Which is the right path?

Recently, I came upon a reading from a small book I purchased years ago, entitled The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD. One of my favourite chapters in the book is Chapter 8: The Tao as Path with Heart. The author writes about how we can be distracted by so many outer confusing messages or directions, drowning out our capacity to listen and to connect with our “still point” and “inner path.” It can be confusing to be told that all paths actually lead to “nowhere;” yet in a spiritual sense, this is true. She shares that in The Teachings of Don Juan, Don Juan’s advice to Carlos Castaneda was as follows:

“Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path: If you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or leave it must be free of fear or ambition… look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.”

And the important question to ask oneself is “Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it’s of no use.”