Removing old habits and adding new ones seems always to be our biggest challenge. What we do that is most commonly observed by others is often seen as what defines us. But it remains what we find from within ourselves that defines our own rites of passage through both heart and spirit and the consequences that follow. As we carry ourselves into the future that only oracles serving as agents of divine communication can see.
When I began writing back on Christmas Day in 1993, the first entry was entitled “In everything there is Tao”. There were three things I was told I needed to overcome: lack of coordination, patience, and memory and to find the Way I must first find balance, benefits, and boundaries. With thoughts of limitations the only cause for anger due to your own lack of discipline.
In everything there is Tao
It is through you, Dan we speak. You have far to go but you can find the way. Stay within yourself and it will come.
Tea is a part of the ritual that brings you to us.
Lack of coordination, lack of memory and lack of patience are but weaknesses we gave you to overcome. For you to find the way you must find all three.
To find balance you must seek coordination in your relationship with others. To find benefits you must learn to remember what you have always known, and to find boundaries you must first find patience.
Your power is in your vision. When you have mastered all three that vision, or oneness, is within you now to find the way of virtue. In everything there is Tao.
As the crane is to longevity as a strong wind you should be. In following the Tao, the rest will come. You must repeat the above liturgy prior to any proceeding to find the way. We are here now come with us.
(Written Christmas Day 1993 finished January 9, 1994)
A pretty tall order. I’ve been looking for them ever since. Matching human frailties with eternal truths only I can answer as my writing has remained the key the unlocks the door over time… that when you have mastered all three that vision, or oneness, is within you now to find the way of virtue. I think it was the “looking for the way of virtue” that took me to Qufu first in 1999, and again in 201o where I was to be a teacher at the school founded for Confucius descendants.
Why the title of the entry below “Changing clothes” becomes such a bellwether, as something that shows the existence or direction of a trend. What I have come to know as a transformation, or the passage to the future… my own future. That I have always been my own trendsetter. Some might even say the clothes we wear can project an image of becoming a “trendsetter”, I like to carry this over to caring for nature and my garden. Removing old bad habits allows our memories of our good habits to come through and follow. Why clearing our mind of unwanted intrusions becomes so essential before heading for home once again.
My Travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Introduction – Your Writing becomes You
7. Changing Clothes
Forever reaching for the next rung on the ladder that must be followed. Beyond earthly endeavors. Attachments strewn about like dirty clothes waiting for their place in the right laundry basket.
Knocking on the door and finding benevolence and virtue / Qufu
One’s life simply the process of cleaning the clothes previously worn that must be recycled over and over again. To be constantly reborn. Anything that is seen of paramount importance is only a test to be mailed in after you have found and corrected your own mistakes.
Outcomes only determined by lessons learned with only yourself checking and knowing the right answers. Mistakes although constantly repeated. Leading only to an eternity of self‑fulfilling prophecies of our own unwillingness to follow the ultimate path we know must be taken. Finding the courage to change. Leaving behind patterns filled with adversity we have come to know as a life support.
Forever keeping us down as a one-thousand-pound weight around our shoulders. Continually given the eternal chance to change. To keep living until we get it right as we live and die simply by letting go.
Finally finding the ladder. Cautious steps of optimism leading to places previously unheard of and unseen. Knowing that eternal truth lies only in the steps that must be followed. Never looking back, thereby losing your balance the constant order of the day.
Be forever the agent of change. Knowing that the content found by others with everything as it remains is not the way things will be. Remaining forever unattached and finding yourself in clothes that are eternally clean. 12/30/94
Number seven of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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