ABC Correspondent Dan Harris was on assignment in Baghdad in 2006, covering the Iraqi War. Of course, reporters are human and sometimes can lose their "distance" from the people they cover while doing a story.
That's exactly what happened to Dan Harris. He covered a story that included an 18-year-old Iraqi and his heart ...and Soul...went out to this little guy, also named Dan.
That's where the story of Dan and Dan began.
After the segment that included Iraqi Dan aired on ABC at the beginning of 2007, viewers wrote in and wanted to reach out to the 18-year-old. A small Liberal Arts college in Maine, Thomas College, went further: they offered Iraqi Dan an opportunity to attend college free. The question was: how would Iraqi Dan get into the United States.
That's when Dan Harris asked for and received permission from ABC management to intercede and help out.
That he did.
Within a few months, March 2007, Dan Harris was greeting Iraqi Dan at JFK International Airport in New York City. From there, they journeyed to Waterville, Maine and Iraqi Dan began his "American" life.
Happy ending.
No...actually. NOT ...a happy ending.
Iraqi Dan got enamored with freedom in the United States and began to party and party really, really hard. The story took an ugly twist when about nine months later, despite all their efforts at helping him, the administration at Thomas College expelled Iraqi Dan.
The story took many, many twists and turns with Iraqi Dan getting many chances to straighten up his life and capture a part of the American Dream.
His odyssey included a stint at a Maine group home, near homelessness, and a move to a Boston.
Nothing worked for Iraqi Dan.
Two years and four months later, the story ends with Iraqi Dan returning ....happily ...to Iraq. He wanted to go back home and rejected staying even a few more months to pick up his "Green Card" that would have assured him of entry back into the United States.
He simply did not want it.
Tracking Iraqi Dan in his homeland a year later, Dan Harris realized that Iraqi Dan achieved something in Iraq that money, freedom and access to a "greater life" could not buy: happiness!
Iraqi Dan was home and he was wiser and smarter for his American journey.
Many American who saw that story on Nightline, as I did several nights ago, probably ponder why access to the ultimate in life did not work for Iraqi Dan: access to education, to more money, to freedom to all the things that he seemingly could not get in Iraq.
Were these viewers to get stuck on those points, they would miss a tremendous lesson about life and about our Soul's journey.
Our journey in life is not to achieve status, money and power. Yes, these are by-products and tremendously rich by-products of our journey. But, our ultimate purpose here in this life at this time, or at any other time, is for the evolution of our Soul!
To not know this is the reason many Souls wind up going around and around and around and around searching for their tails!
If you believe like I do, then you'll understand that the journey of this life is the continuation of the Soul's journey from a previous lifetime. This is NOT an argument for the Theory of Evolution. Nor is it a belief in the the same BODY having the same experiences as it did in a previous lifetime.
But it is a thesis for the same SOUL continuing on its journey from one lifetime to the next continuously moving, or in some cases, inching, closer to what, I believe, IS the ultimate goal in life: a closer connection to the universal energy we call God.
This lifetime, like any other, is an opportunity to refine and improve upon a previous one, where our human traits and characteristics may have so intruded on our spiritual passage that we got LOST in the journey and ultimately lost connection to our Soul.
That Soul comes back with all the ingredients of the previous lifetimes, continuously urging, nudging, calling, whispering to us to get on "the right path."
That right path has nothing...NO THING...to do with achieving riches, unless it is to contribute to the growth of that Soul.
That right path has nothing...NO THING...to do with living in the best country on Earth, unless it is to contribute to the growth of that Soul.
And...every BODY...every Soul has a singular journey.
No two Souls are evolving at the same rate at the same pace at the same time.
Each Soul is navigating its way along its own path in this journey of this lifetime. This is a singular experience for that singular Soul.
"Remember that the spirit of God exists in every person, the same spirit that gives you life. Therefore you should not only love but respect the soul of every person as a holy place."Epictetus
People make so many, many mistakes when they believe that "what is good for Susie is also good for ME..."
Through envy, jealously, greed, passion or other dark traits and emotions, people get lost to themselves and the journey of their Soul.
That's where they truly make their mistakes.
Sometimes that loss comes about at the hands of others.
But, if a body is connected to its Soul, it knows what it needs to go back HOME. It knows what it needs for ultimate happiness, like Iraqi Dan.
It begs to go back home, Green Card, or no Green Card.
That is the story of how an Iraqi teenager, now man, taught America an important lesson of the singular journey of a singular Soul!
Don't miss your lesson!
Namaste',
Che'
NOTE: Dan Harris also detailed his time with Dan in a "Reporter's Notebook." See it by cutting and pasting this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/reporters-notebook-dan-met-dan/story?id=12270612&page=1
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