the kongdan foundation

With thoughts of what it was like before, our travel becomes only to see how things have changed and to signposts along the way.

To the famous Marco Polo Bridge, he crossed over in 1282 in his travels and me releasing a lantern in its shadow in celebration of the Dragon Boat festivities in Chengdu in late May early June 2014.

The light in the lantern our spirit floating to new heights leaving behind our past that does not represent the path we are now on. I love being in Chengdu… and visiting with old friends. Why coming here now in meditation is such a joy. 

With the centuries of history as a backdrop and knowing the people who were present and to what they wrote about and memories of the time. Makes me think that the more I inquire the less I know, giving reason again for today’s journey. Listening and looking for what appears like music to my ears. Serving as a reminder of what I have always known, have lived, and simply forgotten. Here now to be reminded, and only to add another line or verse or two. 

To why artists, musicians, writers, and those telling the story, even poets, become the living history of their time. With their greatest gifts touching infinity, the source of eternity.

Each with an inner knowing, returning now simply to teach and entertain us. 

Infinity signifying our endless lessons and incarnations and calls us to wake up, rise, claim our divinity, and letting others find this for themselves. Symbolizing the concepts of eternity, balance, and eternal life, i.e., the spirit of all things found in nature. It is like Eric Butterworth told us that the universe is calling… and finding our own way to answer when we are ready to listen.  

Governments come and go, but the artist within us remains as a spark, immortal for a reason. Seeing ourselves beyond the present if only for a moment with an audience that may be yet to be seen or accounted for with talent meant for the ages. 

Just as history will record Trump as today’s Nero from ancient Rome, happy to burn it all down for nothing more than his own ego.

His supporters like those in the ancient coliseum of Rome happy to see the death of magnanimity, or what they happen to disagree with at just that moment with little or no care for whatever outcome that may follow for appearances sake. 

Why our memories and storytelling of the innate virtue of both men and women become so important to our future. It is in knowing who we once were that we can recover what is sacred that could be left behind. We forget that some of the greatest shamans of antiquity were women too. 

Looking to humanity, with nothing left but what we find in museums, and the architecture that has withstood the test of time that tells the story of true greatness like the Roman aqueducts and roads that have stood for thousands of years. Roads that my own ancestors in Italy would have travelled or drank from the aqueducts bringing water from hundreds of miles away.  

In remembering our ancestors there comes an inner knowing that with contemplation reveals a universal, inner connection… as our umbilical cord to the past that can re-assure and teaches our future.

Why storytellers become ciphers with origins in antiquity, as they in-turn hand down our past as living history. Telling us of who we have been, are now, and who we are yet to become. Serving to remind us that we were always there too.

Often appearing as modern-day shaman or healers of spirit, who have always been the ones responsible to the stars above, nature, and universe.  

Moving us from thoughts of fiction we live in the present to the stories that tell of our true selves.

With history becoming not about the past but stories of the past and that who tells the story becomes important. How music, art, and storytelling over the ages became the bellwether of their time and why we can see them as immortal. How even reading the story of Marco Polo led Columbus to travel westward thinking he would reach China but landing in the Americas instead.

Columbus was partly inspired by 13th-century Italian explorer Marco Polo in his ambition to explore Asia and never admitted his failure in this, incessantly claiming and pointing to supposed evidence that he had reached the East Indies. Getting credit for something he thought he never did.

It is this inner connection and knowing that pulls us saying that we are so much more than we appear to be. With the storytelling conveying the character, compassion, and cooperation left behind for us to follow for both ourselves and others with results that can be both consequential and unpredictable. As our supposed limitations become self-defining for the ages.   

At first unexplainable, but just as in China and Italy, a sense that in our travels there is a remembrance of past experiences and connections that defy literal understanding. Beyond what some may call a vivid imagination but our going there just the same. That drive us to the indefinable… as we never settle for less than who we are yet to become. 

With a need and desire to update stories that define the best of who we, and others, have always been. Even to as some may say, we are here correcting mistakes of the past as the value of the story is often in the way it is told or delivered.

As George Orwell famously wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”  I would add that it depends on who gets to tell the story. 

I have always liked the painting of French impressionist painter Monet because it brings us into what he is painting like a master storyteller and lets us decide the structure of what we see with no hard edges and finding the outcome. More importantly that he encourages us to use our imagination and to step into his painting and taking the next step to self-discovery for ourselves…  Just as like all great writing over the ages, we are to see ourselves in what is written as prompts and wanting to go there too.

Even to points on a compass signaling we may be living as an end to the Age, and that change is upon us. Sometimes no further than our imagination, like the joy of reading books considered to be both fiction and non-fiction, but true to us just the same.

Taking a journey without really going. Mindfulness simply listening to and traveling with the wind as though spirits are calling. Even coming back for us as our guide, we are found walking again through history.  

Or the music we once listened to, when hearing it years later it takes us back to when and where we first heard it again. As we are always leaving ourselves behind to find and know something better. As our writing comes mostly from personal experience.

Or for myself, when in Chengdu in Sichuan Province in China. Recognizing things that you last saw at the time of Marco Polo’s visit a thousand years ago.

Just happy to live now to write about it as I visit with dear friends both from the past and present.

As with the myriad of places seen in my travels, the purpose only to see how things have changed since my last visit. Traveling on the wind again to new heights touching the dream and the stars again and again… every day.