There is story about a lady from a native American Indian tribe. A test was to be held, the winner of which would become the Queen and marry the present King and Queens’ son. This lady in the story, having fallen in love with the kings’ son, trained the most intensely of all. After five years of training, the day of the test arrived and she knew how important it was. The test was a 5 day journey and the route had to be memorized beforehand.
At the beginning of day three she was in the lead, and then by the roadside she came across an old lady. On seeing her she stopped and the old lady tells her that her village is half a day away and that she is sick, and doesn’t think that she can make it there. ‘Unless someone takes me there I think I am going to die here’ she said. ‘Would you help me and take me back to my village?’ The lady thinks: for 5 years I have trained for this test, it’s important to me and I have got a chance of winning. If I take this old lady to her village it isn’t going to be me who marries the prince. She decides though, that there is nothing for it, and replies that of course she will take her back to her village.
She takes the old woman back to her village, and thinks ‘that’s it!’ – Still she goes and gets back on route, and tries to make up the time. Day 5 and she arrives back at her village. All the others are there before her, she is the last. Well, she sighs, whoever has won deserves to have won.
The time for the prize-giving ceremony arrives and the queen of the tribe is to present the winning cup. To the lady’s astonishment the queen walks towards her and presents her with the cup. The lady looks into the queen’s eyes and at that moment realizes that she was the old woman on the roadside. She was the only one who stopped and this was the only test.
And all of us have been in these situations. There is a deadline to make, and we maybe didn’t see that somebody may have needed us. Maybe they just asked: Would you just help me fix the photocopier? Would you just take this call? Instead, so focused on what we think is ‘the right thing to be doing’ we don’t ‘see’ these moments and we don’t cherish these truly important times in our lives. They are little moments where we could dip inside and use love, compassion or care, only we miss them.
When we pass these moments by we keep ourselves locked in this ordinary state of consciousness. To transcend this ordinary state of consciousness we have to believe that love is the greatest power on this earth, and it is.
