Snow Melt

Day 2 Journal Challenge: Perfection Through a Broken Mirror

Perfectionism: “We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves the way we are, and why we don't accept others the way they are.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

         We don't love ourselves because we don't know who we are. We, human beings, are dual natured creatures. that is we have a material or physical body and a spirit or soul. Our physical bodies are part of the animal (for lack of a better word) creation and our souls are gifts from the Divine Creator or God. The soul or spiritual body is the image of God, which isn't a physical image because God is a spirit. Our souls contain all the attributes of God.

         We don't see these spiritual attributes in ourselves because we're looking at perfection through a broken mirror. We see the physical part of ourselves and we see our limitations, we don't see the attributes of God that our souls contain. These spiritual attributes, like our physical attribute, have to be exercised and practiced to develop. A baby can't learn to walk unless if we carry it around all the time. To walk a child must be allowed to crawl, pull itself up on furniture, and then fall down several times before acquiring the skill.

         A child eventually learns to walk, even after falling down numerous times. Spiritual attributes have to be practiced, but practicing them doesn't always come as naturally as learning to walk. Some spiritual attributes appear to come more naturally to some individuals then others. For instance, some individual are more loving then others, some are more creative then others. However, we still need to consciously develop these attributes through out our live or they atrophy.

         We see perfection through a broken mirror, we don't see the image of God within our souls we see the image of matter. We focus on the lack, reject ourselves and refuse to love ourselves because we aren't perfect. Perfection is the ideal, but it's a spiritual perfection that is our goal not a material or physical perfection. In order, to develop our spiritual attributes we have to exercise them, which means sometimes we're going to fall down. When we fall down, we have to get up and try again and again and again.