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A Pact with my Higher Self
Decisions seem to come easily to some people, but not to me. Since around the age of ten, I have sought clear, simple guidelines for living a meaningful and virtuous life, but no amount of reading, questioning, or involvement in different groups that believed they held the key to the good life gave me what I wanted. As I approached my sixties, it finally became very clear that there was no path laid out and waiting for me to find it. I would have to make my own path. So after decades of studying different belief systems and philosophies, I seriously reflected on my life, on my mistakes (so many of them) and achievements, on what makes me feel good about myself and what makes me feel mean or hollow, on the person I want to be, and the person I know I can be, on the lost dreams and missed opportunities of my life – on the true and unvarnished reality of my experience.
Then, I thought deeply about what it all meant, and what changes I wanted to make, and finally, I reduced all of what I had discovered about myself, and what I want from life into a few core principles:
Patience
Action
Compassion
Truth.
The Practice
Living, or striving to live by one’s core ideas or principles is a kind of spiritual practice. It requires clarity of thought to define precisely what that idea or principle really means. It requires discrimination to determine how the idea is relevant, and in what way it can be acted upon in each particular situation to protect the essential core of compassion and respect for others’ choices, and to prevent one’s ideals from hardening into dogma and intolerance. It requires also self-discipline, the willingness to forgo pleasure and approval for the greater satisfaction of integrity, and to stir oneself to action or speech when inertia or silence would be much more comfortable and easier. In addition to clarity, discrimination, and self-discipline, one should possess clay feet. If the spiritual practice is to permeate every aspect of one’s life and not just be an intellectual or moral exercise, one must develop a good sense humour, be able to laugh at oneself, and be imperfectly and cheerfully human.
The Path
Ideals are not simple things – though history proves that we can form simplistic notions about them. Rather, each ideal is a clusters of values, ideas and potentialities, and one can never really predict what precise form they will take at any time. Ideals, unlike dogma, are inwardly creative; they are thought forms in which we invest much emotional energy, and they resonate with the emotional and mental energy of millions of other human beings who hold,
live, or strive towards similar ideals. I think of them as archetypes in idea form. And like archetypes, they contain a richness of meaning that can never be fully plumbed by our limited human consciousness.
The more I think about each of my four core principles, and try to live them, the deeper, richer, and more challenging they become, and as I study and read the thoughts of wise masters, past and presence, they become more like deep wells from which I am able to draw meaning without end. To explain what I mean, I have summarized some of the key notions that are expressed, for me at least, within each of these values.
Patience
Acceptance of the way things are, and of people as they are, though I might want them to change Persistence when goals take time, or are difficult to achieve Forbearance in the face of trouble and life’s losses and sorrows Gratitude for what is, because life is a gift, and each person, a miracle.
Action
Self-discipline to overcome laziness and to accomplish goals, instead of finding reasons to avoid doing the necessary work
Courage to live my values and beliefs, and not just talk or think about them
Taking responsibility for doing what must be done, even if no one helps
Duty to family, especially duty to love, nourish, provide for, and protect my children - and duty to others to whom I have made a commitment.
Compassion
Kindness towards others instead of always needing to be right or to feel morally, intellectually or spiritually superior
Caring what happens to others, for injustice and needless suffering anywhere affect us all
Self-control so that I do not hurt or violate others or myself by overreacting
Discrimination to distinguish between what is good, appropriate or necessary and what is harmful, unnecessary, or inappropriate.
Truth
Integrity, so that my behaviour reflects my true thoughts and feelings
Forthrightness, which means saying what must be said, to the right person and at the right time
Acknowledgment of my strengths, weaknesses, failures and accomplishments so that I deceive neither myself nor others
The courage to stand firm on what I believe to be true, and to change when I find I am wrong or need to grow.
I have entered into a pact with myself to be guided by these principles. Similarly, each person who seeks spiritual development must commit to certain principles, and undertake the lifelong journey of creatively, imaginatively, and concretely searching the depth of meaning within those ideals. This cannot be done only in the mind, but must also be lived – hence, the journey.
T.Z.
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