Arthur Miller wrote a play called "After the Fall" shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe. The play is about forgiveness, and the title of this post comes from a line that one of the characters says in the play:
"I think it is a mistake to ever look for hope outside of yourself. One day the house smells of fresh bread, and the next, smoke and blood. One day you faint because the gardener cut his finger. Within a week you're climbing over corpses of children bombed in subways. What hope can there be if that is so?
"I tried to die near the end of the war. The same dream returned to me each night until I dared not go to sleep, and I grew ill. I dreamed I had a child. And even in the dream I felt that the child was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away from it. But it always kept climbing into my lap, and clutching at my clothes, and I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever was in it that was my own, perhaps I could sleep again. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible. But I kissed it. I think, Quentin, one must finally take one's life into one's arms, and kiss it."
Wow - how powerful that is! No matter how bad you think your life is, if you can just pick it up, hold it to you, and kiss it, you can accept it as it is and watch it transform from the warty toad you think it is to the beautiful prince (or princess) that your life can be.
To work through the transformation, you need to answer this question, though - are you really what you are, or are you what you are learning and what people have told you through time you are?
To help you focus on truly answering this question, I give you another reading, this time from a book called Teaching According to Don Juan by an anthropologist named Castaneda, who studied the Yaqui Indians. In this book, there is a man called Don Juan, and this is what he says:
"Each path is only one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I warn you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. It is this: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush. Does this path have a heart is the only question. If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use."
Wow - again, how powerful!
So I leave you with the challenge of kissing the toad that is your life (and if your life is already transformed or transforming into the prince (or princess) you are truly blessed!) and discovering if the path you are on has a heart (if it does, you will know, for it will call to you like a lover and you will not be able to resist it's pull!).
Namaste!
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