High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘adventure’

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The dark days are upon us.  Soon the earth will freeze and the air will be filled with crystalline snow, burying the last of the fallen golden leaves, erasing all color.

The trees will stand bare in the cold, devoid of songbirds, their branches crackling in the wind.

Some would ask how we could go forth now, into the bleakness.  What kind of life will we have in such a hostile world?

We wrap their limited vision in compassion.

We, you see, believe in adventure.  We believe the darkness grants us opportunity to spin great dreams and to ready ourselves for living them when the warmth returns.

We, the children of autumn, go forth boldly, confident in who we are, and fully trusting tomorrow.

The water drops heard the laughter of those who had gone before, and now that they were nearing the rocky places, their little water hearts raced with excitement.

Oh, they had fallen over the edge of the dam.  But that was a smooth, straight glide.  The tumble over the rocks would be like nothing they had felt before.

At the water school, they had been counseled not to interpret excitement as fear.  “Whenever you face something new,” their instructor had told them, “you will feel a tension within, an increase in your heartbeat, and a tendency to breathe short, shallow breaths.

“This is the feeling of impending adventure.  Welcome it and let it make you eager for what is ahead. “

So they raced forward boldly, ready to live every moment of the long foamy fall with senses alert and hearts open and free.   And when it was done, and they had gathered themselves back together, they agreed it was the best ride of their lives.

The sky and waters and all that lie above and below them leave their marks, etch their colors on your mind.   Everything you perceive is but an interpretation of the dance; the reality is too large for seeing.

It’s the paddling itself that enriches and grows you, the experience of moving through the dream, the way your interpretation shapes its flow.  It becomes whatever you name it.

Call it rough and the waters of the dream will roil and churn; call it calm and it will be so.  That’s its magic.  It reflects you to yourself and shows you the consequences of your naming it.

It paints your mind in layers, comprehending your meaning.  It knows whether you are intending adventure or fear when you order rough waters.  It knows whether the calm will evoke boredom from you or peace.

Paddle on; the journey is for your bliss and understanding.

Initially the lilacs chose the Earth mission because it sounded like such an adventure.  The place was known, after all, for its challenges and extremes.  Well, that, and for its incredible beauty.

They had to undergo rigorous testing before they were approved.  Successful candidates for the program had to be resilient and hardy, able to withstand wide-ranging contrasts of heat and cold, to survive in rich and poor soils, to stand against buffeting winds and pummeling rains.  Most of all, they had to have strong hearts.

During their first few years of the mission, they found out why they had to be so strong.  The planet’s reputation for challenges and extremes was well deserved, they learned; they were indeed put to the test.  It was everything they could hope for in an adventure.

As for the beauty of the place, it was indescribable, and the lilacs were filled with bliss just to have a part in its unfolding.

As the years passed, the lilacs discovered something more.  So many of the people who lived on earth were lost, and confused, and filled with pain.  They had, for the most part, forgotten who they were and so they fought with one another and caused each other great distress and pain.  It was heart-wrenching to watch.

How meaningful it was, then, for the lilacs to discover that they had the power, simply by expressing their own nature, to bring the humans comfort with their beauty, and to heal their spirits with their perfume.  It gave the flowers a sense of purpose that elevated their souls and made every challenge worthwhile.  They had dreamed of adventure, and discovered, in service, pure joy.

They were told, of course, before they volunteered for the Earth adventure, that it wouldn’t be easy.   Earth, after all, was an experimental world, far from settled, and subject to great extremes.

It was a place of breathless beauty and exquisite pleasures, to be sure.  But they were balanced by hardships severe enough to test the bravest soul.

The crocuses volunteered eagerly nonetheless.  To hold true to your mission on Earth, to spread your petals and blossom there was to win the gold.

But it wasn’t the gold they were after.  It wasn’t even the thrill of the adventure.  What really and truly motivated them was the opportunity to express the depth of their love for their mission: to spread joy to the farthermost edges of the inhabited universe, to express it even in the wilds of time and space.

In their hearts they knew that was the key: to hold fast to believing, no matter what, in the sanctity of spreading joy.

And so when the snows fell on their freshly opened petals, they folded themselves carefully inward and quietly chanted their creeds of happiness.  When the winds blew and the night brought frost, they turned their thoughts to their mission, and murmured to one another, “I believe; I believe,” until they fell asleep.

