See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapters 34 and 40 (Unpublished):
34
It is flowing through all,
in all directions.
It is giving,
big and small,
without exception.
Flowing continuously,
seeking no glory.
Endlessly sustaining
all that’s living.
Unseen,
It is small.
Seen,
It is vast.
Holding to none,
It holds all.
40
Returning
is Its movement.
Yielding
every moment.
Being
to non-being.
Non-being
to being.
—
Over nearly four decades of returning to the eighty-one chapters of the Tao Te Ching, I gradually noticed a small family of chapters that attempt the impossible: describing what cannot be fully described. Chapters 34 and 40 belong to that family.
For many years I appreciated them separately. Chapter 34 drew my attention to Tao’s generosity. Chapter 40 drew my attention to Tao’s movement. Then, after decades of experiencing both, I recognized they had always been describing one movement, seen from two directions.
Giving AND Receiving.
Chapter 34 begins with giving.
Tao flows through everything. It nourishes everything. It claims nothing. It seeks no glory. Life continues because Tao continues giving.
Chapter 40 reveals the companion movement.
Returning is Its movement.
Yielding every moment.
Giving never stands alone. Every gift enters a larger movement where something is received, renewed, and eventually offered again. Tao gives into the world and returns through it, in the same motion.
I’m not sure if I would have readily seen that movement were it not for Barry Johnson.
Barry devoted his life’s work to helping people recognize that many of life’s greatest challenges are sustained through values that need one another over time. At the center of every Polarity Map® sits the infinity loop, a picture of reality more than a piece of design. The loop reminds us that life flourishes through continual participation. One movement strengthens another. One value renews another. What is given eventually returns in another form.
The longer I worked alongside Barry, the more I recognized the size of the gift he was making. For many decades he kept refining the Polarity Map, then kept giving it away: training to practitioners, answers to the same first questions with the same patience as the thousandth, grace whether the teaching landed as well as it could have. He often describes the energy system as “free,” like gravity and sunlight. I am one of the many thousands who received that gift. Reciprocity only asked for participation in return, to make the map useful in the real world: 1-1 coaching, classrooms, boardrooms, teams, families, and a country still finding its way through its own tensions. The energy keeps passing along to people Barry will never meet.
The visual matters less than what’s happening in the relationship between givers and receivers. Giving creates the possibility of receiving. Receiving creates the possibility of giving. Each continues because the other continues. Once I recognized that pattern, I started seeing it almost everywhere, wherever energy was flowing the way it was naturally meant to flow.
The forest at Kayser Ridge receives carbon dioxide, sunlight, rain, and soil built by generations of life before it. Trees return oxygen, shade, habitat, and nourishment. The pollinator garden gives nectar; the pollinators give pollination back. Streams receive rainfall before returning themselves to rivers. The entire landscape participates in exchanges that no single living thing controls. Flourishing belongs to the whole because every part contributes to the whole.
Human relationships work much the same way. Or can.
Friendship survives through reciprocal participation. Teaching depends upon someone willing to learn. Learning depends upon someone willing to teach. Leadership requires influence freely given and trust freely offered. Breathing itself reminds us that receiving and giving belong together. Every inhale prepares the exhale. Every exhale prepares another breath.
The same reality extends into organizations.
Employees receive opportunities, coaching, compensation, and belonging. Organizations receive commitment, creativity, judgment, and effort. Healthy workplaces continue renewing those exchanges. When either side begins expecting without contributing, something deeper than productivity begins to weaken. Reciprocity is not a management technique. It is part of how relationships stay alive.
Communities and democracies depend upon the same reality.
Every citizen receives freedoms protected by generations they never met. Every generation inherits institutions it did not build. Every voice deserves dignity. Every disagreement leaves relationships requiring continued stewardship. Accountability strengthens communities when it serves repair. Forgiveness allows repair to become possible. Trust grows where people continue participating in one another’s humanity.
Friendship across old divides still holds communities together longer than the forces trying to pull them apart. That kind of friendship is reciprocity in its plainest form: showing up for people who do not yet agree with you, and letting that outlast the disagreement.
Artificial intelligence presents another invitation to recognize this ancient pattern. Machines increasingly generate information at extraordinary speed. Human beings remain responsible for cultivating wisdom. We receive knowledge from one another, test it through experience, question it, refine it, and return it to the community. Information can move almost instantly. Wisdom continues growing through reciprocal participation.
Our shared home depends upon the same movement.
Each generation receives forests, rivers, fertile soil, stable climates, and astonishing biodiversity before contributing its own chapter to Earth’s continuing story. Stewardship begins with gratitude for what has been received and responsibility for what will be passed along. Human Prosperity AND Planetary Health continue strengthening one another through that ongoing exchange.
When reciprocity is suspended, something in the relationship begins to break. When it resumes, repair becomes possible. That is true at a pond, at a kitchen table, and at the scale of nations.
Looking back, I am grateful for Lao Tzu’s gift of mystery through the Tao, and for Barry’s gift of a map, a loop, and decades of lived example that helped me see it. Even the years I spent learning some of this the hard way turned out to belong to the same giving and receiving.
The rhythm was always there: in the forest, in friendship, in leadership, in democracy, in the stewardship of this Earth, and inside each of us, waiting to be recognized.
It receives by giving.
It gives by receiving.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Giving And Receiving:
INVITATIONS:
To use an AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, “Seeing” CLICK HERE.
Ready for the Polarity Advantage? Go deeper into Polarity Thinking, see our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice or in-person training with Barry Johnson and me at Kayser Ridge by CLICKING HERE.
