BORN TO DO

We say, "I was born to paint pictures," or "I was born to heal the sick," or "I was born to run the fifty-yard dash," but in fact we were born to do only one thing, to awaken spiritually.  Everything else is irrelevant.

But then is this fair?  Of course, we are born with natural abilities and interests, which we go on to have nurtured and developed over the years, to where what we do in life feels like what our lives have truly been for, what feels like our destiny. 

Yet, this is our destiny only partially.  There is more to us than the fifty-yard dash.  It is perhaps best to see what we do in life as what it ultimately may prove to be, a means to the larger end of spiritual liberation. 

This is to say, we may well not have been able to realize awakening had we not painted all those pictures, healed all those people, and dashed all those times around the track.