Training in Compassion 14: Whatever You Meet Is the Path

Whatever happens, good or bad, make it part of your spiritual practice – because everything IS part of the path. Even straying from the path is part of the path – just see it that way.

If you've followed the earlier trainings, or even some of them, then you're beginning to see that whatever you meet is the path. In spiritual practice, which is our life, there are no breaks. We human beings are always doing spiritual practice, whether we know it or not.

Once you begin practice -- or even just begin thinking about your practice -- you always keep going, because everything is practice, even the days or the weeks or the months or decades or entire lifetimes when you forgot to meditate, forgot to pay attention to whatever intentional spiritual practice you have. Even then you're still practicing, because it's impossible to be lost. You are constantly being found whether you know it or not.

To practice the slogan, "Whatever You Meet is the Path," repeat it to yourself again and again. Know that no matter what is going on, no matter how distracted you think you are, no matter how much you feel like a terribly lazy individual who has completely lost track of her good intentions and is now hopelessly astray -- even then you are on the path and you have the responsibility and the ability to take all of that negative chatter and turn it into the path.

Whatever you meet is the path.

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