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[SoulRider]

Originally Posted by Raven

There was once a man who was so poor he didn't even have enough money to buy a car so that he could find a decent job. He took the little money he had and purchased a lottery ticket and with it won a great deal of money. His friends came to him and said, "My, what great fortune you had purchasing that lottery ticket!"

"Perhaps so," the man replied.

When the government learned of his winnings they came and took all of what he won to pay back taxes the man had owed from many years past. His friends all came to him and said, "What bad luck that was, losing all that money to the government!"

"Perhaps so," replied the man.

A local charity heard of the man's hard luck and took up a collection raising enough money to purchase a car for the man so that he could find and commute to a good job. His friends came to him and exclaimed, "What a great blessing it is to have been given this beautiful automobile!"

"Perhaps so," was all the man said.

A few days later while out driving his new car the man was hit by a drunk driver. His new car was demolished and the man was seriously injured and had to stay several weeks recovering in a hospital. His friends all came to visit, saying to him, "This is a terrible, terrible thing that has happened to you!"

"Perhaps so," he responded.

A few days after entering the hospital there arose a great storm. During the night the hillside on which the man's house was built was washed away in a mudslide destroying and burying the house and everything in it. His friends came to see him once again. "Aren't you lucky you were here in the hospital and not asleep at home as you would normally have been!"

You can probably guess how the man responded. He was wise enough to understand that in the world of manifest phenomena, things come and things go. Nothing...absolutely nothing is permanent. Even stars with lives of billions of years will arise, shine for a time, then disappear. All manifest things are temporary in nature. Knowing that fact allowed this man to see all things, both the pleasant and the not so pleasant as simply temporary conditions, and nothing to get too terribly attached to.

In a way this almost sounds like such a person would have no enjoyment in life, but on the contrary, recognizing the impermanence of all things sets one free to enjoy what is without the nagging fear of loss because they know in advance that all things are just temporary arrangements, both good and bad.

So Ta-Tsu-Wa, regarding your story of "the woman who almost was" so to speak, you really need to see things from that standpoint of impermanence of forms. Like that wise man you can look at that relationship and say, "My, but that didn't turn out well... Perhaps so." Or you could say, "That was really a great few years of my life...Perhaps so." Either way you would be right.

The same is true of anything you manifest. Some things may turn out exactly as you envisioned them, and some things may turn out very differently. Does that mean they were either "good" or "bad"?

Perhaps so.

~Raven~

So succincntly put Raven. We must not attach any relevance to the outcomes of our actions, only to the action. If we always act out of a true heart, we can never truly hurt another, even if this causes, for example the Mother who reported her Children to the police after they beat a man to death. The Mother could have done what she thought was right by her children, and kept quiet. She didn't she did what was right. She acted on her highest thought, her purest purpose.

The outcome of an action is irrelevant, just do the action with love. Be love, and all there will be is love, but then, that's all there is anyway.