9 Sep 2004 @ 04:17, by Craig Lang
I received alot of feedback on my last article, "Life as Usual". More than one person pointed out that the article was pretty dark. And thus, I have to conclude that in one way it delivered its message well. Changes are indeed upon us, and there will be many challenges down the road. Furthermore, most of the people out there simply don't see them. So they continue on with life as usual. And so in many ways, we are probably committed to those changes. That was the key, and perhaps the only, point of the artcile. But the implications were many, and the discussion it stirred up was vast - including/especially within my own psyche.
Marissa made a comment which to me implied that the article was far darker than my normal views on the world. Her brief, concise comment was something like: "What hope have we got if YOU throw in the towel?". To me, that question was both heart wrenching and thought provoking. It really got me to rethinking these ideas - and rethinking them some more. And you know, she was absolutely right...
Often, in past articles, I have described challenges facing either myself or others. Generally, if it is about challenges, then the flow of the article somehow turns the corner and ends in a positive note. A lesson is learned, a ray of hope is seen, or we see life for the joy it is. But the last article did not do that. It simply said that the majority of humanity continues to live life as usual - the implication being that this is a negative thing.
But is it really as dark as all that? I think that in reality, each of us decides that for themselves. For each of us there is a path, and on that path are challenges and joys. The result of the challenges which each of us faces is growth of some form. I often wonder if the Universe deliberately places such challenges in our path to teach us, or maybe simply to make us stronger. Yet the result is that we emerge from each challenge a little wiser than we were before.
And so along with the path of challenge, there is the path of light. It is the light that comprises the joys of life, the little things that we enjoy each day. It is the hug of a loved one. It is the joy of waking up in the morning and seeing the sun come in through the window - or maybe hearing the rain on the roof. And it is the sense of the present moment, with each moment flowing into the next in an unbounded flow of time. Yet it is the knowing that beyond time and beyond our senses there is an infinite Akashic Universe that sees far more than I do.
As we grow, the path of light can become the path of unconditional love - as described by Astrid in another comment on the same article. It can be a path of learning, and to me, it is one of absolute fascination.
The path of light is in stark contrast to the dark path which I saw a couple of days ago. That was a path of depression, sadness and pain. It was a personal darkness driven in part by a powerful clairempathic exposure to the non-positive emotions of a crowded world. Truly I saw two paths, and on that two day strech last week, I was definitely travelling the darker one. I had alot of company...
To have light one must also have darkness. Yin requires Yang. By the law of polarity, each path requires the other. Yet in more transcendent moments, I often notice how the two paths are really the same path. Indeed, they are comprised of the same events, the same decisions, etc., that make up the events or our lives. So, it would appear that the only difference between my light path and my dark path is me who is travelling it. They are the same, and only I am different. Truly we create the road we travel.
Yes, change is coming. Civilizations rise and fall, and I believe that western civilization is at or past it's peak. There will be challenges - big and little, personal and global. And perhaps we are indeed too late to change some rather non-positive events that lie ahead in our world-ecological journey. But the future is what we make it - we truly do create our own reality. So, as I also indicated in the last article, what those changes are can still be up to us.
A quote which I recently read states "There are no endings; only beginnings." For me, on this day, that is perhaps the biggest lesson of all. For at each moment, from the old world arises the new. Along the darker path shines the light of contrast. It turns the dark path into the light path.
After the night comes the dawn.
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