The Chariots Go Forth to War

The Chariots Go Forth to War

The chariots go forth to war,
Rumbling, roaring as they go;
The horses neigh and whinny loud,
Tugging at the bit.
The dust swirls up in great dense clouds,
And hides the Han Yang bridge.
In serried ranks the archers march,
A bow and quiver at each waist;
Fathers, mothers, children, wives
All crowd around to say farewell.
Pulling at clothes and stamping feet,
They force the soldiers' ranks apart,
And all the while their sobs and cries
Reach to the skies above.

"Where do you go to-day ?" a passer-by
Calls to the marching men.
A grizzled old veteran answers him,
Halting his swinging stride:
"At fifteen I was sent to the north
To guard the river against the Hun;
At forty I was sent to camp,
To farm in the west, far, far from home.
When I left, my hair was long and black;
When I came home, it was white and thin.
Today they send me again to the wars,
Back to the north frontier,
By whose gray towers our blood has flowed
In a red tide, like the sea--
And will flow again, for Wu Huang Ti
Is resolved to rule the world.

"Have you not heard how in far Shantung
Two hundred districts lie
With a thousand towns and ten thousand homes
Deserted, neglected, weed-grown?
Husbands fighting or dead, wives drag the plow,
And the grain grows wild in the fields.
The soldiers recruited in Shansi towns
Still fight; but, with spirit gone,
Like chickens and dogs they are driven about,
And have not the heart to complain."

"I am greatly honored by your speech with me.
Dare I speak of my hatreds and grief ?
All this long winter, conscription goes on
Through the whole country, from the east to the west,
And taxes grow heavy. But how can we pay,
Who have nothing to give from our land ?
A son is a curse at a time like this,
And daughters more welcome far;
For, when daughters grow up, they can marry, at least,
And go to live on a neighbor's land.
But our sons? We bury them after the fight,
And they rot where the grass grows long.

"Have you not seen at far Ching Hai,
By the waters of Kokonor,
How the heaped skulls and bones of slaughtered men
Lie bleaching in the sun?
Their ancient ghosts hear our own ghosts weep,
And cry and lament in turn;
The heavens grow dark with great storm-clouds,
And the specters wail in the rain."

Du Fu

ACIM: What About You?

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of

creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew.

Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine

Who You Want to Be.
Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know),

but to remember Who You Are. And to remember who everyone else is.

Judge not, then, the karmic path walked by another. Envy not success,

nor pity failure, for you know not what is success or failure

in the soul’s reckoning. Judge not, and neither

condemn, for you know not why a thing occurs,

nor to what end. And remember

you this: that which you condemn will condemn you,

and that which you judge, you will one day become. Rather, seek to change

those things—or support others who are changing those things—

which no longer reflect your highest sense of Who You Are.

There is perfection in the process—and all life arises out of choice.

Your own life is the way it is because of you,

and the choices you have made—or failed to make.

All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality,

and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will.

Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had,

and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies.

Ever.

It leaves your being and heads out into the universe,

extending forever. A thought is forever.

The Laws are very simple. 1. Thought is creative. 2. Fear attracts like energy.

3. Love is all there is.

So—do you want your life to “take off”?

Begin at once to imagine it the way you want it to be—

and move into that.

Check every thought, word, and action that does not fall into harmony with that.

Move away from those.

The most difficult thing for people to do is hear their own soul.

And every Master has likewise had the same message: What I am, you are.

What I can do, you can do. These things, and more, shall you also do.

All attack is a call for help.

Life is a creation, not a discovery.

Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and

nobody you have to be except exactly who you’re being right now.

Remember, you are constantly in the act of creating yourself.

You are in every moment deciding who and what you are.

You decide this largely through the choices you make regarding who and

what you feel passionate about.

Yet never resist anything. If you think that by your resistance

you will eliminate it, think again. You only plant it more firmly in place.

All thought is creative?

There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself.

The point of life is therefore to create—who and what you are, and then to experience that.
This is the process of Self realization about which Eastern mystics have written.

It is the process of salvation to which much Western theology has devoted itself.

Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.

A Master blesses calamity, for the Master knows that from the seeds of disaster

(and all experience) comes the growth of Self.

What you do for your Self, you do for another. What you do for another,

you do for the Self.

This is because you and the other are one.

So much of your present experience is based on your previous thought.

New thought is your only chance. It’s your only real opportunity to evolve,

to grow, to truly become

Who You Really Are.

True Masters are those who have chosen to make a life, rather than a living.

To change your reality, simply stop thinking like that.
Go ahead and do what you really love to do! Do nothing else! You have so little time.

How can you think of wasting a moment doing something for a living you don’t like to do?

What kind of a living is that?

That is not a living, that is a dying!

Worry is just about the worst form of mental activity there is—

next to hate, which is deeply self destructive.

Worry is pointless. It is wasted mental energy.

It also creates bio-chemical reactions which harm the body,

producing everything from indigestion to coronary arrest,

and a multitude of things in between.

Worry, hate, fear—together with their offshoots: anxiety, bitterness, impatience,

avarice, unkindness, judgmentalness, and condemnation—all attack the body at the

cellular level. It is impossible to have a healthy body under these conditions.

The world is in the condition that it’s in because the world is full of sleepwalkers.