Paradise Lost
by Alison David Bird, C.Ht.
The sky is the limit, they said. They were wrong. There are no limits – only those you impose on yourselves.
We say there is no such thing as death – at least not the way you perceive it. Death is merely a transitional space between where you have been and where you are going.
And there are far worse things than death. Imagine being enslaved by habitual routine posing as duty, or responsibility. Imagine being so controlled by fear of what might happen if you move to the right or to the left, that you choose always to stay exactly where you are.. Imagine being reluctant to let go of what you have in your hand for fear that what you truly desire might be just out of reach. Imagine being afraid to love.
Sound familiar?
Most of you still resist taking a chance on yourself - as much as you would resist stepping out onto a wing with a prayer and parachute you packed yourself. And you continue to hand you power over to any hawker who will take it.
Is this life? Is this what you choose to make of your great adventure here on Earth. Could you fit it on a postcard?
What does Paradise mean to you? Is it being free to do anything you can imagine? Like soaring with the eagles in a bat -winged flying suit? Or, trekking over snow topped mountains in summer? Hiking through lush green valleys, and swimming with the dolphins in warm crystal-blue lagoons? Perhaps lying with a child on a cool grassy bank near a babbling brook, and gazing up at an emerald green canopy filled with multicolored songbirds…
How about riding bareback on a black stallion through cathedrals of weatherworn rock under lightening filled skies? Or, feeling the raindrops on your skin as they fall from another dimension, or being held by a lover beside a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night. Does that sound like Paradise to you? It does to us.
Maybe it is not Paradise for some of you. You would prefer to have the world transported directly into your living room via modern technology. Or push yourself to the limits of physical endurance in the gym as you craft the perfect physical specimen. Or, engage in the cut and thrust of the boardroom, the parry and repost that keeps your brain sharp.
Maybe you’d choose to escape the effort it takes to breathe by drinking yourself into oblivion at the end of every weary day. You see, the thing about Paradise is, it has something for everyone!
You are free to choose from a rich variety of experiences on a scale between Light and Dark and everything in between. And yet you think that Paradise is something else, somewhere else… cruelly eluding you. When the fact is, it is you who are eluding it.
This earth, this schoolroom, this church, this ‘old stomping ground’, this haunt, this summer camp… This house! This is the place where memories are made. Go out and make some.
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