Close your mind from everything while reading this. Take a couple of deep breaths, relax and calm your body. Be more comfortable on your seat and feel completely relaxed. Visualize each and every word you read on this article. Picture yourself in the scenes very clearly and make sure you are not distured half way through. It will be good if you are under dim lights that would help you to visualize better as you will not be closing you eyes. Focus your attention starting from the top of your head and slowly go down until you reach your toes sacnning your whole body once and be relaxed.

You see complete darkness around you, you do not know where you are. You throw your arms around to feel anything but the warm air passes through your fingers and you could not touch anything. You slowly move one foot then the other very carefully hoping not to fall down. The darkenss is so black that you can't see yourself, you can't see your foot nor your hands. You take another step very slowly. When you do this your heart beat increases, your fear increases. You can now listen to your own heart beat. You are terribly scared now, no one close by. You try to call someone but you could only open your mouth and no sound comes out. You do not know if the next step will be on a hole or on the ground but you wish to move further. You suddenly feel a great amount of weight on your shoulders. You know you are carrying a shoulder bag, but this becomes so heavy that you are forced to sit down. You sit there in the dark placing your hands on the ground, around you feel nothing but hot rocky ground. After a couple of minutes suddenly from no where you could feel cool breeze touching your neck and you turn to that direction. In sitting position you slowly move your legs in the dark towards the cool breeze slowly but very carefully. You now moved 10 steps and you see something shinny, it is a ray of light falling on the conner of the dark cave you are in. Your heart jumps with joy, you move towards the pencil like light ray to see if it is real. You gain your confidence and slowly stand up. You move towards the little light on the wall of the cave and now your legs become stronger, the weight on your shoulders seems bareable. Still there is darkness all around you except for this little light. You are now standing with the ray of light falling on your face and you follow the light. In the distance you see dim light that spreads on the floor of the cave. Your legs are weak, very weak than you could ever imagine but your mind is now becoming strong and forcing your legs to move faster and faster towards the light. Before you could reach the entrance you knew where you are and fall down on the ground and began to cry, this is a cry not out of fear, not out of trouble, not out of grief but a cry out of happiness, a cry out of joy. This time you jumped to get out of the ground, your shoulder did not feel the weight though you are still carrying the heavy bag. You now run out of the enterance and feel the cool cold wind hiting your face as if inviting you. You take a deep breath on the fresh air. You walk further towards the sun light now, out of the darkness, out of fear, out of sadness, out of problems. You see beautiful trees and birds singing around you. You see water flowing on a stream and small pebbles on it and you touch the cold water and wash your face with it.

You feel all new, you feel refreshed, you feel the energy in you now, you feel wonderful. You keep moving forward and you still feel the bag on your shoulders. You need to climb the mountain in front of you to reach the top and you decided to climb. With the new energy you just received and with the hope and happiness in your mind, your legs and whole body move faster than before. You are now half way through the mountain and you do feel good about yourself. You can now cross over any stone that comes in your way, you can move directions not to be stopped by any hurddles on the path, you can break branches and woods on the path to move forward.

Finally, before you could even realize you see yourself on top of the mountain. Now you could feel the cool wind on your face even better. You trun around all over to see if there is anything else that is taller than you but you are the only one on the top. You shout with joy, you jump a 100 times and feel good about yourself seeing where you are now. In the distance you could see the cave from where you came from, but that is left far behind, too far that you will never be there again. In the midst of this happy moment you forgot about the bag you are carrying. You take it out of your shoulders and place if on the ground. You open it and inside you have small little but heavy bags. You look at them and they are your negatives, your weakness, your failures, your bad habits. You take them one by one and throw them far away from the top of the mountain. You see them flying away from you and falling down the mountain. Then you close the bag and put it back on your shoulders. Your shoulders now feel very very light, the bag is empty and you feel so comfortable.

Spreading you arms wide open in the cool breeze you kneel down and thank the Almighty with tears rolling down your cheeks.

Joy Leo