the demonstration of a test

It was easily three weeks ago I was doing my usual, walking the Hound.  It was an extended period of multiple tests, one after another, coinciding with each other, piling on one another, you might be experiencing the same thing, my mind stretched grid-like in the demonstrations arising, working out the balancing act required to meet each one, confidently, making the most of each as they were  presented and recognized for what they were.  The Hound snatched something nasty from the bushes at night and whomped it down before I could inspect.  He became ill, of course.  In the course of getting him to the vet, the rockbuggy would have to be charged and a new starter meant getting to the car guy.    These are classic everyday tests we experience in overpopulation, nothing is as it would be today if only ...  You may have noticed these tests come in bunches.  Certainly someone, or one key element, along the chain of multiple tasks required would flake and more, each test required it be done correctly in order to proceed to the next.  As soon as it came to me the combination of dog, vet and auto mechanic was a test and the scenery and cast were all part of the demonstration, all doubt vanished.  And still, I barely know my way around in this place.  Driving around is always a sort of hunt and peck affair, but its small here in my quadrant and with enough time, you can reach whatever destination you want.  I was up to the challenge.  As a person who has lived jungle and rural for half of their life, to find my way around a complicated maze of ramps and overpasses in that special searching style explains my lack of interest in knowing where anything else is located, with the exception of what it is I want to find within every sector of post NWO structures, or would that be Neo-NWO, whale-gulping our Mother's resources in every skinflint shape and flavor.  I refused the GPS app for a similar reason, why do we need this shit?  GPS addicts tell me how fabulous and convenient are these talking beltway devices, but they should know better by now.  I would take offense, if such a thing were possible, except I can't be offended by not being interested in mass consumer hypnotics to quiet the methane-belching cattle.

There are some days or nights or both that run by us magically in their perfection.  Its as if you were looking at a tapestry of the hours woven as it happens, where the yarns, blending colors and weave explain it all in seamless mesh, as one activity naturally leads to another, each demonstration sweetly paves the way into the middle of the next.  The Pup is cool now thanks to his vet who did what I wanted her to do and relinquished her own plan for dog te$ting and just handed over the goodies.  I'd done my homework online.  The rockbuggy took us there because 1) I got an unexpectedly easy charge for the battery, and 2) the car guy did his replacement at the speed of, heh, light.  

There's more, two beat up strays were hanging around the 'hood during this same period.  You could see they'd had it rough and for a long time.  Various neighbors were leaving out food and water, but not taking them in.  It was pretty cold too.  I worried about their nights, under bushes, escaping the MAN, but the way they were roaming around the houses after dark said they were hungry, tired of exposure to the elements and in need of family.  My own pup was worried too.  For him, the message was loud and clear.  I called a friend who has adoption connections and was told if I could bring them to her, she would get them medical attention.  Ah ... the test took a sudden turn.  I'll save some space here and just mention they now live permanently in a nice big heavily-fenced house with dog door, huge backyard and pool and are brushed, bathed and putting on weight, best of all, they are cherished.  You might think I denied them their freedom, but the city kill shelter is reportedly worse than Abu Graib.  The same people who would call the dogcatcher, and there are multitudes of them, are the same patriotic Roundup Ready racist fringe who  are devoted to their version of cleanliness is Godliness. 

The list of tests goes on, those I mentioned were important, but apparently not final.  The tests are actually life, why we are here.  Sometimes, a test will appear as minor, the reason for that is to gauge your ability to acknowledge they are tests.  To use a TAO-like balancing example, without awareness of what it is that is taking place on a higher level, there is no understanding at all, i.e.; ignorance.  Further, failing a challenge that you arranged, attaches itself to your core, negatively, from negativity into certain defeat and self pity. 

An interesting test is giving small sums, if it is done compassionately, without expectation of reward such as currying favor or calculating return, there is no element of debt which changes everything that the recipient was preparing himself to feel badly about in advance of asking for what it was he needed. There is a beautiful Universe that exists where expectation and anticipation, rewards and dishonor are erased from the activity.  There is no hypocrisy, no building of pre- and post-fabricated animosity.  It can be for some a very difficult test especially in overpopulation, everyone you know running short of funds and thus quickly friendless, rampant corruption all around and the fear of being labeled with trash nicknames behind their backs. It works both ways when done wrong, the giver is a sucker and the taker is a deadbeat.

I well remember being so crazy hungry I actually called home collect, thousands of miles away, to beg, and looked down at the Lower East Side street beneath my bare feet before the call connected and staring back at me was a twenty lying on the pavement.  In terms of demonstrations and tests, the message was clear and it was multipart on numerous levels, all of them corrections and lasting lessons.   None of them forgotten to this day, especially the part about the futility of dwelling so intensely on fear of the future.  Given awareness, all works out as it was designed.

Just because I am posting about beautiful things such as tests in no way negates the egregious, bloody happenings "out there".  The time has arrived to make serious plans to secure a more survivable future.  As a reminder, I am reposting Scrapwood's contribution of T'ao Ch'ien's  After Liu Ch'ai-Sang's Poem ...

I'd long felt these mountains and lakes
beckoning, and wouldn't have thought twice,
but my family and friends couldn't bear
talk of living apart. Then one lucky day
a strange feeling came over me, and I left,
walking-stick in hand, for my western farm.
No one was going back home: on those outland
roads, farm after farm lay in empty ruins,
but our thatch hut's already good as ever,
and you'd think our new fields had been
tended for years. When valley winds turn
cold, spring wine eases hunger and work,
and though it isn't strong, just baby-girl
wine, it's better than nothing for worry.
Distant -- as months and years pass away here,
the bustling world's racket grows distant.
Plowing and weaving provide all we use.
Who needs anything more?
Away, ever away into this hundred-year life and
beyond, my story and I vanish together like this.