Be a little more compassionate
Than needed.
– Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 26, Agni Press, 2002
What keeps us from attaining perfection?
What keeps us from attaining perfection? It is our self-indulgence. In self-indulgence we feel that there is something absolutely necessary in our life, and that is pleasure. When we cry for pleasure and want to remain in pleasure, to become pleasure itself, perfection is a far cry. But when we cry for divine joy, delight, bliss, at that time, we enter into the ocean of perfection. If we cry continuously, we learn how to swim in the sea of perfection.
When we have an inner cry for delight, we jump into the sea of perfection. This is the first step. But when this inner cry becomes constant, we swim in the sea of perfection. When we keep joy and delight as our goal, perfection automatically grows in us, and slowly we become the sea of perfection. But what now keeps us from perfection is our fondness for pleasure-life and our indulgence in pleasure-life.
/Will the process of striving for perfection ever come to an end?/
It will never come to an end, because God Himself does not want to end His Cosmic Game. Today, what we feel is the ultimate perfection, tomorrow will be just the starting point of our journey. This is because our consciousness is evolving. When our consciousness evolves to a higher level, our sense of perfection simultaneously goes higher. Let us take perfection as a achievement. When we are a kindergarten student, our achievement of perfection may be very good for that stage. But from kindergarten we go to primary school, high school, college and university. When we get our Master's degree in perfection, our achievement is much greater than what it was when we were in kindergarten. Even then we may feel that there are many more things that we have to learn. Then we will study further and enlarge our consciousness still more.
If the child thinks that the Master's degree will always be unattainable, then he is mistaken. The spiritual ladder has quite a few rungs. If we do not step onto the first rung, then how can we climb up to the ultimate rung of the ladder?