The Ideal

The road to “perdition” is traveled one small step at a time, and if we do not know exactly where we are along that path the next small step may well get us there. We often excuse our misbehavior believing it is a relatively small offense but it is the succession of small offenses that will take us where we do not wish to be. Few of us would leap into chaos but we arrive there by a progression of inches and not yards. 

When buffeted by the winds of change, how then do we keep our direction true?  What can we use to both guide our journey and keep our activity productive? The answer is an ideal, one so overarching that it will guide us day by day. Our ideal should be as a fixed star that always shows us the way but not so small at to become a goal. If we set our ideal and every day is lived in that direction it is not likely we will lose our way. If then our activities each express a portion of our ideal we will be living our ideal from one moment to the next. A good example of this might be a dedication to excellence. This does not mean we must be excellent but that we should pursue excellence in all that we do. Only in our pursuit do we truly experience our ideal in the most intimate way. 

We may fail to achieve our goals but in pursuit of our ideal there are no failures. We are either dedicated to our ideal or we are not; what we are doing is either a portion of our ideal or it is not and there is no middle ground. We will find if a dedication to excellence is our ideal, as a result of our constant pursuit, our activities will be imbued with excellence. 

A body racked with illness finds relief one step at a time. Where healing becomes our goal, that vessel into which we pour out our dedication to excellence, our life is spent in pursuit of healing. In such a life we not only express our ideal with regard to our self but we may also become a force for healing in our brothers and sisters. If we are paying attention to our life style we may begin traveling the road to health. Likewise, as a result of our behavior we may awaken that which is healing in all those lives we touch. In this way, with healing as our goal, by expressing one single ideal we may heal our self and the world around us. 

When we search for results we are easily discouraged because our ideal must be larger than results. Where our dedication is to the ideal itself, we cannot fail, we cannot be discouraged and our healing will come in pursuit of that which is divine in each of us. Every act becomes a success and eventually, one small step by one small step we become our ideal.