The Path: Living A God-centred Life

The Path: Living a God-centred Life

It has been said that the road to happiness, however arduous, must indeed be travelled by ceaseless service and endless love. In the same way that we are asked a fee for our earthly transactions, so too will we be constantly asked by the Inner Guide for deposits, to take on our behalf, to Its heavenly bank. Our search then, our quest for equipoise, will be measured by our down-payments of love, in this earthy school.

On this sojourn, there are a lot of temptations, a vast array of seemingly well-lit roads. They appear easier, wider, smoother and alluring, and has been walked down many a time by great men and women, whose only crime was a sense of impatience; an urge to walk away from pain. We see this as alien to the divine, as not part and parcel of the plan, as if our Inner Pilot somehow devised a beautiful game where there is room only for that which pleases us. Consequently, we abhor the afflictions, see them as somehow alien to us, and feel joy only in the meadows of light.

The path is essentially one of struggles, of experiences, many of them necessary for one's growth. There is no easy way. It is when we take the seemingly easy way, that we become side tracked and find ourselves going backwards in this Godly journey. One must essentially keep going and not turn back, there is no time for remembering those which we have left behind.

Perhaps this is why the Wise ones remind us that:

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at.” St. Matthew 7: 13. King James, Cambridge Ed.

On this training ground called Earth, we grow through service, and consuming love. They burn our ignorance like fire within, without which no empathy can be built, no beauty seen in the Soul of Mother Earth or indeed all sentient life. This Path will ask us to lose our narrowness, our selfishness, and to sacrifice. Like the great oak or willow, it will ask us to spread our wings like giant umbrellas, giving shade to the needy, the destitute and the downtrodden. For the Path tells us that this is the way to compassion, that immortal quality that thrills our hearts and creates the most lofty and beautiful inner music. Dickenson knew of this, and illustrates it in her lofty piece below:

“If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.”- Emily Dickenson.

Dickenson would have felt this song of course, and so would her American sister who sang a different tune for the despairing, lonely and afraid:

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone.

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth

But has trouble enough of its own.” –Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wilcox had experienced much in life, and so she walked her Path as a sturdy soldier, full of light and truth. She experienced identification or empathy, built from the walls of adversity and pain, and which we all must walk. Hers was a march full of faith and courage:

“I am the voice of the voiceless;

Through me the dumb shall speak,

Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear

The wrongs of the wordless weak.

From street, from cage, and from kennel,

From stable and zoo, the wail

Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin

Of the mighty against the frail.” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

And so I say that on this journey, this Path of struggle, of hope, of vision and seemingly solitary dreams, let us love and serve, and receive and give. For in the elevation of the children of God can our own natures grow. In selfless service do we bend, yield and cry, sometimes joyfully, until our hearts become like mirrors to reflect or radiate our Inner Sun: The Joy of Knowledge. – Manatita 25/06/13.