Monday, September 17, 2012

The not-Ideal

Perfection is not the perceived ideal.

Many many years ago, I wrote Donald Michael Kraig, and asked him about something in Modern Magick. I asked him if the magickal philosophy was about striving for balance, did I have to do evil to balance the good? I will only quote part of his reply, "The opposite of cat is not dog but not-cat." This was a new way of thinking for me.

Similarly, perfection is not the ideal. Perfection is not-ideal. Flowers unfold in a pot or wild place. When we see them we do not place a moral judgement upon petals. We see life, beauty, the perfection in the imperfection.

So too should we see ourselves. We must avoid tarnishing the unfolding spirit with moral judgement. Would you do that again, now, after all you have been through? "No," you say and we claim that is good. Good has nothing to do with it. Our current "no" may be growth but we cannot say our younger selves, even if that younger self is only an hour our junior, was bad, good or anything else. We cannot sully ourselves with the ideas of good, bad or any other form of moral judgment. Our younger selves were the process of unfolding into what we are now.

The unfolding is continuous, unlike a flower, whose life-cycle we can observe. Our unfolding is over lifetimes. We observe only this one as we cannot see the others. So let us keep the focus in the relative here and now.

We are born perfect. As proof of this, I point to your reaction to your newborn. Did you look at say, "Oh what an evil bastard! He is destined for hell," of course not. You were flooded with love beyond all reason. Overwhelming love is the response to seeing that which is perfect.

Our immortal souls created within us a divine personality, patterned before birth. As proof of this, I offer your children. How soon could you tell the second's personality was so different from the first? How soon did you see likes, dislikes that are not explained by what you have exposed them to or taught them?

These personalities have experiences and do things because they are designed to do them to learn, to grow to manifest the divine in every word, thought and action. We do it all the time. This perfection keeps flowing through us. The perfection moves through us, causing our unfolding in the perfect beauty of the non-ideal. We unfold and unfold and unfold continuously.

We are a piece of the divine just like ever spider, bird and flower. To devalue yourself is to misunderstand your perfection but that is okay. This is perfect too. You will grow to understand and live in the perfect you are. You are growing perfectly at this very moment. You cannot help but to be on the journey.

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

i love this! it got me! thank you.

Scott Stenwick said...

As I see it the balance we strive for in magick is between self and others. Working for your own benefit at the expense of others is the sort of behavior that generally is described as evil, whereas traditionally working for the benefit of others at the expense of yourself has been similarly cast as virtuous.

In reality, though, both of these are dysfunctional. The enlightened perspective is to work for the benefit of all sentient beings including yourself. So actions that harm yourself are just as problematic as those that harm others, and similarly it's a positive and beneficial thing to work for your own benefit so long as you don't harm others in the process.

Of course, just as in the case of interpreting "harm none" in the Wiccan rede the concept of harm versus benefit is a whole other discussion. So is how one should define "sentient being." But hey, nobody ever said maintaining an enlightened perspective was easy!