The Path You Walk, The Destiny You Share

The Path You Walk, The Destiny You Share

Who You Follow, You Join

Every path changes the person who walks it.

Whose teachings we embrace, whose philosophies we internalize, whose voices we trust, and whose examples we choose to follow become influences upon what we ourselves are becoming.

This does not mean that following another person guarantees that we will arrive at the same destination. I do not know that such predetermined destinations exist.

It means something simpler.

What we repeatedly choose becomes part of us.

Ideas influence choices.

Choices influence actions.

Actions create consequences.

Repeated actions become patterns.

And those patterns help shape our character and, I believe, the continuing evolution of the soul.

In this sense, who we follow matters because following is never entirely passive. When we accept another person's understanding of the world, we allow that understanding to become one of the forces acting upon us.

But we remain free.

We can question.

We can reconsider.

We can turn around.

We can choose another path.

There is no predetermined destination here, only direction, consequence, possibility, and continuing evolution.

Belief Is More Than Declaration

It is easy to say we believe something.

We can proclaim allegiance to love, compassion, forgiveness, justice, mercy, or faith. We can identify ourselves with religions, philosophies, teachers, movements, and traditions.

But a declaration is not necessarily a manifestation.

If I claim to believe in compassion while consistently choosing cruelty, which belief am I actually expressing?

If I speak of forgiveness while seeking vengeance, what am I strengthening within myself?

If I proclaim love while treating strangers as undeserving of dignity, what path am I actually walking?

Perhaps our deepest beliefs are revealed not by what we call ourselves, but by what we repeatedly choose when choice carries a cost.

What we practice, we strengthen.

What we strengthen becomes easier to manifest again.

And through repetition, we participate in shaping what we become.

Fear and the Power of Those We Follow

Fear deserves particular attention because fear can profoundly influence the paths we choose.

Fear of the unknown.

Fear of those who are different.

Fear of losing security, status, identity, power, or comfort.

Fear itself is not evil. It is part of being alive. It can warn us of genuine danger and protect us from harm.

But fear can also be manipulated.

A leader can give fear a target.

A movement can transform uncertainty into resentment.

A community can be persuaded that its suffering is caused by another race, religion, nationality, class, culture, or group.

Someone is identified as them.

Someone becomes responsible for everything that is wrong.

And once another human being has been reduced to a category rather than recognized as a person, actions that once seemed unthinkable can begin to appear reasonable.

This is why we must examine not only whom we follow, but what following them is causing us to become.

Does this voice make me more compassionate or more contemptuous?

More thoughtful or more certain of my own superiority?

More willing to understand or more eager to condemn?

More capable of recognizing another person's humanity or more comfortable denying it?

These questions do not require us to know anyone's ultimate destiny.

They require only that we pay attention to the direction in which we are moving.

The Paths of Our Teachers

The world's spiritual and philosophical traditions offer different understandings of existence. Their histories are different. Their teachings are different. Their conceptions of God, consciousness, enlightenment, salvation, suffering, morality, and what may exist beyond this life are not identical.

I do not pretend to know which of their metaphysical conclusions are ultimately correct.

Perhaps none of us yet possesses enough understanding to know.

But we can examine the paths they ask us to walk.

If you follow the teachings of Jesus—

If you practice compassion, charity, forgiveness, mercy, and love—

If you recognize dignity in the poor, the stranger, the rejected, and even the enemy—

then you are walking the path Jesus taught.

I do not need to conclude that doing so guarantees a particular resurrection, ascension, heaven, or eternal destination.

The path itself is already changing the traveler.

Every act of compassion strengthens the capacity for compassion.

Every act of forgiveness provides another opportunity to loosen the hold of vengeance.

Every time we recognize humanity in someone we were taught to fear, something within us changes.

Perhaps that transformation is itself part of what the teaching was always about.

If you follow the teachings of Buddha—

practicing mindfulness, examining attachment, cultivating compassion, seeking wisdom, and becoming more conscious of suffering—

then that path also changes the traveler.

I do not need to declare that enlightenment is a predetermined destination awaiting everyone who follows it.

I can simply recognize the direction of the path:

away from ignorance and unnecessary suffering, and toward greater awareness, compassion, understanding, and freedom.

Again, the path shapes the traveler.

And if you walk within Sikhism, Islam, Judaism, the Vedic traditions, another spiritual tradition, a humanist philosophy, or simply an examined personal commitment to compassion and truth, the same question remains available:

What is this path helping me become?

Where a teaching encourages humility, compassion, justice, service, wisdom, love, and recognition of the inherent worth of others, practicing those principles gives them greater expression through us.

Where a teaching—or our interpretation of a teaching—produces cruelty, hatred, dehumanization, vengeance, or indifference to suffering, we should have the courage to question where that path is taking us.

No tradition should be exempt from that examination.

Neither should any leader.

Neither should any philosophy.

Neither should we.

The Meaning of a Shared Destiny

This is what I mean when I say:

The path you walk is the destiny you share.

I do not mean that you inherit the literal destiny attributed to the person you follow.

