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I recall standing in the sheltered valley near our home, under the hemlock tree. It is two days after 9-11-2001 when two airplanes crash into the World Trade Towers and bring them down. Planes are not flying in the USA now and the silent sky stretches overhead.
I am struck deeply by a clear recognition: this could really be IT, the time of vast change that has been forecast in many systems of thought, spiritual and otherwise. A war could begin. Anything could happen.
I need to intensify my own service. I need to do more. I realize that my own subjective spiritual path is well walked and that I am on target in this regard. However, I am lacking a service with a group out in the world. I need to do more, urgently. It is not about just me alone. The silent sky above makes that clear to me. I need to join with others of good will too.
I realize that it is now time to participate in public activities at the Dao temple only one hill away from me. I know that they are good people and that they offer a positive energy to the world. They are only two and a half miles away ~ perhaps I can stick with an outer service if it is nearby, and if I avoid ideology and stick to basics.
Thus did 9-11 spark me to turn outward in service to the world again, after a time of withdrawing. My service at the Dao temple continues to this day.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 causes another inner awakening for me, carries me yet another turn of the spiral towards greater awareness. After Katrina, when New Orleans is flooded as the levees collapse, gasoline costs in the mountains of western North Carolina skyrocket as the pipeline to our area is shut down. Rumors of shortages spread.
I see clearly that this lovely technological world is like a dream, like a beautiful bubble, so fragile and vulnerable to impact by who knows what combination of events. It could shatter ~ it could end. This could be the beginning of the end. It is all so impermanent, so temporary, and yet we are living as if it can go on forever!
How precious this moment is, how important to fully engage in this very NOW with all of myself, no holding back. There may not be another chance; there may not be another time when I may “feel more up to it.” I have to give of myself now.
I see that every choice I make, each act of mine, is either in harmony with the positive direction I have chosen for my life, or it is not. Do I want to fear lack and shortages, or do I want to validate good people, altruism, sharing and service?
Do I pull myself in, concerned that I will not have enough, thinking only of me and mine? Or do I want to extend my energies out to others in respectful validation?
I see that every choice I make lines up with the light or with the darkness. To the best extent of my abilities, I choose to align with the light, with benevolence, compassion and respect for others and for myself.
The choice I make now is to reach out to others, to go the extra mile to validate the positive within others, as well as in myself.
Criticism, complaining, competing, greed, anger, excessive material acquisition (to me) all point toward the darkness, and to travel that way leads away from my chosen direction. Every single choice, right now, either takes me a step closer to light or a step closer to darkness. The choice is mine NOW, seen as clearly as if by a bright flash of lightning.
What do you choose?
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