How Spiritual Completion Never Ends
What follows forgiveness? What path do we tread as we journey from the seedling of magnanimity to the towering oak of spiritual maturity? The answer is in perseverance through analysis leading to higher levels of analysis and perseverance, so that together with increasing honesty these aspects of reason allow us to discern truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and God gifted us this intrinsically grafted spiritually just as He internally gifted the primary designs for life and our love. This is the foundation of the virtues which flourish beyond excellence: patience, conservation, prudence, ethics, justice, courage, and, finally, a godly willpower as rejection of our own will.
Ready forgiveness is made more possible through an emotionally accepting response; but this is a rational choice to work toward this: letting go resentment and embracing grace. Maintaining this choice constantly requires the final virtue in the structural virtues framework: willpower, the culmination of our moral journey in giving all our pride and stubbornness over to God’s Will. Willpower is not brute force or stupid persistence, it is the steadfast resolve to align our actions with divine purpose; power over our will.
How does this willpower manifest? Ultimately through dogged and unceasing analysis of self and self-patterns for correction: meticulous examination of our thoughts, feelings, and motivations; unending recognitions, in short. It is the process by which we sift through the seeming chaos to the real truth in order, readying the mind for pearls of wisdom amidst sands of ignorance. This analysis is not cold or clinical; it is infused with the warmth of undying love: a love that compels us to seek truth, to grow, and to become more than we were before.
Forgiveness finds its fulfilment in willpower, a denial of one’s own will along with the lower material self; an unending spiritual completion. This is not a destination but a continuous process that never ends, as a ceaseless creation. We dance; we dance between humility and resolve, between grace and effort: death of self into Life. For even as we strive for these virtues, we must always recognise our dependence on God’s Love: the eternal flame that guides our every decision. So much.