“You find yourself here, in the minds of an experiment in human evolution”, he began. “What you set in motion now, in your personal life, as a part of the body of humanity, will have farther reaching consequences than you can possibly imagine. We humans are still children, playing with forces larger than ourselves. But we are growing up fast.
The challenge and the opportunity of this moment in history is only beginning to dawn on us. We are just waking up.
You will be tempted again and again to fall back to sleep, to fall back into your personal dilemmas, and in that tunnel vision, to lose sight of the bigger picture. You will find yourself treading water in a sea o concerns, with only moments of peace and flashes of happiness to interrupt the parade of problems.
But is that what life is about? Are we merely here to spend our lives treading water? Or is there something else?
In order to find the answer, you need to take a realistic and compassionate look at yourself and your situation. See your own part in it, your responsibility and your power of choice within the larger context.
We all know that life has ups and downs; you’ve experienced both. And though you can’t always control what happens outside you, you can choose how you will respond. You can treat life as a dance rather than a wrestling match. You can become an active participant rather than a victim of circumstance.
There are times to let things happen, and times to make things happen. now is that time. You will either make things happen, watch what happens or wonder what happened.
Do you want to live as a peaceful warrior, or a soap opera star? Choose now what you will do and who you will be. The choices you make today sow the seeds for the future.
Do you have the courage for it? Do you have the love? If you have enough of one, you will develop the other.
But if you fall asleep, you miss the show! If you lose sight of the bigger picture, you may also lose your sense of humor and become fearful or frustrated.
If you choose the warrior’s way, the challenges of life remain; they may even intensify. And, yet, everything changes: You begin to recognize this world as a training ground, a school for souls. We are all humans in training. Whatever life hands you, tackle it. Handle what is in front of you. DO whatever you have to in spite of fear or insecurity or doubt. Don’t wait to feel motivated! Life rarely lays out a red carpet between you and your goals; more often itsa a swamp. But remember that your stumbling blocks can become stepping stones.
Someday, at the moment of death, your whole life will pass before you. In a few fractions of a second-because time no longer applies-you will see many incidents form your life in order to learn. You will review your life with two questions in your consciousness: Could I have shown a little more courage in these moments? Could I have shown a little more love?
You will see whether you let fear stop you from expressing who you are, how you feel, or what you need. You will see whether you were able to expand into these moments, just a little, and show love, or whether you contract.
Don’t wait until you die to learn the warrior’s way. DO it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you have lived.
You are not only here to grow up and go to school and work and make money and marry and raise children and retire. These occupations only form the backdrop in the Theater of Life. They provide the wrapping, but they are not the gift -only the means of your education- important aspects of life, but not the purpose of it, not the whole of it.
Life develops what it demands. The issues you face are the spiritual weights you lift to strengthen yourself. Your task is to shine through the petty details of your life, not to get preoccupied with them. And when life puts hurdles in your path, my friend, you had better become a hurdler.
There may come a day when you begin to see beneath the surface of life, and read the meaning between the lines. There may come a day when you welcome hurdles and obstacles of daily life as the means of your training. Then you will thank Spirit for everything that is given, whether you call it good or bad, easy or difficult. Your preferences will begin to drop away, and you will embrace what is.
Your life has peaks and valleys. When you peak, you may feel high and close to Spirit. And Spirit will give you the most resources to take advantage of that peak. At another point, you may find yourself deep down in a valley, and that valley may allow you to get in touch with resources inside yourself you would have missed if you were always peaking. So everything can be used in its own way.
When you are peaking, if you fail to take advantage of it, you will have to wait until the next peak to have the same opportunity again. This life time offers the peak of peaks for most people -an incredible time in the history of the planet- far beyond anyones comprehension. Now is the time to prepare yourself.
Because if you just coast by and don’t go into high gear during this time, you are going to feel deep regret when you leave this life and say, “Oh, my God, I had all those lifetimes where I gave everything just to make a little progress, and then in this lifetime things were relatively easy down here and many people were talking about spiritual matters, we didn’t have our heads chopped off, we weren’t getting burned at the stake, we weren’t caught up in a great war or famine. I wasn’t distracted by these hardships; I could have really been myself-fully; I could have reached right up toward my potential. I had the space for it; I had the time and energy for it. I studied a little, but did I really use the time, the energy, the life?
