Thoughts of Perfection

When sensitive souls try to find their way to God, they sometimes try too hard to love Him just right. By this I mean only that, sometimes, the desire to know God and do good is so strong that it clouds the soul with thoughts of perfection–and the soul, seeing this image of the perfect, may interpret its task on Earth to reflect this perfection in everything it does. 

Now, this is not a bad thing, at its core–the desire to reflect God is part of our mission as children of Christ. But when the mind comes in and dialogues with the soul–it can sometimes misappropriate this sense of “perfection” for its own ends, and that’s where the trouble begins. 

For during our time on this Earth, when our bodies are struggling to keep up with our souls, it is impossible that we should ever be perfect in all we do. We can try our best to make our efforts match the intensity of our desire to do right–but the striving and the labor will sooner or later tire us out, and we will be forced to take our rest. 

So when you feel a growing sense of inner strain–the sensation that you are somehow at odds with yourself–you are measuring yourself against a standard that exists independently of who you really are. For when we act in alignment with our innermost self, we experience a harmony that permeates everything we do. To live in a state of self-fracture and distress: this is the sign of trying to be too many things at once, or trying to be something that God has not ordained us to be. It is only natural that, for a person who seeks to be good, the desire to move beyond one’s limits is keenly felt; but when this desire leads to dissatisfaction with the self, and an inner refrain of worry, something has gone awry. 

God, we forget, is simple and kind, and is happy when our hearts are fixed on Him. He sees the intentions of the heart, and cares less about the results than the spirit that animates them. If you focus on doing your work with an attentive spirit, you can trust that He is working through you. Sometimes, this means being patient with yourself and choosing to believe that the invisible work is more important right now than the visible work–in other words, that the things God is accomplishing in your soul hold more weight than observable metrics like productivity or promotion at the office. 

This is not to say that we shouldn’t care about such outward things. Of course, when we’re tasked with doing a job, we want to do it well, and we wish to stretch our talents so that they bear good fruit. But the thing to remember is simply this: “first clean the inside of the cup … and then the outside also will be clean.” When we take care of the inner things, and develop peace in our souls, our outer lives will sooner or later catch up and begin to reveal the splendor of all the goodness that has been welling up within.

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