There are moments in life when we feel our paths are aligned, especially when we meet someone whose eyes reveal the face of eternity. In that brief, almost fleeting look, we can glimpse the essence of love, spirit, and an eternal understanding of our own path. Not in a physical sense, but an awareness that this person is a connection, perhaps one of many we are destined to meet as our “spirit guides.” 
It can feel like there are unspoken words between us because there is an eternal love that transcends the present as though our spirits are looking for or calling out for the other. When we know, these eyes are of those who we would choose to gaze into each morning to remind us of who we are and the journey ahead.
Whether we believe in a universal Creator or that things happen through a process like natural selection, there is a symbiotic relationship among all things that are designed and meant to be dependent on each other. Through mutual vibrations everything connects as they should with each element relying on the other to be and feel complete.
This applies to everything in nature, not just people. It’s as though there is cosmic dust that spirits cling to, binding all things together across space and time in untold galaxies, constantly renewing themselves and others. They might travel the same path, only to meet when one or both needs the other to change directions or simply to encourage us to move forward. It’s not about belief or disbelief; it’s about choosing the world you want to live in.
Cosmic spirits are always evolving to become something greater than the present because everything must change. The question becomes what are we changing into? The sage knows and the Tao teaches us that we know what will go in by seeing what came out, we know what is coming by observing or recalling what has passed.
It is by this principle we learn what is coming in advance. Why seeing beyond ego and self-interest becomes the answer to our own success… or not. It’s like rain clouds in the distance that are coming our way.
Rain is likely coming, and it’s time to focus on preparing and mastering the long game that reaches far beyond the horizon.
The story below is one of the most famous in human history not just in China. Lao Tzu shared the same fate of Confucius in that no one could see beyond their own ego to listen to good advice when it was there for the taking in the times in which they lived. It’s a story of how those in charge cannot, or will not, listen when the best advice on how to govern is given. It shows the inability to look beyond yourself and your own personal interest to the greater good. There is an old saying that history repeats itself. It’s like we never learn.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Eight – Explaining Conjunctions
124. Coming face to face with immortality
Following in the footsteps of Lao Tzu, Lieh Tzu had journeyed to places few had ever been or seen before. In his travels he came upon Kuan‑yin, the fabled man who Lao Tzu had met years earlier at the famous pass where he left the story of the Tao Te Ching as he headed west into history and immortality.
Having become a venerable sage in his own right, Kuan‑yin had many questions for Lieh Tzu that for him still defied logic. 
He wondered what could come of living in a world where others placed value only on their own satisfaction and enjoyment in worldly affairs.
How could a single man traveling alone through unknown vistas of self-attainment defining his true place between heaven and earth come of anything? When coming into the realm of others, all they seek is advantage at the expense of anything and everyone they meet? What could be the answer?
Kuan‑yin cited that it had been this disgust that Lao Tzu had relayed to him as he was leaving. Lao Tzu had traveled from state to state offering his assistance to one local government after another and in the end was driven off or left in his own disgust. It had been as if no one was interested in truth, only their own self-aggrandizement. It had helped Lao Tzu to understand the fallacy of living within someone else’s definition of truth and falsehood.
Now Kuan‑yin had come full circle with his coming face‑to‑face with his meeting Lieh Tzu. What had he learned along the way? He could say only this:
“If your words are beautiful or ugly, so is their echo; if your person is tall or short, so is its shadow. Reputation is the echo; conduct is the shadow. Hens it is said that you should be careful of your words, for someone will agree with them. Be careful of your conduct, for someone will imitate it.”
As he too left heading west, Lieh Tzu simply responded:
“What can there be to life, except to live within what you already know.” 7/30/95
Number one hundred twenty-four of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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