A few years ago I had a dream that has stayed with me -- one that seems to be very relevant to these crazy times we now find ourselves in.

In the dream, I was in a diner, sitting at the counter and waiting for my food to come. I sensed something odd going on behind me, so I swiveled around and could tell that poisonous gas was entering the room through the heating vents on the floor -- even though it was colorless and odorless. One by one, people started falling off their chairs and dying. I'm not exactly sure how I did what I did next, but I found a way to slow my breathing way down and extract just the good oxygen from the air and not breathe the poison. Knowing I was in real danger, I stood up slowly, turned around, continued breathing slowly, and exited the diner.

I was the only one to get out alive.

Methinks this is the choice we all have these days. There is so much toxicity, so much poison in the air, on so many levels, that it's easy for anyone of us to take it all in indiscriminately and lose our life. And yet, each of us has the potential and the power to extract the life-giving force from the mixture of good and bad. It's a choice. We get to CHOOSE what to focus on, what to take in, how to stay conscious, and what to let go of. Choice. We all have a choice.

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PHOTO: R. Mac Wheeler

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