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Personally, I think that the photo would benefit from several changes.  For example, the sky is considerably brighter than the land, and this pulls the viewer's eye away from the main area of interest.  I believe the completely blown out area of the sky (ie, 255,255,255 in the upper RH of the frame) will be extremely unattractive to many viewers.  In addition, the flat light on that day means that the local contrast is very low throughout the image, so I worked on increasing that using a variety of techniques including large radius USM.  Once these things are taken care of, the shafts of light that were the original object of concern almost automatically increase in prominence.  I did brighten them a bit (and slightly darken the surrounding areas), but much less than one might think is necessary looking at the original.

To make my changes clear, I exaggerated them.  Everyone has their own preferences, and I'm sure you remember the scene as not having this much clarity / contrast / drama. So, if the changes are too much / too "unrealistic" but you like the general direction they took your image, obviously, it's easy to dial them back - just blend back in some of the original.

Tom M