Living as though our stories are meant to become universal. As we are here to travel on the path to virtue.
Looking beyond ourselves means appreciating and understanding the experiences of others. That diversity is the key to preserving all life. We cannot change into becoming our highest aspirations living in a vacuum. When we judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions, we often limit our perspective of ourselves to the present moment. Why our memories play a key role in shaping our preferences and thoughts. Life takes us on many journeys, but in the end, we often find our way back to where we started, as though we’re finding our way back home.
I wrote the entry below as it felt like I was stepping off my own path and onto the path’s others have walked. It was as if embracing my own way meant recognizing how others have come and gone, almost as though they were never truly here. As though they were transitioning to something else beyond who or where they were at the moment. There is always something beyond the present that may appear to be unknown, until we find the way to go there. What can seem like a vivid imagination can sometimes feel like unlocking doors to memories others are sharing, as if their stories also need to be told. Telling us that our own stories matter not only to ourselves, but to others needing to be told as well.
When we open our memories to those ever-present that serve as universal vibrations we are meant to recall, we understand, or learn that we are never alone. Why meditation and what some call prayer to something higher than us, can serve to reveal either our ego, or something far greater. Why the great philosophers through the ages have always implored us to look inside ourselves first to virtue and compassion for all things we see and find in us. Why the saying that we are to “know thyself” first, then expand on the innate wisdom that we are here to live becomes essential to our own growth. When Emerson said we are to become “transcendental”, he was saying we must first understand our nature that resides within us, as our true purpose becomes clear.
Why simply walking in the woods or maybe along the seashore listening to the wind rustling the leaves or to the breath of the waves coming ashore can tell us so much. Appreciating our gardens and flowers that we or our neighbor grows, having a mountaintop experience where we have seen the other side and returned. We are to listen to what nature and others are here to teach us… that eternal spirit resides everywhere in all things.
We may come and go but we are to find comfort in knowing that we have always been present.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter One – Heaven’s Gift
17. Lost Civilizations
(This was written as a tribute to the Aztecs of Central America and the Anasazi Indians of the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado in January 1995).
A cry carrying across the centuries. Setting out as the morning sun from beyond the clouds. Magical comings and goings. Granite columns are the only remnants of an age beyond time. A stone calendar reciting triangles and leaving shadows. Telling all the beginning of planting season and when rain and drought can be expected with life and death forever in the balance.
Constructing cities to drain away and save the rain. Temples for sacrifice are the only order of the day. Grand sculptures with giants ornately done, always to be worshiping the sun. The Gateway to Heaven is now simply a doorway to nowhere. Ruins of the metropolis, compounds of adobe with kings and commoners alike all leading to the Temple of the Dragon at the center.
The Acropolis is known simply as the sky above the roaring sea. Decorated with gold telling stories done by artisans and craftsmen of the day. All to be overrun, soon to find themselves extinct. Facades and foundations with stone walls still standing long after the death of all. Passing into oblivion.
The end is only the last stop on today’s journey. The sun fading in the twilight where life begins and ends. Worshiping the temples of life and death. Towers of silence and remaining evidence but a repository of memories. The final dirge of the unknown.
Remember us as we live on forever as the children of the morning sun. Across mountain streams and blue skies, we travel. Simply as we mourn the passing of the children of the sun. 1/10/95
Number seventeen of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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