What do you want to say when you look back at your life? Do you want to say you did twenty percent? Forty percent?
This is the time to push yourself to the limit, but this is the time you will tend to coast, because it’s easy, it’s comfortable. You will want to tune out, to grab some ice cream and turn on the TV. Theres’ nothing wrong with such things; we all need some rest, some time-outs. But necessity is the mother of invention, and its not always easy to feel a lot of necessity here.
Maybe you think you’re too busy just staying afloat, or don’t have the time. When your back hurts or your stomach aches, or when your relationship is in trouble, these concerns can monopolize your attention; you think, I’ve got no time for bliss right now; I have to get this report in by noon tomorrow! So the truth that sets you free gets buried at the bottom of the ‘in’ box. You look for immediate solutions to life’s little problems. Drowning in a deluge of details, you grab for anything that floats, when, with a simple shift of attention, you could enjoy the water.
Right now, in this and every moment, you are engaged in a great battle! The shadows of fear and insecurity sing you to sleep, call you into the cocoon. The temptation is strong to put your head in the sand where it’s quiet. Comfort and convenience, dreams and illusions, are the ego’s cushions-false hopes and fairy tales.
Why do I tell you this? It’s to let you know you’re not alive! Not yet. Now is the time to wake up. Many people are waiting for the Age of Aquarius, but I’m not waiting for anything. This is the great time, the time of the battle. ’Armageddon’ is already here. It is being fought inside us, right now as we struggle with the forces of fear, self-doubt, apathy, ignorance and insecurity within us.
Don’t be caught unaware. This is the time of the greatest growth, the greatest opportunity, and the greatest work. Now in our lifetime. Now is the time. Now.
And so, I ask you: Where is your commitment? Knowing all this, what will you do? Examine your possibilities; look beyond your imagined limits; see your habits, your addictions, and your fears. Resolve to go beyond them, then act. Make this commitment to grow beyond yourself the center of your life. Understand that daily life is more than it seems. Use it. Find the courage and love to adapt to and live an enlightened life-not because it will ‘get you somewhere’, but because you understand the Way.
I, and others like me, can serve as a bridge between you and the heart of the universe, until the time comes when you no longer need any bridges- when you realize that you are the universe, and you are the heart.”
This is extracted from a quote of Socrates in No Ordinary Moments, by Author: Dan Millman. GREAT BOOK.
Okay, so sometimes it’s best to just share the words of others as they can be so much more eloquent than your own.
His words here mirror my own sentiments so perfectly that I just had to share it. The little story of how I stumbled upon these words is a little joy of coincidence…or not?
It is ironic what led me up to this book “No Oridnary Moments”. Yep, life was difficult, I had a rat chew on my ear in the middle of the night, I lost my apartment, I was homless for a day, then I was swindled out of a different apartment and had to find another where cockroaches fell on my head in the middle of the night to cause a funny thrashing about in my bamboo cot.
Yes, I am living in Brazil and it’s not all peaches and cream sometimes. Yes, I also am not sitting in traffic all day, but I challenge anyone to come down here and plop yourself into a foreign land, community that is on the fringes of bursting from over-population and negotiate your living situation in a foreign language. Challenge is everywhere and as Dan points out, you can choose whichever challenge you want.
Sure it was rough, I was struggling, but I never complained. I never pouted or brooded about it. I didn’t dump my hardship on others. I actually walked carrying all my shit back and forth across town with a smile while everyone else was partying and I was homeless. Maybe it was a forced smile…but I smiled, I still listened to my friends, I still did my absolute best to be resolute, to keep my spirit high until finally, I managed through friends to find a place to stay that had only 100 cockroaches…not 1000. But I had a place!
When I arrived, this book was sitting on the shelf waiting for me. It was accompanied by a only a few Portuguese books that didn’t really look that interesting and it all made sense in that moment…It was no ordinary moment.
I only hope it inspires you to do what needs to be done…AND pick this book up if you are ready for it. GREAT BOOK.
