CENTER POINT THE CENTER FOR SELF-CHANGE NEWSLETTER
Vol. 3, No. 1- January, 2009
WHERE DO YOU GO FROM HERE?
J. Kingston Cowart "The Change Maker"
Pause with me now for a moment and I will tell you a brief true story. Have you ever been to the park at the top of Presidio Hill in San Diego, where the large expanse of lawn slopes down from the Serra Museum? In the daytime the area is often filled with laughing children who lie on the ground and roll downhill like logs as far as they can. I was there with my wife and son one night several years ago. The park is very different during the late hours of darkness: no children, no laughter only a mysterious combination of emptiness and shadowy beauty. We arrived at midnight. A full moon hung brightly in the sky. The grass glistened with silvery moonlit dew.
As we stood at the edge of the unmarked grass, I asked my son to walk on down the hill for about 20 yards and then pause.
He did and then I asked: "Can you see your path?"
"No," he said, "There is nothing ahead but the grass. There is no path."
"Turn around," I replied, "Do you see it now?"
Of course, looking back, he could see the path he himself had created. His footsteps had left a clear trail in the dew.
"What now," I asked.
His answer was perfect: "You mean where do I go from here? ... I get it. ... Wherever I choose, right?"
That night comes to my mind from time to time.
We are all always standing on the edge of the next moment - a moment with no mark on it - taking us wherever we choose.
There are limits, of course. If I am in Albuquerque, I cannot expect the next moment to take me home in a single step. Yet it can easily be the first step, the first choice, in my getting home eventually.
After that first choice, it's a matter of choosing again and again - the same choice, chosen anew, at the edge of every moment.
We now live in what the Chinese call "interesting times."
What worked well in the past may not work as well in the months or years to come.
This is a time to reassess - and then to readdress - what lies ahead.
And then ... Where do you go from here?
Wherever you choose. And you always choose from "here." Here and now is where the power is. You have no power then and there - which is a place where you either are no longer or have not yet arrived.
That night with my son, he was just walking on the grass because I had asked him to. There was no goal to reach.
On another occasion, however, when I was lost briefly while backpacking alone in the desert, I chose a goal to find my way home. It was a distant landmark. I knew other people would be somewhere near there and so I headed for it. It took quite a while. Sometimes I thought it might be better to go back the other way. I could retrace my steps and find the point at which I had gotten lost. But I kept choosing to go forward. After several hours, I came to a road I could follow the rest of the way. I found people. I found a restaurant. I used a telephone. A friend came to get me and took me back to the starting point where I had left my car two days before. And I drove home.
The thing I still like to remember most about that day is that, looking back from the edge of the road after I encountered it, I saw my tracks behind me in the sand.
They were evidence that I had not been just wandering around - which is a real danger once we get lost.
Today, standing at the edge of whatever lies before us, we know we are here, which is now - and, as always, that is the choice point.
No matter where that here may be, all any of us ever really needs to do is to head for a good goal, one we have chosen thoughtfully. By deciding again and again to keep moving toward it in each successive here and now, we will eventually get there.
Otherwise, we will be stuck where we are as things get worse; or take off in a wrong direction; or just begin wandering around.
And, with all that lies ahead - whatever it may be - there is no time now for any that.
J. Kingston Cowart
JOIN THE CENTER CIRCLE
It's easy. Every Wednesday for a few minutes between 10:00 and Noon sit down and turn inward - through prayer, meditation, self-hypnosis or any modality you choose - and send out good thoughts to everyone else in the circle.
I'll be there. How about you?
J. Kingston Cowart 619.561.9012 Post Office Box 19005 San Diego CA 92159 jkcowart@self-change.com
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