Monday, May 22, 2006

The Place of God in the Search for Excellence & Perfection

Saturday, 20 May 2006 - 08:09am

I woke up this morning without any intention to compose a post for the blog. I launched my Bible (e-Sword) and read my morning devotion and this quote from Hoekstra’s daily devotion caught my attention:

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, which the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

Let me digress a little and set the whole premise upon which the title of my blog is based: Excellence of the type I dream of can only be experienced by a person that pursues self mastery. Self mastery is to me the key to unlocking all the potential (or as much of it as we humanly can) that is buried within us and stifled through years upon years of social conditioning and compliance. I will explore in depth the issue of what Self Mastery means to me in a latter blog but suffice it to say for now that without it, we forever are computers running programmes written by others.

So the treasure mentioned in the above verse to me is that quality of sublime excellence and effortless perfection and the earthen vessels refer to us. I believe that I was created by a Supreme Being (no I didn’t evolve from some lower life-form) and I also believe in the fact that as a created being, excellence & effortless perfection can only come when I am living the purpose for which I was made. Now, the purpose of a creation can only be found in one place – the mind of its maker – in my case God. So to live a life of excellence and effortless perfection, I must be living according to the purpose for which I was made and that purpose is something I must find. I don’t believe in the generic purpose of ‘I am here to worship God’ – If God wanted people just to worship Him, he would have created more angels. I believe that as God formed me uniquely from every other person, He had some specific mission in mind for me. Our world can be perfect if everyone fulfils his own purpose for being here – in doing so and letting the Wonder of God’s creation shine – we will be worshiping him in truth, with out whole being, with our lives. It is in the process of self mastery that we get to know and pursue that unique purpose for which we were created and unless God were to choose you and reveal it to you in a vision one night while you are sleeping, it takes a long process with many false turns. Once you find that purpose – the journey of self mastery continues – now on the path that has been revealed to you. Self mastery is to me a journey to the ‘inside’ of us and I believe that is where God is to be found, until we find God in our hearts/spirits, we won’t be able to see him in the next person, in the blades of grass, in the river or the situation that begs for our intervention.

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