Almost ten years ago I had a dream that changed my life.
I found myself at dusk in a deep valley, although still high up in the mountains. Above me, at the very summit of the tallest hill stood a torii gate catching the last rays of the sun. A sense of danger swept over me and I saw that I was caught between two advancing, warring armies with nowhere to hide. They came forward and I crouched down between them, totally exposed, and afraid for my life. Suddenly, a deeply throated noise rumbled toward me, engines or wheels, I thought at first– was it artillery being brought to the front or a battalion of tanks? But then suddenly I looked up to see that the noise did not come from anything mechanical at all, but was caused by a herd of elk stampeding sideways across the space between the advancing armies — the very space I was in. They rushed around me toward the edge of an abyss to my right, and so I thought toward their own destruction. But, mysteriously, as they plunged forward and I instinctively trailed them, it became clear they knew a secret, a wild way down beyond the edge, and I could also use this ancient path that almost invisibly traversed the the sheer sides of the cliffs. They knew exactly how to make their way to safety. And so I followed them.
They were showing me the way out of the human war, perhaps my own war of intellect or insecurity, straight beyond an edge I had mistakenly conceived meant certain death. Such was my conditioning. Apparently I believed that the very thing that might save me would kill me for sure. And what is this thing? This abyss? I didn’t know at the time, although the image of the torii gate suggests entering sacred space where nature spirits, like those elk, still reign. To me, back then, the sacred surely was an abyss — I knew so little…
And I have learned there is another world beyond the edge of this one. And, like a well, it can give us the energies to begin changing this world where the wars continue to blaze, where we live in fear of one another and often find ourselves caught in the middle.
Instead of the raw noise of traffic, jets, phones, beepers, television, and modern war, we can be held by the great music of silence and notice voices with ancient, waiting wisdom.
Instead of being caught in the time traps of workaholic deadlines and useless pursuits, we can enter timelessness and the now.
Instead of facing the sheer ugliness and commercial destruction of what used to be the human village, we can rediscover profound beauty, not just in nature, but also though our own arts, symbols, and rituals.
Instead of living alone in shallow relationships, settling for mistrust, lovelessness, cynicism and negative beliefs about others, we can find openness, richness, and community.
Beyond the edge of this world is another, and in it is all the energy we will ever need to nourish our personal leadership.
Can you touch this place, have you been there, and can you now source your own vision of change from it? Can you open yourself and let it pour forth of its own accord through you?
Today, like every day, we wake up empty and scared.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Today is the day.