Life is given

Being takes the form of giving.

We are most fully in existence, most fully present, most fully ourselves, most authentic, pure and real, when we are giving. This is perhaps why we experience life as most meaningful, purposeful, and worthwhile when we are kind and generous with each other. 

Nothing true or lasting about what we are, concerns what we have, what we had or might some day have. To ‘have’ means to be formed by what we at some earlier time did not have. It is to be determined by something we have acquired, which by something we in some future moment will no longer have, either because we consume it, lose it, destroy it, or simply because it withers away.  

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Check yourself!

To be alive is to navigate a million thoughts, feelings and sensations. To live is to awaken to consciousness in medias res, cast into existence with no understanding of how we got here, or where we are to go. We do not live, we discover ourselves as living.

What is living? What is alive? In the Bhakti tradition, a living being is called a jīva, a ‘living entity’. The word ‘jīva’ says not one, but two things. We are, and we are alive. What is the difference between being and being alive?

Spiritual practice means following a path from moment to moment, from step to step, from experience to experience, from breath to breath. Every instant presents us with a crossroad, a choice, an intention. Where is my head? Where is my heart? What are my intentions? What are my circumstances?

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