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The Jade soul

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posted on Aug, 29 2005 @ 08:05 PM
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The Jade soul

I’ve come to realize over the years that a story doesn’t have to be true to be a joy, it need only be entertaining and well told. These thoughts occurred to me a while ago as I remembered a story once shared with me by a friend.

Joe and a few of his friends were camping in the woods, drinking beer and swimming in the lake, just enjoying their youth and the thrill of being alive.

On the morning of their second day a forest ranger came upon their camp. After having a cup of coffee with them he let them in on a little secret. Not far away was an outcropping of jade, jutting out of the mountain and very beautiful. After getting directions they decided to go check it out.

It was right where the ranger said it would be, Greenish and marbled in some spots and fading to light blue or a creamy white in others. Every camper had the exact same thought go thru their mind.

They were rich!

Heading back to camp they gathered their shovels, tire irons and any and every digging or mining tool they thought would come in handy. For hours they worked the jade outcropping until finally a pretty large piece fell off. It weighed 300 pounds and was of such an awkward shape it took another hour just to figure out how to carry it out of there.

That evening they broke camp, loaded everything into their car and with the back bumper scraping the ground they took their treasure home. Their plan was to sell it the next day, divide the money evenly and return for more. They even discussed how to stake a claim on the mountain.

That night they each went to bed with dreams of mansions and expensive cars dancing thru their heads.

They woke up to a different reality though. As they tried to find a market for their huge chunk of jade they began to learn the truth about the market. Jade is a very common substance. It really isn’t worth anything until an artisan has taken it into his hands and turned it into a masterpiece. Its value is the same as a blank canvas. Only when the artist is done is its true value determined.

He didn’t tell me what they finally did with the beautiful, 300-pound rock they’d hauled out of the forest. It doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t even matter if the story is true. What mattered is he enjoyed telling the story and I enjoyed hearing it.

I share this with you now because a little while ago I was thinking of it and realized, each of us can be found in this story. At the beginning of our lives were issued a blank piece of jade that is the growth of our soul. We carve it, polish it, and do our best to fashion it into something that the entire world will admire.

Oh sure, sometimes we screw up some facet and it looks pretty bad to those watching us. That doesn’t stop us though, we continue polishing and chipping and grinding our only true work of art into what we hope and believe will be the finest and most beautiful creation that the heavens has ever seen.

We are each artisans, taking a blank stone and carving it day by day into the ultimate shape of beauty, the shape of our own soul.

Love and light,

Wupy



 
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