Following Your Path

By William Mackis.

If you are seeking spiritual fulfillment, you must follow your own path.

This does not mean that you cannot learn from others.  You can.  But others cannot do your work for you. 

You cannot buy spiritual enlightenment.  You can buy a book on meditation, or you can buy a hundred books on meditation; but until you sit down and meditate, day after day, you will get no benefit.  Physical hunger is not appeased by reading a cookbook.  In the same way, spiritual hunger is not appeased by simply reading about spiritual practices. 

Talk alone does not lead to enlightenment, nor to anything else, for that matter.  Talking about the need for compassion is not the same as being compassionate.  Discussing the need to protect the environment is not the same as protecting the environment.  Telling others that they should practice kindness is not the same as being kind.  I have met a large number of men and women anxious to talk about their principles, and to discuss their beliefs; but I have met only a mere handful anxious to actually attempt to live them.

Your path to enlightenment is your path.  Not only can you decide what path you'd like to follow, but you can also decide whether or not you actually will follow your path.  If you do not follow your path, then you will get nowhere.  If you actually do follow your path, then you will eventually make progress.  Worse than either of these two decisions would be to pretend to follow your path, to put on a false show for others or - how awful, and yet how common - for yourself.    Doing what is needed, even if you fail in your first hundred or first thousand or first ten thousand attempts, is far better than pretending to do something.  Pretending to gather firewood will not warm you.   Pretending to be spiritual will not bring you closer to what you seek.

Regarding which path to choose, I can do no better than to quote the great Sufi poet Rumi:

"Every prophet and every saint has a way,
but all lead to God.  All ways are really one."