# The Path to Ultimate Good The path toward ultimate good is not a road that stretches before us with clear signposts. It winds through the territory of our own becoming, through the forest of choices we make each day, sometimes blindly, sometimes with what we imagine to be sight. We believe we are moving forward, but perhaps we are only circling, returning again and again to the same thresholds of understanding. What is this good we pursue? Is it happiness—that flutter in the chest, that momentary lightness? Or is it something harder, more austere: the alignment of our will with what we perceive to be just, true, necessary? The ancients spoke of virtue as the path. The moderns speak of authenticity, of self-actualization. Yet in both, there is an assumption that we know ourselves well enough to know what is good for us. But do we? The self is a stranger even to itself. We contain multitudes—desires that contradict, values that clash in the dark. The path to good, then, may not be a path of certainty but of honest reckoning. It is the daily work of noticing where we are drawn toward diminishment, toward cruelty, toward the small tyrannies we exercise over ourselves and others—and choosing, however feebly, however imperfectly, otherwise. The good is not a destination. It is perhaps the integrity of the seeking itself. It is the refusal to settle for comfort at the expense of truth. It is the slow, unglamorous discipline of becoming who we say we wish to be, knowing that the gap between intention and action may never close entirely—and beginning again, each morning, to narrow it.

Often I try to understand what your love for me is. When I think of those I love, what I desire for them, I attempt by that measure to grasp what you desire for me. And what you desire for me, I see it plainly. You desire my true good. My food, my clothing, my ease and comfort—these you want only as means to something larger. I have come to see that these are not my true good at all. My true good, I perceive, lies in communion with you, in meeting you face to face.

Among all the things you have given me, the greatest I recognize to be the knowledge of you. That you are truth, that you are wisdom, that you are eternal—that you are my very breath, the foundation and refuge of my life, the only one, the whole and undivided, full of love and pristine purity—that you have allowed me to know this: this is your supreme gift. To see you, to love you, to join myself willingly with you—this is my highest good. And that you are bestowing upon me this highest good, and will give it yet more fully, more truly and completely—in this lies your love for me.

I often wonder: what is the difference between me and any other creature? They eat for six days, they play, they die. Am I not also just an animal like them? What greater love could you have for me? You answer me again and again, showing me that as an animal I am far greater than they are; and beyond that, you have given me something you have never given them.

You have revealed yourself to me, and in revealing yourself, you ask for my love, my allegiance. Through this spiritual communion with you, I have ceased to be merely an animal—I have become a self. Yet I do not truly know this bond, nor do I hold it fast. My self, though it awakens, does not fully awaken. I cannot practice the yoga of love and devotion with you. I cannot move forward toward the attainment of my true good.

Just now you told me that your love for me means you desire my highest good. But how can I believe it when I see how far I have fallen from my true good? I blame you—yet you do not accept the blame. You say, "I show you the path to your highest good again and again; it is you who do not walk it. What can I do?" That too is true! This is not a matter of being led about by the nose. This is the kingdom of freedom. You desire love that is free, service that is freely given.

You will not force me into love. There would be no meaning in it if you did. So let me keep my eyes on you, let me give you my heart, let your will become my will. You have shown me my highest good, and now that this good rests in my own hands, I will not thrust it away with my feet.