What is the Path?
Dear friends,
A few people have come into the store recently asking questions like, “So what is the spiritual path, really?” “What does it mean to be ‘on a path’?” A friend thought this would make a good letter. I hope this is so, and thus felt to take a shot at answering briefly…
The fundamental delusion on this planet is, “If I could just get my circumstances right, then I’d be happy.” So we decide we need a relationship, get one, but the person leaves us. “I forgot to ask for loyalty!” Reincarnation, anyone? So we come back and our partner is perfectly loyal… but dies early. “I forgot to ask for health!” So we come back again and our love is healthy and loyal… but we grow apart. “I forgot to ask that we grow together!” So, fourth time’s the charm (but it actually isn’t quite…). You get the idea.
And that’s just relationships. Every time we die with a desire for something other than Spirit, we get to come back and try again (Money? Health? Family? Career? Power?). Finally after a looooong time we realize that the only thing that can fill the hole in our heart is God/Spirit/Unity. The next time we come back, we are consciously on the path Home, seeking the only thing that will finally work for us. There is nothing wrong with money, relationships, or most anything else in and of itself. It’s just that those things can never give us ultimate fulfillment, and as long as we put acquiring those things first, it never will quite work out. So in fact everyone is on the Path, it’s just that most do not know it yet.The conscious realization and commitment comes after many, many lifetimes of trying everything else.
In every human endeavor, you can find someone who reached the pinnacle of it and said, “It was fine, but not really worth it” except one: becoming a saint. No one ever became a great spiritual light, and at the end said, “I should have been a banker!”
The great lights who have purified themselves from the need for things to be "their way" come back to help others: Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Yogananda, and many others both known and unknown. They return, not to have us “follow them” but as guides to show us that freedom can in fact be found, and then how to do it. The various paths and techniques for liberation are just different highways to the same ultimate destination—perfect unity with all that is.
May each of us find that peace in our own hearts now and ever more.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West