“How vain it is to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live.” —— Henry David Thoreau
It is always unfathomable to me how individuals presume to write about exalted experiences in their lives suggesting a practicum of choices or solutions, when they have not known the experience of life itself. It goes beyond comprehension to project a fabricated modicum of what those changing moments were, when there exists no substantive experience in conscious awareness or physical practice. There always exists an event, a moment, a series of horrific experiences or the like . . . that becomes the defining moment of enlightenment. Lao Tzo has stated this in another way, “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”
Without this precipitating moment and the individual’s acceptance of that awareness . . . growth becomes a series of repetitious events leading to the same results. We all have family, friends and loved ones that may give us exquisite lip service in understanding conscious growth, however their actions belie another path that reflects the inability to fathom, discern, distill and embrace another choice. It is not an easy facility to completely change direction from what we believed was the correct thing to do for ourselves, families, friends or loved ones. However, unless some decisive choice is made those same results occur . . . over and over again without change compounding an ever evolving web of behavioral misteps. Simply put, Mark Twain said . . . “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”
You will make a difference when the conscious choice is made, first in your life and then in those lives you touch in every facet of your existence. Yes, it is that magnified and the results are beyond your conscious comprehension. You may never know how your choices changed the course of those specific lives throughout this journey. Truth is never compromised, it grows as we become more conscious of our nature, being, and substance. We must be the change we wish to project, and said in another way by Thich Nhat Hanh “Our own life has to be our message.” What message are you sending? JLR