I do not know that.

I do not mean that adopting a religion guarantees its promised afterlife.

I cannot know that either.

And I do not mean that existence assigns us a predetermined destination from which there is no escape.

I believe too deeply in freedom for that.

By destiny, I mean direction of becoming.

When we consistently practice love, we explore what love can make of us.

When we practice compassion, we discover what compassion can become through us.

When we seek understanding, our capacity for understanding can grow.

And when we repeatedly practice hatred, cruelty, vengeance, or contempt, those choices can shape us as well.

None of these directions need be permanent.

The path behind us does not eliminate the paths still available before us.

At every moment in which choice remains possible, another direction remains possible.

Energy, Equilibrium, and the Soul

Throughout this book, I have proposed that all energy exists in relationship to forces acting upon it and tends toward states of balance or equilibrium according to the conditions governing it.

I believe consciousness participates in a similar process, although not necessarily through the same mechanisms that govern classical physical systems.

Our experiences act upon us.

Other people act upon us.

Ideas act upon us.

Fear acts upon us.

Love acts upon us.

And our own choices become forces acting upon what we are becoming.

This is where consciousness differs profoundly from an unconscious physical process.

We can participate.

We can recognize the forces acting upon us and choose how we respond.

I believe the soul—the cohesive I am at the center of conscious experience—is therefore not simply carried toward some predetermined equilibrium.

It participates in its own evolution.

Love does not automatically guarantee some final state of perfection.

Hatred does not condemn a soul forever.

There is no need for either conclusion.

There are choices.

There are consequences.

There is change.

And there is always the possibility of further evolution wherever genuine choice remains.

Perhaps equilibrium for consciousness is not a final destination at all.

Perhaps it is an ongoing relationship between what we have become and what we still have the possibility to become.

The Path Is Manifestation

We are therefore not passive travelers walking roads built entirely by others.

We help create the path as we walk it.

The ideas we accept matter.

The voices we amplify matter.

The people to whom we surrender our judgment matter.

But ultimately the choice remains ours.

A teacher can point.

A religion can instruct.

A philosophy can challenge.

A leader can persuade.

None can make the final choice within us.

That belongs to us.

This is why the teaching attributed to Jesus, “By their fruits you will know them,” carries meaning far beyond religious identity.

Look at what a belief produces.

Look at what happens to the people who embrace it.

Look at how they treat the vulnerable.

Look at how they treat those who disagree.

Look at what happens when they acquire power.

Look at whether their beliefs manifest as compassion or cruelty, humility or arrogance, understanding or contempt.

Then look inward and ask the same questions of yourself.

The fruits are not proof of some predetermined eternal destination.

They are evidence of the direction in which a path is taking us.

The Sacred Moment of Choice

And ultimately, every path returns us to choice.

Before the word is spoken.

Before the hand is raised.

Before we join the crowd.

Before we condemn the stranger.

Before we forgive.

Before we defend another person's dignity.

Before we choose vengeance.

Before we choose compassion.

There is that moment in which more than one possibility still exists.

That is where freedom lives.

We may have followed hatred yesterday and choose compassion today.

We may have lived selfishly and discover generosity.

We may have inherited prejudice and decide that it ends with us.

We may discover that a teacher we trusted was wrong.

We may discover that we ourselves were wrong.

Changing direction is not failure.

It is evidence that we are still capable of evolution.

Choose the Direction, Not the Destination

So choose carefully whom you follow.

Not because they possess your destiny.

They do not.

Choose carefully because their words may become influences upon your choices, and your choices participate in shaping what you become.

Ask of every teacher, leader, philosophy, religion, movement, and belief—including the ideas presented in this book:

Where does this lead me?

Does it expand my capacity for love?

Does it deepen compassion?

Does it encourage understanding?

Does it respect the freedom and dignity of others?

Does it make me more willing to seek truth, even when truth challenges what I already believe?

Or does it require an enemy?

Does it feed upon fear?

Does it excuse cruelty?

Does it ask me to surrender compassion in exchange for belonging?

Does it make another person's suffering easier for me to ignore?

I cannot tell you the final destination of any soul.

I do not know whether there is a final destination at all.

Perhaps existence offers something far greater than destinations.

Perhaps it offers infinite possibility.

Perhaps That Which Is Greater Than Infinite does not demand that consciousness arrive at one predetermined conclusion, but provides the conditions in which consciousness can choose, experience, learn, change, and continue becoming.

If so, the path matters precisely because the destination is not predetermined.

Who you follow influences what you practice.

What you practice influences what you become.

What you become influences the choices available to you next.

And each new choice creates another possibility.

So walk consciously.

Question even those you admire.

Follow no one so completely that you surrender your own capacity to choose.

Choose love because you wish to discover what love can become through you.

Choose compassion because you wish to become more compassionate.

Choose understanding because there will always be more to understand.

And when you discover that the path beneath your feet no longer leads toward what you believe is true, have the courage to choose another.

The path you walk does not reveal a destiny already written.

It reveals the direction in which you are becoming.