Note: “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.” – Matthew, The Bible
I think the story of the mustard seed and moving mountains through our faith is common in most all cultures saying that we are to open the path we are meant to take that is unique to only us. This invisible path opens with the rolling of the wheel or what is unknown through the bite of the apple. It becomes the path we choose when we are open to what nature, and the universe are ready to teach us. It becomes both symbolic and instructive of the miracle we are meant to follow. To what the famous writer Nietzsche tells us that it becomes “a wheel rolling of itself”. One’s difficulties are met, and the unpredictable highway opens as he goes. That we can show and teach others the way, but they must take the journey for themselves and reach their own conclusions.
One of the most important things we can do for ourselves is to keep questioning what we think we know and take for granted, exploring what leads us to new places, people, thoughts, and ideas. It’s not about dismissing the knowledge or simply replacing the wisdom we have, but about continuously refining our beliefs to make them clearer and more insightful. Our opinions mean nothing if they are not grounded on science, nature, common sense, and virtue.
Why the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche who lived from 1844 to 1900 prove to be a great example. Another great writer who I admire is Leo Tolstoy, who I hope to visit here another time. It’s not about staying in a silo or one place with your heart and mind in place, but knowing the universe is always prepared to give you a nudge that helps to fine-tune your directions so that you don’t miss the signposts laid out before for you as you reach for the horizon.
If 
anyone can challenge what we take for granted, it’s Nietzsche with his writings on Nihilism and the idea that God is dead. He explores the ladder of religious cruelty, suggesting that Nihilism arose from Christianity’s intellectual conscience. Nihilism involves sacrificing the meaning that “God” provides in life, and Nietzsche explains how to confront life’s meaninglessness by reaffirming it through his concept of eternal return.
The point of reading things we may not agree with isn’t to change our minds, but to sharpen our understanding of what we do believe and why. That we are not meant to believe something someone else says blindly, but to better understand the role the cosmos and eternity have for us. It’s about reaching for that horizon, shaping both the journey and the person we hope to become.
*** Note… This entry was written originally in China in about 200 BC as a tribute to our connection to nature and what would refer to the Tao and Taoism. The addition of the reference to God came later.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Five – The Questions of T’ang
76. The Mountains of Tenacious Sincerity
After a lifetime of going around the mountains to get to a place directly in front of him, an old man decided that this was much too far to come and go. That the mountains should be leveled and thrown into the surrounding sea. So that a road straight through could be built and travel to places a distance away could be made much closer. All agreed, except the man’s wife who argued that at the age of ninety he was too weak to raze even the smallest hill.
Soon the work began as he and his sons broke up the stones one at a time and began carrying them to the sea. Those passing by scoffed at the idea. Asking how a man in 
declining years could damage mountains several thousand feet high, he responded:
“Certainly, your mind is set to firm for me ever to penetrate it. Even when I die, I shall have sons surviving me. My sons will beget me more grandsons, my grandsons in their turn will have sons, and these will have more sons and grandsons. My descendants will go on forever, but the mountain will get no bigger. Why should there be any difficulty in leveling it?”
All those doubting the old man’s tenacity were at a loss for words. The mountains spirit began to get irritated at those pecking at their feet and upon checking it out, heard about what was going on and were afraid the old man would not give up.
We are meant to be seen with dragons above the clouds on Yellow Mountain
They reported the story to God, who was overwhelmed by the sincerity of the simple faith of the old man and his efforts. God commanded that the mountains be moved, one the Shuo Tung the other to Yung Nan. Since that time the area where the old man’s descendants remain is as flat as can be and can be traveled across with ease. The forbidding mountains long gone.
With the strength of one’s sincerity what task can be too overwhelming. 4/19/95
Number seventy-six of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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