Everyone is on a “spiritual path.” Whether you know it or not, you are on a spiritual path. My sense is that it doesn’t matter whether people are consciously aware of their spiritual paths because this is a “fail-safe” universe. You don’t have to do anything special to be on your spiritual path. I am not, of course, the first to have that thought. In 1819 the poet, John Keats, wrote a letter to his brother George and sister Georgiana saying
Call the world if you Please “The vale of Soul-making”. Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say ‘Soul making’ Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence—There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions-but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.
I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to -read, the Soul made from that School and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?
Keats juxtaposed the world as a vale of soul-making with the more common belief, that life is a vale of tears. We are not “here” just to suffer. We are here to learn. In so saying, Keats is presupposing that we are all on a path of teaching our intelligences what is means to be a “soul.”
The idea of “soul-making” is more closely associated with spirituality than with religion. Religions tend to assume that you have an eternal soul that will be rewarded or punished following the death of the body: Up to Heaven or Down to Hell. Many spiritual practices include the concept of reincarnation because teaching an intelligence how to be a soul requires more than one lifetime. It also presupposes the idea that individuals do not need to be consciously aware of where they are on the path at any given time. Every experience counts, and they will eventually arrive at the final destination of “completeness” regardless of what they experienced in their various lifetimes.
From this perspective, what you are experiencing in any given lifetime is not especially important. What you are learning, however, is very important, even though you may not be fully aware of the lessons until you are ready for your next incarnation. I suspect that most of us now living have already done it all: We’ve been Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Asians, a variety of native peoples, rich, poor, and in between. We’ve doubtless experienced numerous wars and experienced both male and female incarnations. My sense is that life is not a “one and done” proposition, but an ongoing learning experience.
Also from this perspective, Gary Zukav’s idea of spiritual partnership makes perfect sense to me. Early in our relationship, Debra and I started thinking of each other as “spiritual partners.” That doesn’t mean that the relationship has been easy. As Debra mentioned in her article this month, we have had fights so bad we gave them names. In addition to “Parking Lot Number One,” we had a nasty “My Office” argument. We have also had all sorts of arguments we didn’t give names, including one about where I should park my car. Even so, we persisted and have continued trying to gain perspective. Along the way, we have had memories of past lives, either spontaneous recollections or as part of a process of past life regressions. It is hard to say, of course, whether past lives are “real” or whether they are metaphorical constructs created to help provide perspective on one’s current life. Whether real or metaphorical, however, the most important thing is to pay attention to the lesson being presented.
Debra and I have elected to have a conscious spiritual partnership, but in actuality everyone we meet is serving as spiritual partners, regardless of whether they know it or not—and regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. The more aware we are, however, the faster and more coherent our spiritual progress becomes. Whether all this makes perfect sense to you, or whether you think it is the raving of a mad man probably depends on where you are on your own spiritual path at the time of reading. Either way, you are right where you belong at the time, and either way you can’t avoid taking what is for you the next right step.