The Best Greeting and Farewell

When I die, if the gods approve, 

everyone in my address book 

will receive this note:

Dear One,

I’ve left the earth, and with such gratitude.  

I once attempted to define the best possible greeting one might offer to another.  My answer was, “What are you learning about yourself?”  That’s because I find life on earth to be nothing but a mirror showing us ourselves.  Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned in this incarnation is that how we define our world actually creates our world.  We are so powerful.  My favorite candidate for our greatest form of ignorance is the belief that other people and outside circumstances are responsible how we feel.  The second most important thing I’ve learned is this statement of my guru, Paramahansa Yogananda: “All paths are paths to God, because, ultimately, there is nowhere else for the soul to go.”   

Then I attempted to define the best possible farewell.  Which to me means a statement reflecting the fact that everyone I’ve ever encountered in any form whatsoever has contributed to my self-understanding.  This understanding is rooted in the experience that “Manifestation of God” is our primary identity.  I welcome any opportunity to honor not just them but everyone I’ll ever meet in this or any life.  How gracious I am in a given moment doesn’t matter.  Every breath has been and will forever be exactly the same: an opportunity to grow my capacity to love.  The purpose of life being to realize ever-more consciously that love is all I am––because it’s all any of us is.  Which is why I offer you, dear one, my best farewell, “I hope we meet again.”

SXR