We gain genuine satisfaction from life when we forgo pursuing perfection and instead measure our actions against our soul’s purpose.
Do you ever feel frustrated by your own imperfections? It seems that everyone wants to perfect something about themselves, wishing for a better body, more money, greater success, or something else. This is unfortunate since it can only lead to discontent. A person can work and work to become the best at everything they do, and they might even become famous and recognized as the best in their field, but in the end, they can never be satisfied if they are seeking perfection. Eventually, someone will surpass them, or some other part of their life will fall apart in the meantime. Even if we are the most beautiful, talented, and successful person that ever lived, time will catch up with us, and our lives will eventually decline and end.
If we focus on creating perfection in life, we are focusing on the material world, which constantly changes and thus never reaches perfection. Everything in the physical world is constantly transforming from one state to another. Living things are born, grow up, grow old, and then die. Rocks and soil erode, continents change shape, mountains slowly wash away into the sea, and even the sun may someday explode and disappear along with the earth. Thus, the world we experience in life is not about reaching a permanent state of perfection, since that is impossible.
We Are Already Perfect
Does this mean that there is nothing perfect in our existence? Not at all. There is one very important perfect thing—our souls. And the good news is that we don’t have to do anything to perfect it; it is already perfect! We can, however, learn to live more and more in connection with the soul, which is the true meaning of spiritual growth. If someday we learn to live 100 percent in alignment with our souls, that does not mean our lives will be “perfect” in the usual sense of that word. Maybe our bodies will have grown old by then, and we will still have to face the everyday problems of life. But we will be able to claim one thing that is the spiritual goal of life: completion.
Completion simply means living in a state of pure connection with our souls, rather than chasing the temporary, egoic satisfactions of life. If we can do this, we are living in the domain of the creator, beyond the sufferings of time and space. The soul’s perspective is much higher than that of the material world, and it is beyond the constant sufferings of life and death. Instead, it is plugged into the eternal, divine cosmic realm. In this state of awareness, we will naturally feel our oneness with all life and with all the universe, and we will realize that everything in our lives and everything in the universe is all part of a perfect whole, no matter how disappointing or even tragic the events of this life may seem on the individual level.
Applying a Broader Perspective
Taking this perspective on life—the perspective of the soul—has practical value, too, since it can make our everyday lives happier and less stressful. We can save ourselves a lot of heartache and pain by switching our minds from the question, “Is this perfect?” to “Is this complete?” By asking the latter question, we are asking how a situation serves our souls’ purpose rather than our egos’. If we do this, it becomes much easier to let go of hurtful situations once we have learned what we need to from them, and we no longer need to obsess over everything being “successful” from the world’s perspective. Yes, of course, we can and should pursue goals for our lives and strive to do them as well as we are able, but we no longer need to feel attached to the results of our endeavors. Whether we fail or succeed, our souls remain in their perfected state.
So, we can make this small, but profound change even today: live for completion, not perfection. Doing so is like coming out of a small, dark box into the light.
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