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A Path With Heart: Saturday's GNR [1]

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Date: 2022-12-03

I’ve been taking a lot of strength from the book A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield. I thought I would share some of his wise words with you:

In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: We must make certain that our path is connected with our heart. To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to life… As the qualities of presence and simplicity begin to permeate more and more of our life, our inner love for the earth and all beings begins to express itself and brings our path alive.

In the stress and complexity of our lives we may forget our deepest intentions. But when people come to the end of their life and look back, they questions that they most often ask are not usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or “How many books did I write?” or “What did I build?” or the like. If you have the privilege of being with a person who is aware at the time of his or her death, you will find the questions such a person asks are very simple: “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?”

These simple questions go to the very center of spiritual life. When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears have limited us, and we can see the many opportunities for our hearts to open. Have we let ourselves love the people around us, our family, our community, the earth upon which we live? And, did we also learn to let go? Did we learn to live through the changes of life with grace, wisdom, and compassion? Have we learned to forgive and live from the spirit of the heart instead of the spirit of judgment?

The longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all of our activities. The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing or owning or even understanding. Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love, to have a loving, free, and wise relationship with all of life. Such love is not possessive but arises out of a sense of our own wellbeing and connection with everything. Out of love, our path can lead us to learn to use our gifts to heal and serve, to create peace around us, to honor the sacred in life, to bless whatever we encounter, and to wish all beings well.

What matters is how we live. This is why it is so difficult and so important to ask this question of ourselves: “Am I living my path fully, do I live without regret?” so that we can say on whatever day is the end of our life “Yes, I have lived my path with heart.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/3/2139369/-A-Path-With-Heart-Saturday-s-GNR

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