Finally, just as their last bit of strength was fading, the sun rose over the rim of the hills.  And at the touch of its very first rays, the little flowers felt hope rippling through them and a delicious, growing warmth.

One by one, they began to open their petals, gingerly at first, and then in sudden bursts of delight.  Before the sun was even half way up its climb, they were standing tall and broad and open, and their laughter spilled across the lawn and into the air.  It rose to the treetops, where it kissed the morning birds and sailed up to the sky in gladness and praise for the Great Yes who had sent them.  And the Great Yes echoed back their gladness, and the Earth was filled with joy.

Their Earth debut was only a few short weeks away now and they could hardly contain their excitement.

Those who had been there said their Earth visit would be one of unparalleled adventure in a realm of unimaginable wonders.

Tomorrow they would enter the condenser where their carefully held patterns would be transformed into a germ of actual matter.   Then the life carriers could transport them down through the dimensions to the seed pods waiting in the Earth’s soil, beneath her winter snow.

They knew the entire course of events ahead of them.  They had practiced the choreography of the seasons from the day they were first chosen to go.  The patterns were second nature to them now and utterly stable.

But knowing and experiencing are two quite different things.  And of course, like all beings who are privileged to visit Earth, it was the experience they were after.

And so tonight, beneath the glow of the seventh moon, they gathered for their last dress rehearsal, overflowing with anticipation and joy.  And how they danced!  How magnificently they danced!

When they were advertising for the place, they never said it would be easy, or cheap, or fair.  Thrills?  Extremes?  Oh yes; you could expect plenty of those.  And experiences to test the metal of the hardiest.

It was all an experiment, you see.  Nothing quite like it had ever been tried before.

The body suit you’d wear was fashioned completely from the elements of the place.  And while it was remarkably serviceable, it was far from perfect.  It was subject to damage for one thing.  And because the place was located in the time stream, it deteriorated as well.  So the length of your stay would depend entirely on how well your body suit held up.

The body suit’s processing apparatus had a lot of potential; but it could receive external data only from five senses that were limited in the range of vibrations they could perceive.  That was one of the major challenges.

But the bigger one was that your memories would disappear the moment you slipped into the body suit.  Your only connection to your actual identity was lodged in its heart, but so far, returning adventurers reported that its signals were eclipsed by those coming from outside the suit and difficult to access and interpret.  You had to get special training once you were there from those who had learned to listen.

All those factors created, it seemed from the evidence to date, one heck of an emotional stew for the adventurers.  They told of experiencing amazing things like anger, and frustration, hopelessness, fear and despair.  And yet, to the last, they all said it was a small price to pay for the beauty they had seen, the kindness and camaraderie they had experienced, the thrill of overcoming obstacles, of stumbling into hope and discovering faith.

“You could forget entirely who you are and be caught up in the complex problems of the challenge,” one of them recently reported, “when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you’d get a whisper of truth, a whiff of goodness, or some sliver of beauty would appear.

“It was the most incredible thing,” he said.  “Regardless of how much pain or suffering you thought you were experiencing, when you needed it the most, you would look out and discover grace in the hardest places.”

Imagine you lived in a magical world where winged princesses feasted on flowers and crystalline globes rode emerald grass to catch the hues of the sunrise.

Imagine that you woke each day to the trill of silvery notes and glad pipings, and when you opened your eyes, gossamer banners floated above you in translucent shades of saffron and rose, lavender and turquoise blue.

Imagine that after you breakfasted on the eggs of birds or the pressed grains of the fields, you would don your robes and step boldly into the day’s adventures, never knowing what awaits.  Grand challenges would greet you, testing your strength and will.  With valor and humor you would wield your decisions, doing and undoing, creating, solving, serving, trading goods and time as if you possessed an unending store.

Imagine that everywhere you went music wrapped around you and colors danced into your eyes.  And behind each door was an opportunity with your name on it.  And people came, and children, and animals of every description, each one with a lesson to give and to take, and emotions tagged every encounter to show you the way.

Imagine the evenings came gently, and the day foam of your energy melted away into clear and flowing peace.  And the night sounds were a symphony honoring a star-glittered sky and everything whispered yes to you and love.

Imagine you could live in such a world for the choosing of it.  Would you?  Will you?  Do you?