Be Ye Perfect

 We live in a messy, imperfect and out of balance world and we are messy, imperfect and out of balance people. However, we are shooting for the stars. Jesus said, "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect", but he was the most forgiving and compassionate of souls. He was demanding and exacting, and yet he understood human weakness and frailty like no other. We have to have the highest possible standards because that is the truth, the only truth, that will set us free. At the same time, we must accept that we and others will fall short. If we aim for anything less than perfect we will never escape this world, but because we are in this world we can never be perfect. We will always fail. Until by the grace of God we succeed.

Any spiritual path that is valid is extreme in its demands. A teaching that reflects divine reality must be absolutist and perfectionist because those are the qualities of divine reality. In this relative world of imperfection these standards can never be met but we should always strive to attain them and not excuse or justify failure. A real teacher demands the best from his pupils but knows they will fall short. That doesn't matter as long as they keep the vision before them. 

Here is the problem. We must free our soul of sin but we can never actually do that. What we can do is set our hand to the plough and keep trying. That shows our heart is rightly oriented which is the important thing. If we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to God then he will wash the soul clean. We cannot do that ourselves but we can offer ourselves to him and open our heart and mind to his purifying love. That means love on our part. It is love that overcomes sin, the love that has the willingness to sacrifice self at its root. Nothing else will do. Not knowledge, not wisdom not higher consciousness, whatever that is. And "if you love me, you keep my commandments."