I woke up one morning and the world seemed different, or was it me?  I wasn’t sure, so I went out and asked lots of people about the world.  What were the people in the world like? What was the world really like?  Did they love me, did they know who I was.  I went and asked the trees who am I?  Why am I here?  I walked in the big cities with billions of people pressing around me.  Sadly they could not tell me who I was, nor could they really tell me much about the world and the people in it that made any sense.  I went to the halls of learning, I went to the mountains and they could not tell me what I longed to know.  I went to the sea, the sea and all the fishes could not tell me.  So a sat on my own and called out to the universe who am I?  I sat on my own for a very long time!

You are who you choose to be was the reply!  So I went out again and asked the people in the big cities, most didn’t  seem to think it possible that I or they could choose.  Once again I asked the animals, the mountains, and the sea what shall I be?  “Whatever, pleases you” was their reply.  “We are as we are because it pleases us to expresses are innate nature, to be all that we can be.”

So once again I returned to my solitude, this time in darkness I sat.  Who do I choose to be, what is my innate nature, what would it please me to express?  Sitting in the darkness a mirror appeared before me showing me a multitude of possibilities: a mother, a wife, daughter, politician, healer, teacher, prostitute, all manner of things.  The mirror shifted and became dark and smoky and the shadowy possibilities of chaos, war, suffering and destruction appeared before me.

My eyes flowed rivers of tears enough to fill a whole lake, but the lake did not remain sad.  Fish started to swim in the lake, birds began to arrive to nest and feed upon the fish.  Grass and trees and beautiful flowers appeared around the lake, the lake became a place of life, vitality and growth.  I was starting to think maybe I should be a lake.  At that moment the image of the lake dissolved away leaving a single drop and the single drop merged with my heart and so the lake was within.

Once again I looked upon the mirror and I saw many beautiful things, life, love, people all doing wonderful, joyful things.  Yet there was a shadow over this world of wonder and as this shadow came so did darkness and the people entered into a world of war, judgement and destruction.  The light came again, but dimmer.  The darkness was creeping over the world and the people in it like a cloak, until they were no longer able to enter into the place of love and joy.  They no longer knew how to take off the cloak!

Once again my tears flowed but this time they did not form a lake, they floated up and took wings becoming a beautiful flock of doves swarming around my head.  The doves completely surrounded me forming a coat of lightness and from the space around me a voice asked me “who to choose to be?”  The sound of the voice shattered my sense of self.  “I will be what you want me to be” and so it was for awhile, I was a puppet, it wasn’t bad being a puppet, a beautiful happy puppet, but there was someone else who pulled the strings.  In my core there was a yearning – “who do I choose to be”

Again I returned to the cave of solitude.  In the cave was the darkness of nothingness and the every present mirror on the ceiling.  I looked into the mirror and saw the world as I knew it to be.  All its flaws, its pains and joys and my sense of powerlessness.  One soul, a drop in the ocean of endless souls.  I felt a nuzzling at me knee and looked down to see the dragon, cute and yet fierce, magical beyond this world of mine and yet part of it also.  The dragon looked deeply into my eyes and said “it is time” and he let out a roar with a stream of fire.  The enormous fire in front of me lighting up the whole cave and extinguishing the mirror.  The dragon leapt into the flames of the fire unafraid and disappeared.  The flames of the fire changed to a beautiful blue and in the centre the shape of a bird began to appear.  The bird had magical piercing eyes that could see into darkness and into light.  It danced in the flames, drawing strength from the heat of the fire.  It rose up and flew into the mirror and the mirror was shattered.  I was nothing a voice in the darkness!  I was all things and yet no things.  Who am I?  who do I choose to be?  Whoever, it pleases me to be in any moment in time and space.  For now, I choose to be a way shower of those who desire to be free!

What do you choose?