Perfection

We are all perfect the way we are. When we came into this life we were perfect. Nevertheless, we can use a little improvement. Things happened. We happened. Our original perfection became muddied with unnecessary spiritual and social impurities.

At birth we each have tremendous spiritual capabilities. Every human has the competency to see their Creator. This is especially true if they are atheists, agnostics or others who do not totally believe in anything they cannot see, touch, feel, taste or smell. Everyone has an inscrutable sixth sense. It is the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense gives us those unseen and untouchable abilities we require to be successful through each minute as going human concerns. It’s the ineffable facility to breathe, eat and drink.

Part of what impedes us from seeing how perfect we are and how much further we may proceed in our ongoing quest for further perfection is that we lose sight of the deep abiding love others have for us. Our receiver is broken. We forget about the thing that makes us able to see in our minds and in our hearts that all around us there are persons who love us. One is over there. Another is across town or across the country. There may even be persons on a different continent who we aren’t aware of who love us, but they do. One or more persons may have crossed our path for a minute or a year. They still know who we are. In spite of what we think about ourselves, they think we’re loveable. They see that spark of the divine within us.

We have the possibility of taking our perfection and our striving to be better to a further level. Waiting for us is the option to live in the process that the Greeks call theosis and is known in English as divinization. When we strive to be divinized, we strive to be more like God. We willingly give away the smaller things, the less fulfilling ways of living that we humans have been told we are supposed to want. We drop the modes in which we have been told to live our lives and the things we are supposed to want to be more. To have more.

If we have the courage to strive to be more, to be better, we are faced with a challenging idea. We are striving to achieve mystical union and communion through a process known as theosis or divinization. This is not something most Westerners find palatable. Among the various times I broached this concept, this way of living, with others, was with another man who became red in the face and furious with me on the spot. He called me a heretic and told me I was going to hell. That is a typical American response. I found it to be an amusing encounter. It was a reminder that we all have our own paths to our own personal perfection. Also, it was a clarion call to the reality that, as a Westerner who has spent time among the Eastern Orthodox and studied their theology, as well as the wonders of their ways of approaching life as opposed to those of us raised in Western Christianity, my experiences are hugely different from the average American.

If this makes me a heretic, I gladly embrace this epithet.

In this present, in the surprises of me becoming more perfect alongside you, I find the intersection of my Creator and myself. This is my reality. When my spiritual eyes are open I am able to see the richness of life. When I permit myself to live in a moment of clarity, I am able to see whether I am improving. Sometimes there is more improvement in my life than at other times. Sometimes I am stuck. Being stuck is okay, too, because in spite of my impatience it passes.

The spirituality of perfection is light. The spirituality of taking a breath of air is light. We breathe spirituality deeply into our lungs. We do it in the lightness of Spirt.

We maintain ourselves. We make needed repairs to our souls. It’s not like we’re out to recreate the world. Why would we when there is so much in our personal reality? The possibilities yet to be in our lives give us that extra bit of energy we need to improve our lives. To bring us closer to the perfection we seek.

If the truth is told, I am pretty certain that every day that I have drawn breath on this earth I have made it very clear to my Creator that this is not enough. Life is not enough.

I want more.

I want bigger.

I want better and for my better to be more and bigger than at any time ever before.

Why would we not demand this? Most of us go through lives that are not exactly peaches and cream. There is no reason to assume that we aren’t worthy of a life today that couldn’t have existed yesterday.

We’re worth it.

If you’re not in the mood to be shy, do what I do. If you realize what an extraordinary act of creation you are, then tell your Creator exactly that. Trust me, after years and years of hearing it from me and my friends, the Creator’s shoulders are big enough for each of you to say the same. It’s an act of saying thanks.

Tell Your Creator that you are an astonishing, extraordinary perfectly perfect artwork of creation. It’s time to add to your bowl of peaches and cream.