“To live a path with heart means … to allow the flavor of goodness to permeate our life. When we bring full attention to our acts, when we express our love and see the preciousness of life, the quality of goodness in us grows. A simple caring presence can begin to permeate more moments of our life. And so we should continually ask our own heart, ‘What would it mean to live like this? Is the path, the way we have chosen to live our life, leading to this?’
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, the 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 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?
Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping.
Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end, we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next.”
A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, Jack Kornfield, pgs. 14 – 15.
