What happens to the knowledge and wisdom we take in every day through what we hear, read, and see? How do we let go of the places and things from our past that no longer hold meaning or purpose, while still keeping the memories that guide and inspire us? Letting go of what holds us back can open the path to what we might call our greatest potential and destiny.
It often feels like there’s a portal or threshold we need to cross, like a door waiting for us to open and step through. It can feel like someone or something is tugging at our sleeve, urging us that it’s time to move on. We see the path ahead but pause, uncertain and afraid it might take us to places we’re not prepared to face or venture into.
I often think of a book written about the time of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching entitled Inward Training written about the same time in 600BC. (You can find this book here on my website.) It’s about training our mind so that it can lead the way forward. Why looking to a portal often when we clear our mind in meditation and prayer, that the next step becomes clear. The secret is that the answer we seek cannot appear until we are ready for it.
We often feel the urge for change, but we’re unsure what exactly that change should be, only knowing that the present doesn’t match our circumstances or provide the direction we seek. Why understanding how underlying contradictions are so important. A few months ago, we explored the I Ching day by day to understand how complementary opposites, often called yin and yang, help us find the middle path, or way. Everything in the universe is always in motion, including us, as nothing is meant to stay unchanged. Events unfold like a passing streetcar—we can choose to stay where we are or hop on board, even if we don’t know exactly when or where we’ll get off.
When we stay in one place, whether because we’re afraid of change or simply content with where we are, we risk missing out on the growth we need, leading to stagnation and an empty feeling. Nature abhors a vacuum, so whenever something is withheld, something else naturally moves in to fill the gap. Without a clear vision of what we want that matches our highest endeavor, we risk leaving our future up to chance. But when we make room in our minds for change to grow and thrive, we open the door for personal growth. Staying open to change sets the foundation for our own portal and unfolding potential.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Four – Confucius
57. Conversations with Old Shang
Upon reflection, you are asked to find yourself in time as before to understand the true essence of knowledge as you follow the wishes of Lieh Tzu. 
To know beginnings and endings, repeating events and images over time to bring forth from within life’s true meaning. As the knowing sage, what use is knowledge without a firm foothold on the sheer cliff’s edge you have traveled? As you now see the top is so nearby.
Just as you cannot stay where you are now, any more than you can return down from where you have come. Your footprints lead only up and over the edge to new vistas now spread before you.
As when with what Lieh Tzu found while studying with Old Shang, after three years his mind no longer dared to think of right and wrong, his mouth no longer dared to speak of benefit and harm. It was only then that the master so much as glanced at him.
After five years, his mind was again thinking of right and wrong, his mouth was again speaking of benefit and harm and for the first time Old Shang relaxed with a smile. After seven years, Lieh Tzu thought of whatever came into his mind without any longer distinguishing between right and wrong said whatever came into his mouth without any longer distinguishing between benefit and harm and for the first time his master pulled him over to join him on the mat.
After nine years, he thought without restraint of whatever came into his mind and said without restraint whatever came into his mouth without knowing whether the right and wrong, benefit and harm, were his own or another’s. Only then when Lieh Tzu had come to the end of everything inside and outside of himself; his eyes became like his ears, his ears like his nose, his nose like his mouth, everything was the same.
His mind concentrated and his body relaxed, bones and flesh fused completely. He did not notice what his body leaned against and where his feet tread, what his mind thought, and what his words contained. If you can be like this, what principles of what is to come can be hidden from you.
As you now write this for the third time, what could be made clearer? First, as you began by ‘piquing immortality’s interest’ in the One Hundred Flowers, and then again while you were ‘finding yourself in time’.
The masters, or the dragons as they have manifested before you, are telling you again what was before you the first instant as you began your travels. Simply remain as one with Lieh Tzu coming to the end of everything you once held in importance and know that there can be nothing without the Tao. Just as you quietly strengthen your inner resolve as you continue forward on your journey. With no concern for outcomes that may follow.
What Old Shang conveys to Lieh Tzu he now tells you as well. New doors are now opening. 
Just continue clearing your mind and opening your heart and all will follow and be as it should be. What may appear to others over several lifetimes has come to you in an instant. Rejoice in both your old and newfound friends and in the immortality yet to come. The dragons are pleased with new beginnings as you are now seen traveling with Lieh Tzu upwards through the clouds. 3/15/95
Number fifty-seven of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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