Take care of your identity
We inherit an identity like a passport or the beliefs of our parents. We also build an identity, one that evolves over time as we meet new people and read about them. Sometimes, we end up stopping to think about this identity and a grey area is created from which we have difficulty defining ourselves.
The importance of identity
Identity is not just a label that we stick on our foreheads, it is a framework and a fuel that guides us in our choices. Identity helps us to make good decisions without having to think about them. It’s like axioms in mathematics, we don’t need to prove them again. We are obliged to have certain certainties if we want to move forward, it is like in math, otherwise we cannot demonstrate anything, do anything. Even if identity is rigid to a certain extent, it has not always been so. It is like the robust oak tree, in its youth it is only a young shoot, flexible and fragile at the same time. Over time, it has grown stronger and decided to grow in one direction and thus neglecting other directions in which it could have grown, it has made a choice.
The framework gives freedom
Freedom is not the absence of constraint. Without limits, there is no morality, there is no humanity. The limit offers us a reference point that helps us to discipline ourselves and it is from discipline that freedom is born. Whoever is not master of himself is slave of his passions. To live without a framework exposes us to a life invaded by uncontrollable passions that push us in all directions as the raft adrift is subject to the elements. The frame is at the same time the drift, the rudder and the sail. These three elements allow us to set a course and stay on it.
Identity takes time
You don’t have to be 100% defined by an identity. It is always good to cultivate some flexibility in that you don’t have certainty about everything. Nevertheless, as we grow up, experience and the wisdom that comes with it should leave us with little doubt about what is good or bad for ourselves and others. It is good to have gradually gained wisdom through reflection, reading and testing. When one has been burned by fire, one has naturally understood that it is good to stay away from it.
The power of the forbidden
The forbidden is omnipresent in the society, it is perhaps even what differentiates us from the animal kingdom. Myths, whether Greek or Judeo-Christian, are based on the notion of the forbidden. The cultural world is essentially based on taboos. Therefore, we can learn more quickly to make the right choices by inheriting the prohibitions that have been passed on to us, while also having the wisdom to test certain things for ourselves when doubt arises.
How does one become a bad person?
We are all born with divine dust in our hearts, and then our choices make us sometimes keep, sometimes lose this luminous capital. Essentially, we become a bad person as a result of bad actions that we have learned too long. Karma is the result of all these actions. If we are not careful, we are only acting out of selfishness or vanity and we can make our karma go the wrong way. Essentially, what can tip the balance to the other side is to constantly monitor one’s intentions, to be attentive to the moral quality of the people one associates with too closely, and to learn from the mistakes one has made so as not to repeat them.
God offers you gifts but it is your wisdom that will allow you to see and open them.
The hazards on our path are so many enigmas left by providence to be solved. All the spiritual work consists in giving meaning to what apparently has none. To know how to see beyond what seems to be only a misfortune requires a lot of soul effort. In order to train oneself to overcome trials, it is necessary to see the mark of God at every moment and to act as if everything that happens can be overcome by faith. It is not only in great trials that one shows one’s true worth: to run a marathon well, one must have managed to run shorter distances hundreds of times. A boxer who gets into the ring has faced dozens of sparring partners before, but they will not have as much intensity and stress as in a real fight.
If you don’t see God, it’s normal
God is seen with the heart
Some people only believe what they see. It is also silly to say that we believe only what we can see with our ears. In reality, we have more than 5 senses. There are sensory faculties, those that are the fruit of the perception of our physical body, but there are also those that are the fruit of our spiritual body. Our heart allows us to perceive the invisible, the inaudible, the untouchable etc. To see, we must open our eyes, to feel the divine presence, we must train our heart. It is not with a closed heart that one can enter into contact with God. On the contrary, to do so, one must put aside for a moment one’s intellect and all sensory stimuli. God is seen only through the heart and nowhere else. So of course, beauty can be an awakening towards the search for God: a shining sunset can make us want to go further. Nevertheless, the encounter with God is made with a pure heart, that is to say a heart that has not allowed itself to be contaminated by bitterness or agitated by its passions or closed to the goodness of the world.
