Chapter 1.4: The Power of Paradox & The Gateway to All Wonders

 

These two – openness and intentionality – emerge together from the same source, 

they are but different names for the same.  

Together they are a mysterious paradox, 

a mystery within a paradox – the gateway to all wonders.


On the surface, openness to possibility, letting go, and freeing ourselves from appetites, desires, and ambitions seems completely opposite to intentionality – to setting our sights on goals, fixing our direction, and pursuing our dreams.  And yet, like Yin and Yang they are but two sides of the same coin, guardrails on either side of the Way, delineating the path and giving us room to navigate the course of our lives.  They provide a spectrum of action and opportunity.  Practicing both the intentional pursuit of our dreams and goals to get what we want out of life and the art of openness to unforeseen possibilities, letting go, being in the moment, and spontaneity throughout our lives will lead to wondrous opportunities and fantastic experiences we could not have planned – cosmic coincidences, chance encounters, creative crossings, serendipitous synergies, and sweet successes that we could never have imagined or envisioned in our wildest dreams! 

In summary, The Way and Power of Virtue employs a plethora of paradoxes to illustrate and instruct. So it is with this first chapter.  As we read about the Way, must act on it to fully experience it.  We must liberate ourselves from limiting labels while embracing empowering, ennobling, and affirming appellations (fancy words for good names :P ).  Lastly, we must practice both openness and intentionality in identifying and pursuing what we want for and in our lives.  We must be fixed on our objectives yet flexible in our methods and approaches, and always ready and willing at any point along the way to change course, head off in another direction, and try something new or different if the moment of opportunity presents itself.

There is always a Way, upward, forward, and out.  There is always a Way to a better life, regardless of where you are now or how you got there.  The Way is the choice a leader makes – even a leader of one, yourself – to act, to pursue a course of action when faced with a crossroads in life. It is the choice to reject the limits and labels placed upon you by yourself and others and to embrace whole-heartedly the infinite possibilities available to you in each and every moment of your life – beginning right now.  In doing so, balancing out when to push toward what you want and when to let go, being open to something new, spontaneous, and unplanned while setting your sights on a new frontier – even if you don’t know how to get there yet – will open up wondrous ways before you to experiences and opportunities you could never imagine.  This is what it is to walk the Way.  To those on the outside looking in, those who want to read about and research the apple without ever tasting it, the Way forward is often like Winston Churchill’s “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”  And yet, the gateway to all the wonders of the universe stands ever open, inviting us to take a step on path, to set out on the Way.  This is the opening message of the Way. ~ DCB


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