Salvador Dali - Burning Giraffe (1930)
As a youth, I read Lao-Tzu.He wrote, "when the universe wants to protect someone, it arms that person with compassion." I surrendered to the embrace of this truth early on. And on this warrior's path, compassion did, indeed, prove to be the only unfailing weapon.
But over the last few years, I have found myself surrendering to yet another great truth, albeit a complimentary one: when the universe wants to protect someone, it arms that person with gratitude as well as compassion.
And I discovered this gratitude increasingly daily, sometimes even moment by moment.
Perhaps you find this strange in a person who has stood forth in dissent, and spent so much time beating a drum of warning? But I am grateful for water, for food, for clothing and shelter, and for electricity. I am grateful for the strength to live another day and night, striving for a kinder world and celebrating the beauty of all that IS. I take none of it for granted.
And I am grateful, most of all, that I take none of it for granted.
Yes. Of course, the secret of these two "weapons" is that they are of the nature of the universe itself, and as such, they are accessible to everyone everywhere every moment; we simply have to surrender to them, and allow them to transform us.
And in surrendering to this transformation, we change the world by becoming the change we seek in the world; yes, we are blazing a trail of compassion and gratitude.
-- Richard Power
Richard Power's latest book, Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.
