It’s difficult to even talk about walking a metaphorical path one takes in life without immediately traversing into cliche platitudes, so much has been said on the metaphor of a life path, so much that is probably more eloquently stated than the words you are reading here. But when talking about a path we walk in life it sometimes implies one direction is better than another, which in itself perhaps isn’t even true in total, or is true only in relative terms. As walking a path also implies we are trying to get somewhere, but the path we walk in life has no real end point other than merely the fact that it ends at some point when we die.
Generally speaking though most can attest that a life of intense suffering brought on by regretful decisions would be a path we’d deem poor. A life following lies and chasing after trivial pursuits would also not rate highly on most people’s list as a life we desire. Greed, selfishness, jealousy, and acquiescing to fears, in all their difficult to interpret forms, tend to have consequences that play out with a sort of expansive karma, and one doesn’t need to believe in spirituality or the occult to understand karma is quite real, you only need to understand the human condition and simple actions you take have repercussions. For instance, if you lie to everyone you know others will know it, we tend to believe we can get away with little lies often, but most of the time people sense intuitively if not outright know they’re being told a lie. And when they figure out you’re lying, those who hold honesty in high regard will trust you less, desire to be around you less, and your life will ultimately turn into a shallow existence attracting people to you who are also consumed by lies. Thus this is very real karma in action. Cause and effect.
And a path of living a disingenuous life is possible to follow at any point. Anyone can follow a desirable path for any length of time and can stray and become bemused at any point along the way. When we lose our bearings it can seem like turning around and finding the way back isn’t even an option, as it may seem like we may have to eat so many of our own words that it may seem like it’s too painful to admit we were so incredibly wrong. Much like we can sense when someone is lying to us in some capacity we can also sense when we are lying to ourselves. Something feels off, little muscles in the face twitch, stress is held in the back, and we find it difficult to relax.
Reading ourselves accurately is among one of the most difficult things to master in life, but understanding and reading the little hints in our body can clue us in much faster than a psychologist or waiting for symptoms of repressed angst to manifest in ugly ways in our lives. In mediation it’s possible to sit and watch, observe and listen to what we aren’t hearing in our over busied lives. When that tension is there in our muscles, or the mind consistently chases after distractions, there is most certainly something we are avoiding. At times, finding what that is has an added degree of difficulty because our society tends to normalize so much that is unhealthy.
So much of the labor we perform in our jobs is deleterious to ourselves, other people, or the natural environment, but it makes money, and we justify making money as something we need to do to live in the world, even though we also know there are different ways to make money or live with less of it, and though those other ways may not be as lucrative, they may in fact be far more noble actions to perform than the more profitable jobs. Our society doesn’t monetarily reward kindness and compassionate acts in any great capacity, instead it so often rewards outright deceptions and exploitation. Thus, what may seem like acts we do to survive, may be causing us to live a lie. The lies told in our culture that are so often readily accepted, even admired and envied by others, can be something that also brings an extremely unhealthy manner of living along massive amounts of anxiety.
A psychologist/psychiatrist will rarely tell someone the basic facets of living in modernity can be destructive to our mental equanimity, most of the time they’ll provide coping mechanisms, prescribe a pill, or even label us with some kind of disorder when what is actually “wrong” is the entire manner in which we are living that modern society attempts to force upon us. Further, we know that coping mechanisms for many actions would seem preposterous, like if we walked around asking for coping mechanisms for beating children, the solution is to stop beating children not learning how to compartmentalize the action. This concept rings true throughout many of the actions we take in life, so often the proper course of action is to stop doing that thing, not to learn how to cope with doing something awful, though certainly not all unpleasant things can be avoided. However we do have power to say no to more than we think if we diligently search for other options.
This is where understanding path can be helpful. Walking a path is a consistent action, and when walking a real or metaphorical path it’s foolish to walk three steps along it, and then veer sharply off it for several hours everyday and then believe we are progressing along. In doing so one will see the same sites over and over and quickly find themselves stuck, bored, and burdened with a Sisyphean task as they repeat the grind day after day. We seem most contented when we are exposed to different sites along the way, and outright dismayed when we find ourselves in a hellish location that we replay over and over as we continue to expose ourselves to the same conditions that are causing inner angst.
Any culture can be a destructive one, no matter how righteous they feign to be, we can be misled by blindly following someone else’s directions down a path without opening our own eyes and listening to all our senses and what the message being delivered is that will lead us back down a more advantageous path. We do seem to have an inner compass that leads the way to a greater truth, and many will attempt to tell us to ignore it along the way for their own selfish reasons, and many times our own selfish reasons will misinform us, but if we take a moment to stop and find our bearings we can climb back on the path no matter how far we’ve veered off course.
