If you died today, how would you feel about your life?
I'm old enough that I have several friends my age who have already died tragically early. It can happen. So why are we living like we will live forever?
What is momentously important? So important that everything else in your life pales in comparison. How much time and energy are you spending on that? Where else are you spending your time? Is it in worthwhile pursuits? Or things that you will be sorry about, should you die tomorrow?
Start the day with love, fill the day with love, end the day with love. That is the way to God.
A quote from Sai Baba, perhaps slightly altered since I'm writing it from memory. In any case, that seems genuinely important. Are we doing that? Are we at least working towards that, in whatever ways we can? Is there a good reason not to? I can't think of one.
Love. God. Living the divinity that is latent in all of us. The sadhana, the work, the actions and effort that are leading us towards infusing that always-there truth, into our awareness, our personality and experience. Are we taking those steps that we know? are we checking with our inner wisdom, to ask if our heart feels good with the path we're taking? Are we checking with our mind, to confirm our actions seem to be leading us towards more light, towards our goal? Or do we need to reassess, tweak, experiment, question, seek?
The spiritual path is not just about sitting quietly meditating. It is about the heart with which we infuse everything we do in life. There is nothing that is not spiritual. Washing the dishes is spiritual. Saying hello to your neighbor is spiritual. The physical is the tangible expression of the intangible, and how we move through our physical life is the training ground for spirit. Are you living with integrity? are you living with love and kindness (for yourself as well, as much as for anyone else). Are you living with truth, peace, rightness? Are you striving to live with some awareness that everything and everyone is a spark of divinity? is God made matter?
These questions haunt me, as I reflect on my own mortality, or at least the mortality of the precious vessel, born to give me the chance to manifest my own divinity in conscious experience.
From darkness lead us to light. From suffering and pain and despair and grief, lead us to bliss, peace, immortality. It's not pie in the sky. I don't know exactly what it is, but I know as I walk the path of light, though there are challenges, I keep moving into greater and greater light. More peace and joy. And that reflects and spreads to those around me, it is not selfish. It is more love.
I've said it so many times before, because I needed to be reminded, that many times. And I say it again, because I need to be reminded again. Do not waste your precious life on trifles, on merely eating, drinking, and the other things that all animals know and experience. That stuff is find and good, but don't let it distract you from the peace that surpasses all understanding. The well of peace within that is there without reason, without limit. The friend that is always with you, the love that is without condition or end.
Remember
