On Personal Growth (Part One)

(From my personal journal)

All of humanity is composed of contradiction and opposition,

from the global community all the way down to the individual

man, woman, boy and girl. We each, as individuals, contain

within us, light and dark, truth and falsity, good and not-good.

I do not say "evil," because in Truth, there is no evil; what we

may call "evil" is in Reality a lesson in Truth, that Truth being,

"This is not Love." Therein is another contradiction within us:

Love and not-love.

When our actions and attitudes arise from the area of

not-love, we are conflicted. Acting from not-love gives

rise to selfishness, anger, jealousy, envy, and greed,

among other things. But when we act from Love, those

things from not-love tend to fall by the wayside; they

lose their power to corrupt our lives. The more we

empower Love within us, the less we have of not-love,

and the more we are able to act and feel in harmony

with the rest of Creation. As we empower Love, we

also empower Light, Truth, and Good.

We need to re-define "good." Let us use as an example,

the starting premise of this lesson: contradiction and

opposition. Most of us would call this "bad" or "not good."

On the level of the individual, this is not correct. Dealing

with the contradiction and opposition within ourselves

allows us to define ourselves, for ourselves. And in

reaching those definitions, we enable ourselves to change,

to evolve: "This is what I am; but it is not what I want to be.

That is what I want to be."

This is a necessary first step toward awakening the higher

power within each of us. Once we reach that starting point,

we can begin to alter those parts of ourselves - our actions

and our failures to act; our attitudes, wants and desires,

our false pride - and start to become who and what we

want to be. This is not easy at first; and for some, it will

seem next to impossible.

Why? Because we are comfortable with the way we are,

even when we don't like it. Yet another contradiction.

We're used to ourselves, and to change even the smallest

thing about ourselves takes us out of that place we've

come to call our "comfort zones." But we must leave

those zones in order to become that which we desire

to be.

Should we fail (or decline) to do this, we will not only

keep disliking ourselves; we will also re-inforce that

dislike. We may even come to hate ourselves and

believe we are "evil." And our society and especially

our religions make it easy to see ourselves in this

way. "All have sinned," the Christian Bible says.

Sin, of course, isdefined as "evil." Ergo, we are ALL

evil. Or so they say. Or they'll "flip the script" and

say "We're the good guys, and anyone who doesn't

believe as we do, is evil."

Yet that's a different topic, perhaps for another

entry. Suffice it to say, for now, that this is an

erroneous concept.

(Continued...)