Take heed, that famine, earthquake, fire and flood
Shall not be the end of you,
But the end of all you know.
For these are but the beginning of sorrows,
The ends shall be meted out as your response,
For if you starve without understanding the cause of your hunger,
You will never eat again.
If you shake without understanding the nature of the quake,
You will be crushed under the weight of your own pestilence.
If you burn without understanding the cause of the flame of consumption,
You shall certainly never rise from the ashes to see the light of day.
And if you succumb to the waters that surround you too deep to stand,
You shall certainly drown in sorrows caused by your own unconsciousness.
Nay, I say to you, rejoice in the suffering at hand!
Do not succumb nor be ignorant of these things you must endure.
Those things you needed the most were but the cause of the beginning of your sorrows,
And in the destruction of need you will find the beginning of life eternal.
For the pangs of hunger remove the dependence you have on all that cannot sustain you,
And will cause you to forgo all that is not necessary in your true purpose.
The shaking of all that is will rid you of the weakness in your foundation,
And out of the dust shall come a grounding in the way things are to be.
The burning of all the things of form you think you are shall teach you if nothing else,
That you never needed them to begin with, that they were if nothing but a distraction.
And as the waters recede take notice of the new life around you if even for the very first time,
Understand that the moment your feet touch solid ground, that is the moment of your life,
Life eternal, not lost in the way things are, but in the way they were intended to be.
Rejoice in these lessons learned, and in the power of such Intention.
Find happiness that those things starved, shaken, burned and washed away are not indelible,
And as such that by having no need for those things long since destroyed,
You are, in fact, alive eternal in this moment as in no other,
Alive eternal for the very first time, and as a child new to air embraces each breath,
You shall embrace each moment as if it is the only you shall live.
Ah, to rejoice in such is to never feel sorrow again, an end to such suffering
Is to never see suffering again, to truly feel as such
Is to feel Alive Eternal.