It's All Performance Art 55

I think for a lot of people, they never grow or develop beyond seeing themselves, or should I say, their selves, as being principally their will.  Or we could call it self-will, or auto determination.   Beyond that, most of us don't really evolve much beyond being life supports for our cravings, whims and appetites, hence the power and control that consumerism has over billions of people on this planet.  Even the way we think of our goals and aspirations as  bucket lists, or everything we want to do in our lives before we kick the bucket because this life is all there is, or as atheists tend to believe, this is it, there are no dress rehearsals. 

It's rather a scary, frenzied kind of dynamic.  So our development as moral, spiritual and ethical beings gets shunted aside so that we can do our utmost to fulfill and satisfy our multitudinous cravings and whims.   Which is to assume that our treatment of others and of our mother earth really don't need to factor in. 

The self is more, so much more than the will which simply directs our focus and our gaze.  But not a lot of people really like thinking in terms of God or faith or religion, because this threatens or puts at jeopardy their precious self-determination, and no one can really begin to live life as a Christian, or as a Jew or Muslim for that matter, without somehow submitting their will to a higher power.  Just like they do in the Twelve Steps programs. 

The beauty of it is that we never actually lose our will in the religious process.  We are simply employing our will to accept the supremacy of the Higher Will, and even then, as we move into God's service, we are doing so of our volition,  This is an interesting irony, and many resist and avoid contact with the Divine for that very terror of having their free will violated, not realizing or caring that quite simply, no one gives consent to God without employing their free will, and only by our freedom to choose are we able to follow Christ. 

As selves, as human souls, this is how we really begin to grow and flourish, by joyfully abandoning ourselves to all that is God, with the assurance that even if we make ourselves God's slaves, he will not lead us without our consent, and that we can trust him to lead us, direct and protect us.  Not necessarily an easy walk, this, because even as he gives us back our will, we still must surrender ourselves over and over again to God, for this is the surrender of love to love and this is what truly gives us life.

God is love, and it is love that nourishes and strengthens the soul.