration of uncharted and previously unimagined horizons. Later Taoists believed that the intent of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching was to show that humanity is merely an extension of the cosmos, embodying great constancy, and that clarity and stillness are important in returning there.
Attaining a unified spirit is meant to be the fundamental first step. When we seek opportunities being limitless, it implies the existence of boundless possibilities for all elements in nature to grow and most importantly, to change and transform. When change is resisted things grow inward and ultimately perish. Renewal is a constant characteristic of living abundantly. Heaven and Earth serve as the source of benefit and harm, while the essence of the I Ching and yin yang constitutes the essential force driving the pivotal movements we undertake.
An ancient saying states, “You alone know your true self. Refrain from following the masses in doing good, neglecting loyalty and faith, abandoning benevolence, disregarding respect, and pursuing personal desires. When all matters are thus governed, embracing simplicity and inaction aligns one with the proper path”. It pre-dates Confucius and thoughts of benevolence and virtue. What Lao Tzu did in history was give people the Way to see themselves as the instrument of change first from within themselves. Lieh Tzu’s writing helped people to see themselves as the needed change in us.
Another word we seldom use or see is numinosity that I and many others have liked to explore. It can mean “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring” or “appealing to the aesthetic sensibility.” In a sense, “divine will, divine command, divinity or majesty. The numinous can be understood as a rational experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object lies beyond the self. As though we are guided and led through contemplation and discourse on the matter by the workings of our own, until we arrive at the point where “the numinous within us begins to awaken.”
In essence, this concept can only be evoked or awakened within the mind. What I would add is our memories and eternal spirit having what is often described as having a mystical experience. Our heart/mind obtaining the unified spirit needed for the journey ahead. To what some may perceive as sacred.
Carl Jung applied the concept of the numinous to psychology and psychotherapy, arguing it was therapeutic and brought greater self-understanding, and stating that to him religion was about a “careful and scrupulous observation, or notion of the numinous, the wholly other that operates beyond reason”. Or what I would simply add “to the unknown”. Carl Sagan specifically explored the numinous concept in his 1985 novel Contact. I book I am anxious to read.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Two – The Yellow Emperor
32. Maintaining universal Appeal
Is not the way we discover within ourselves to succeed or fail that controls our fate as we travel throughout the universe? That there is something inside everyone that is destined to be defeated better known as our weaknesses. Just as there is something within us destined never to be defeated. That which is known as our strengths.
So that it must be as the ancients beyond time have always told us. That the strong surpass the weak, while the weak surpass those stronger than themselves. The man who surpasses weaker men than himself is in danger when he meets someone as strong as himself. However, the man who surpasses men stronger than himself will never find danger.
Learning to control your own will and making it responsible for your inner chi and the Tao is the ultimate test and challenge. Are they not telling us that you cannot conquer or control others but must simply learn to control yourself?
Yu Hsiung tells us: “If your aim is to be hard, you must guard it by being soft. If your aim is to be strong; you must maintain it by being weak. What begins soft and accumulates must become strong. Watch them accumulate, and you will know where blessings and disaster come from. The strong conquer those weaker than themselves, and when they meet an equal have no advantage. When the weak conquer those stronger than themselves, their force is immeasurable.”
Lieh Tzu says that Lao Tzu has even more to say on the matter. Lao tells us that if a weapon is strong it will perish. If a tree is strong it will snap. Softness and weakness belong to life, hardness and strength belong to death.
Understand the two parallels of what hangs in the balance of yin and yang. Knowing the paradox that exists in coming to know all things and finding indifference to the ever‑changing events swirling around you. The sage knows that defeating one another through strength defeats one’s own as he follows the traditions of the ages and remains forever in tune with the Tao and in style. 1/25/95
Number thirty-two of one hundred fifty-eight entries
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