Endigar 880
From Courage to Change of May 19:
In the past, whenever anyone disagreed with me, I took it as a personal failure. If only I had found the right words, clothes, opinions, school, job, home, friends, or lover, I could have belonged.
And How did others appear to me? Happy and self-confident – they seemed to have all the answers. But because of the front I put on, people thought I was easygoing and happy, too. If they could be so mistaken about the way I really felt, couldn’t I have a few wrong ideas about their feelings? After all, I couldn’t be the only one who put on a good act. Wasn’t I comparing my insides to other people’s outsides?
In Al-Anon I am learning that someone can disagreee with me without either of us being wrong. When no one has to be wrong, we can all fit in, just as we are.
Today’s Reminder
If I compare, I lose. Maybe I’ll come out feeling better than somebody this time, but next time I’m bound to feel worse. The best way to stop feeling that I’m not good enough is to stop comparing altogether.
“Little by little, we come to realize at our meetings that much of our discomfort comes from our attitudes.”
~ Understanding Ourselves and Alcoholism
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Can I create a better image of myself. Or rather, can I create a better self. I know that when I would run in my past military training, I would spot distant but visible milestones to move toward. I knew that it wasn’t the end. But that milestone got me closer to my destination.
“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48
“We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection” Alcoholics Anonymous
Is there a way to reconcil these two ideas? Is it possible to pursue progress toward perfection? Yet both of these statements seem to hold a mutually exculisive stanse against one another. It resists even a paradoxical explanation.
If I don’t look to other’s external display to compare my internal reality to, then shouldn’t I compare my internal reality in the present with my internal reality in an imagined future? No matter how I try to image myself as a perfected being, I strongly suspect that gaining a grasp on that reality is out of my reach in this limited mortal form.
Growing up in the Southeast US it was known by everyone that the only perfect person was Jesus Christ. He should be the only source of emulation. Yet would that mean that unless his followers sold their property, wandered about in heretical resistance and apocolyptic proclaimations, seeking a way of martyed existence, that they are refusing to seek the Father’s perfection as Christ did. The countering thought I have heard to such “extreme” ideas of perfection is that Christ had a different and very specific mission.
Am I stuck with the same dilema that comparing myself to anyone brings me? I am comparing my insides to Christ’s celebrity expression, his outside expression.
What if the Higher Power planted a Godshard in each and everyone of us? What if the Messiah’s perfection came from His ability to percieve His particular Godshard and live it out? What if My perfected Godshard requires Me to only compare me with me until I find Me? Maybe these are the milestones in the marathon of this earthly life. To seek perfection is to seek the Godshard. To seek progress is to look for a life that allows It to energize. Maybe progress and perfection are not mutually exclusive after all.
Daily Reprieve 
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