What are YOU Doing?

“You may have lived for 30 years, or you may have lived for 80.  Regardless, it is time to ask yourself:  What have you really done with your life? … Avoid dismissing the question by believing that you’re going to fulfill your Life Purpose later in this life or more fully in the next one.  As far as your current existence is concerned, there is only this lifetime — there is only this present moment — there is only what you have done intertwined with what you are currently doing.

You’ve been given a truly vast treasure:  your conscious awareness — this extraordinary thing we call Life … And in this Life there is sorrow, pleasure, and loneliness — as well as guilt, shame and all the tortures of fear.  And yet there is also the amazingness of raw Beauty, the Joy of pure Love and the Power of unfettered Choice. You’ve have been given them all and you have experienced them all — both the pains and pleasures; the challenges and the blessings.  And still the question remains:  what have you Done with it all?

Please consider this question earnestly and consider it NOW.  It’s very important to ask this question, and even more important to courageously answer it.  And when you do so, answer not to the speaker of that query, but rather answer to your Self.  A glorious life was given to you, the most precious thing in the world, and yet what have you really done?  Have you distorted it with your preconceptions, tortured it with your arrogance, and torn it to pieces with your self-centeredness? … Of course you have (we all have from time to time)!  You’ve succumbed to your fears of Love and have divided that which is innately Whole … As a consequence, either via active participation or passive apathy, you have enabled the brutalities of violence, destruction and hatred to continue to wrack this planet with pain.

Where was your love when you were challenged by anger?

Where was your forgiveness when you were wronged by the confused?

Where was your compassion when you witnessed the suffering of the fearful?

So when you sit down right now and earnestly ask yourself what you have truly Done with your life — if you are at all sensitive, you’ll have tears in your eyes. And yet, understand that you’ll shed those tears because you’re thinking of the past and what you might have done.  Tears are self pity — so don’t shed tears!

No, when you ask that question, don’t go to bed with sorrow because you have ‘done nothing’ and your life has been a ‘waste’ …  For the question is asked in this present moment, and its answer lies only in the present as well — not in tomorrow or in the past.  This means that you are only asking yourself what you are doing NOW with this priceless Life that has been given you …

Now, not tomorrow.

And when you answer this question honestly — with your actions more than your thoughts; with your Soul more than your self-centered ego, then you will rediscover what Love truly is.  And what you have not done with your life up to now, as well as what you are planning for your future, will no longer matter …

Indeed, the only important question in Life will then become:  What am I DOING Now? —

… and you will go forth and find the deep-seated Peace that only comes from acting accordingly.”

~ inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti