I’ve reached the halfway mark in my commentary with entry seventy-nine of “My Travels with Lieh Tzu” below. Writing daily feels like a continual journey of self-discovery, therapy, and journaling all in one. It serves as a reminder of why I’m here this time around. It’s about discipline and sticking to boundaries to achieve and recall and remember what we already know, might have forgotten, or decided to delay. It aligns with the idea that we often lean into our human weaknesses rather than embracing what brings us blessings and what truly makes us whole.
What I have learned is that the way we observe things affects reality or how events unfold as our consciousness actively participates in our surroundings. That where we focus our attention plays a crucial role in shaping what is yet to happen. When we are meant to be active participants spending a lifetime sharpening our skills to better ourselves and the world around us. As we are to become an actual blending of our highest attributes with those attributes outside of us that are actually a call to action.
This implies that we aren’t meant to accept things as they are, since life and everything around us is always changing. Nothing, including us, is meant to stay stagnant. Our bodies are constantly evolving, and our minds are built to grow and expand their understanding through knowledge, virtue, and wisdom. This is our purpose. Ask yourself: did your mind and spirit begin as a blank slate, or was there something already within you that the universe and nature intend for you to nurture and grow?
As Eric Butterworth once said, “the universe is calling”. It doesn’t matter who reminds us—whether it’s God, Buddha, the Tao, dragons soaring through the sky, our spirit guides, or something else. It’s like standing at the peak of a mountain, taking in the view of the path ahead and reflecting on what brought us there. As they say, it’s the journey that truly matters.
I’ve never been a big fan of math or science, but I am very intrigued by quantum physics. It is like the ultimate blending of what is considered as mystical (unexplainable), with the universe finally confirming what the ancients conveyed so long ago. It’s like discovering ourselves through time, both figuratively and through the expressive use of language—whether as a metaphor, simile, personification, or antithesis. These techniques use words beyond their literal meaning to create vivid images or evoke special effects, encouraging us to think and act beyond what we know or take for granted.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Five – The Questions of T’ang
79. Where can we go with a satisfied mind
There is a land far north known as Utmost North. Within its borders lies something special. This place has no wind and rain, frost, and dew; it does not breed any species of beast or bird, fish or insect, grass, or tree. It is flat and surrounded by high mountains.
Except for one mountain in the middle of the kingdom known as Urn Peak which is shaped like a pot with a small mouth. On its summit is a cave known as the cave of plenty, out of which bubbles the waters of the Divine Spring which smell sweeter than orchids and taste like nectar or wine. Four streams flow down the mountain in each direction irrigating every corner of the country.
The climate is mild and there are no epidemics. The people are gentle and compliant by nature, do not quarrel or contend, have soft hearts and weak bones, they are never proud or envious. Old and young live as equals, and no one is ruler or subject; men and women mingle freely without go betweens and betrothal presents. Living close to the water they have no reason to plow or sow, nor to weave or clothe themselves, 
since the climate is so warm. They live out their span of one hundred years without sickness and early deaths and the people proliferate in countless numbers, knowing pleasure and happiness, ignorance of decay, old age, sorrow, and anguish. By custom they are lovers of music; they hold hands and take turns singing ballads and never stop singing all day.
Hungry and tired, they drink the Divine Spring and are soothed and refreshed body and mind, and so drunk, if they drink too much, they sleep for ten days. When they bathe and wash their hair in the Divine Spring their complexion grows sleek and moist, and the fragrant smell does not leave them for ten days.
The King of Chou passed this country while traveling north and failed to return home for three years. When he returned to his royal household he yearned for this country, became restless, and distracted. Refusing his wine and his meat, never calling his concubines; it was several months before he recovered. As he and others in his court discussed this wonderful place and planned another visit, they were admonished by his subjects:
“You will be leaving the broad and populous country of Chi. The splendors of its mountains, its civilized manners and morals, its beautiful robes, and ornaments. Beauty and enchantment fill your harem, loyalty and merit fill your Court. Raise your voice and a million-foot soldiers rise. A glance, a lift of the hand and the other states obey you. Why should you long for someplace else, abandoning the alters of Chi to follow a nation of 
barbarians. This is a senile whim, why should you go?”
In hearing this the King responded:
“Of course, this is beyond another’s understanding. I am afraid I shall never return to that country. Why care for the wealth of Chi? Why be concerned about what others think or say? Why this desire for things and a paradise that may not truly exist except in our dreams, of something that we can never attain or have? Why have these desires that create attachments and a universe of fantasy of things unreal that we cannot have? Was this so‑called land of the Utmost North real or imagined?”
Could it have existed, or was it the supreme paradise we want to create and come to know? Is not what we have in the here and now good enough? Even though most do not live as kings, don’t we all create our own universe? Where can this kingdom of heaven be? Who can know the answer? Who can say? 4/21/95
Number seventy-nine of one hundred fifty-eight entries
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