One of the most important spiritual practices is the practice of awareness of death.
Sorry for the dramatic opening, but it’s true. And if we’re lucky, we’ll live a long enough life to look back and ask ourselves: “Did I live a life worth living? Did I fulfill myself?”
Each of us has different definitions of what a “life worth living” is, and that’s perfectly fine, as long as we are sure that indeed, these are our definitions, which we have tested and explored with awareness and we have decided that they are right for us, and not because we have adopted what our society has dictated to us, without daring to even put a little question mark at the end.
Because our society has very precise, though unfortunately not as compassionate, definitions regarding what a life worth living is, and what success is. And so, the milestones that must be achieved in our life path are decided for us in advance, and we – at one level of conformism or another – make sure to tick “V” next to each one we have reached, and feel a great loss (and sometimes guilt and failure) when we have not been able to reach one of them.
Somehow, these milestones are completely related to things that are outside of us – property, education, socioeconomic status, marital status, etc.
And not that there is anything wrong with any of those, there isn’t.
It’s just that when I build and evaluate my life based on standards that are external to me and set by others, this might be, well, how should I put it, a bit dangerous.
It doesn’t make us bad people, or shallow, or not smart, not at all. It is just stronger than us, at least until we decide to become stronger than that.
Thus begins the race – which is sometimes more stressful and sometimes allows breathing space – after the desired “V” ticking.
And within it, we always, but always fall into the most torturous trap – comparing ourselves to others.
So it is true that everything in our world is relative, and what generally defines abundance, for instance, is necessarily relative to what exists in the environment in which I live, and still.
I might find myself measuring my life according to those external criteria and those who succeed (at least in my opinion) in fulfilling them.
Because if everyone does it, then it’s true, isn’t it? probably not.
Western society has never enjoyed greater abundance.
I don’t have enough data to compare to the past (which is really insignificant), but it doesn’t seem to me that people are happier.
Happy people don’t inflict injustice on others, they don’t start unnecessary wars, they don’t hate those who think differently,
Happy people do not spend their lives looking for that something outside of themselves to approve their lives as meaningful.
And if you don’t belong to any of the categories I have mentioned above, including “people who are not happy”, then I couldn’t be happier.
It means there are fewer people to worry about in the world..
But even if it is only discomfort that you feel in your lives, I suggest considering the spiritual milestones.
The special thing about them is that they are internal, they are related to our personal development as a person, as a soul, as a spirit.
There is no place for comparison because each of us starts the journey at a different point, we each enjoy different life conditions, and the internal work required for each of us is different – according to the abilities we each strive to refine.
I would even say that this is the meaning of our journey here –
To finish it at a point of development of consciousness that is higher, wiser, broader, more benevolent, and more compassionate than the point where we started our lives.
And so I can check with myself, for example:
- How independent am I from grasping to material things as a source of happiness? Not that I can’t enjoy them, and in abundance, but, to what extent does my happiness not depend on things?
- How close am I to being who I want to be in the qualities I develop and demonstrate, in who I am?
- How open is my heart to others? How much do I want their happiness? How open am I to differences in worldviews? How much do my love and compassion become less and less conditional?
- How much of my worldview is such that it amounts to personal responsibility? How much am I the change I want to see in my world, to stand on giants’ shoulders?
And so, every small or big thing that I do in my life has a meaning, since it brings me closer – or further away – to who I want to be.
An Invitation for an Inventory.
So I invite you (and myself) to observe your life now.
From the spiritual perspective of the development of the self, the spirit, to who we can be:
- What have you accomplished so far?
Not “when I finish the…” or “when I get the…”
Until now, until this moment, what have you achieved?
How much have you grown?
How much have you loved?
- What have you been able to deal with that you didn’t believe you could?
- what did you build, create?
- What have you contributed to your world?
I invite you to write all of these down, and celebrate them because if we don’t acknowledge what we’ve done so far, we’ll never reach some unknown point where all of this will have meaning.
The meaningful life is here, now, in what we have done so far, in what we are doing now.
And it’s not dichotomous, it’s not a choice between “I didn’t make any progress at all” and “I got to the place I wanted.”
The opposite is true.
It’s a process in which every day I make a progress, grow, evolve – one step at a time.
Because when I feel that there is no place for evolution – it either means I am enlightened or that I am dead.
So the invitation this time is to bring forward this death-bed retrospective evaluation of my life,
and so I can relate to each night when I go to sleep as a kind of small “death”, before which I make the same retrospection, and recognize everything I have achieved until today.
And the next day, a new day, we do it again.
And that, my dears, is true freedom.
Mindful Education 