I'd like to say that what pushes me along the path toward spiritual development is my concern for others, my wish to worship the Divine for Its sake, or my deeply ethical commitments. Sadly, none of these loftier ideals constitute my spiritual spine.
What motivates me to try to be a better person is the following. In case the Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists (and some Christians like Edgar Cayce) are right about reincarnation, then I am trying to do the right thing in this lifetime because: I'm not coming back!
Don't get me wrong, I've spent decades in formal study; so, I love learning, but this whole human-to-human relationship stuff is hard work. I'm old & I'm tired. I'd like to be done. I don't want to keep coming back to get it right, to try to finally learn the very same lesson my thick, rigid, ego wouldn't learn the first ten thousand go arounds.
Intellectually, the concept of reincarnation makes sense to me: it takes a long time to grow closer to God, to let go of all resistances and live in conscious awareness of the Divine. But let's face it, I still haven't learned to eat healthy let alone come close to understanding the most important purpose of life.
While reincarnation seems sound, I prefer the concept of grace. Given our innate flaws, how could any of us ever hope to finally learn anything about Life all by ourselves? How could we ever live enough lifetimes to repay the debts of our errors? We can't. And so, if Spirit is biased towards the good, then there must be grace: the chance to start anew even if we never merit it.
Yet even with this insight into grace, what keeps the fire to my toes is reminding myself that I no longer want to be stuck spinning my wheels in the spiritual equivalent of preschool. I want to graduate, not to a higher level, but to THE final level. I do NOT want to repeat a grade!
And as "punishment" for these thoughts, I'll probably have to come back a few more times until I learn to accept the whole, slow process . . . with grace.
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