Steps to the Divine. Destruction as Part of Development

Lately, as I studied the topic of human abilities, I became convinced that development is impossible without destructive forces.

Destruction often appears to us as chaos. But chaos is the highest degree of order, the ancients said. This means that the structure, opposed to time, which I encountered in my research, represents a higher-order system. As it enters our Universe, it disrupts it.

Since humans interact with this entity on subtle levels, it can be perceived as a value system. I have provisionally called it perfection.

It turns out that perfection transcends matter, space, and time, and it, too, can become an end in itself, ultimately leading to illness and death.

So, aside from love for humanity and the Universe, there is another profound value — love for perfection. If a person makes it an absolute value, they turn from a creator into a destroyer and wish to annihilate the entire Universe, which they see as flawed. But this is pure diabolism. Satan is the symbol of destruction.

I recalled the Bible, where it tells of an angel becoming a devil. He became fixated on perfection, deciding that God had created an imperfect Universe.

Therefore, the feeling that the world is imperfect, the disdain for imperfect people — whether others or oneself — are the seeds of diabolism. Perfection is a great joy when it serves as a means for accumulating love for God, but it becomes a tragedy when it turns into an end in itself. Not so long ago, if someone had asked me the meaning of life, I would have answered: in the pursuit of perfection. Thus, the higher the truths and aspirations we come to know, the greater our responsibility, and the stronger the temptation to make them our goal, forgetting about God.

I pondered for a long time as to why this is the case, and then suddenly, with ease, I understood: in material blessings, there is a portion of love, and it is from this that we derive pleasure. In spiritual blessings, there is a larger portion of love; in temporal ones, even more.

The greater the scale of the entity with which we interact, the more love fills our soul, bringing the Divine, and the stronger the temptation to make this large but finite portion of love our goal, forgetting the infinite — God. In each of our souls lies an eternal spark of God, while in the outer layers, there is an increase in love and an approach to the ideal we carry within. Humanity is destined to ascend the steps of ever-increasing happiness toward God. To accumulate ever more strength and to endure ever greater trials, overcoming the temptation to stop on one of these steps, becoming dependent on it and making it the goal.

S. N. Lazarev, «Diagnosis of Karma, Book 3»