© 1996 by George A. Boyd
Other people are your models
in any type of human endeavor. There is a broad continuum of what you
can achieve: from the worst to the best; from the demonic to the holy;
from the most evil to the most noble and good; from failure in every aspect
of human life to success in every way; and from moral and spiritual degradation
to full Enlightenment.
It is in this place of choosing,
where you see something that you want to become, that you want to do or
have, that you create your lives and destinies. Partly, this choosing
is conditioned by what you believe is possible; partly influenced by what
you have experienced before and by what you have been taught; and partly
determined by your vision, by what you see is possible, despite what you
have experienced or learned from others.
Choosing from your vision means
that you can choose something new, something other than what others tell
us is possible or acceptable, something other than what you have done
before. It is a risk to act from vision, because it is not tried on the
touchstone of experience, and it departs from the conventional wisdom
and patterns of behaving that define your family and social groups. It
calls you to something at which you may fail, perhaps even at the cost
of your life and fortune. It is like a leap of faith, in that you must
act on an untested principle, an assumed truth, something that seems possible
but you do not know for certain whether it will work or not. You step
out from the firm ground of what you have known into the tenuous unknown,
and you choose a new thing.
The possibility of thinking
of yourself beyond the usual constraints and limitations brings you into
the realm of the Divine Imagination, the inner world of the Soul. Here
you can clearly visualize your dreams, your ideals, what you want to achieve
in this human life, what you want to share with others. Beyond merely
satiating your appetites and desires, living out life scriptsgoal-driven,
family-condoned and socially-acceptable tracks for education, career,
family and retirementin the realm of the Soul you seek meaning,
understanding and fulfillment.
These deeper wellsprings of
your life form the voice of your conscience, your inner sense of knowing
your truth and true living. This gives you the reasons for your existence
and provides a purpose for living. Something behind the ongoing, ever-repeating
cycle of the weary Monday through Friday commute between work and home,
doing the unending tasks of work; to Friday night party with friends,
to park with the kids on Saturday, to church and ball game on Sundays,
and back again to the cycle. It is in this place of knowing your truth,
your dharma, that you form a vision of your own standards, of your
essential values, your own ideas of excellence.
Excellence means, among other
things, not compromising on quality, even though you can. It means doing
more than you have to, even if it takes more time. It means doing each
thing as an act of love, as if you were going to present each labor as
an offering before the Lord Himself. It means being patient, when you
could clearly rush through the task, but yielding inferior quality. It
means tasting each berry that you pick to make sure that it is sweet,
before you put it before your loved one. It is attending to the last detail,
so that no part is left undone. It is learning the book in its entirety,
so that you become an expert in the subject. It is taking the hand of
the Master, and journeying with Him or Her into the very Being of God.
It is not settling for second best, for only the finest will do.
Because when you take hold
of the hem of the garment of excellence, you take Perfection and hold
it in your hands, gaze through its mirror into the infinite possibility
of human life, and choose to make it real. You take this rarest jewel,
and bring it out into the marketplace, asking who shall buy this most
precious thing?
You purchase the precious jewel
of excellence by paying your full attention, your undivided dedication,
your unwavering commitment, your one-pointed concentration, your unceasing
devotion, your undying effort. You stay on the path, whatever it takes,
and you travel upon this path to its very end, until you reach the other
shore.
Whether this path is to become
the best basketball player you can be, the finest pianist, the most knowledgeable
scholar, the most precise jeweler, the clearest-communicating public speaker,
the most responsive government officiayou stay on the path. You
are not deterred by setbacks, by disappointments, by temporary failures.
You are not swayed though the entire world decries your folly. You are
not stopped though you have apparently exhausted your solutions, your
energy, your resources, and you stand aloneyou press on towards
the goal.
No matter how dark the night,
though all the assembled hosts of hell stand before you, impeding your
way, press onpress yet on and vanquish each obstacle until the final
gossamer veil is rent and you arrive naked and free into the unborn Light
of God. Because behind every path, behind every winding trailno
matter how long, how steep the climb, no matter through what abyss or
desolation you must travel, behold He is there
waiting for you, cheering
you on, supporting you in so many ways you do not see or know, breathing
upon your dreams to keep them alive. For are they not His dreams, too?
And you, as His Divine child, are His way of realizing those dreams, through
you, in you and around you; in your life and in the lives of others.
Because He will only accept
the best, that is what He has also chosen for youno substitutes,
nothing artificialonly the best. Only the bestthis is the
feast that He has placed before you, the birthright He has promised you.
For when you choose the best,
with no compromises, you are choosing what He has chosen for you. And
when you do that, you know what is excellent, what is good, what is true,
what is beautiful, what is lasting, and what is the perfect will of God.
Yes, this is the high road,
the challenging road of excellence. It is easy to settle for the well-worn
and safe trails of mediocrity, following the crowd, conforming to other's
values and standards, letting others dictate to you how you shall think
and act and be
without ever finding yourself, without ever knowing
who you are?
The path of excellence is a
path that only you can choose. It takes the highest sacrifice and dedication
you can summon. But then, even as no one has mastered an art without long
practice, without dedication and perseverance, you cannot take hold of
excellence in a day. You must polish the facets of this rough stone until
it becomes a flawless gem, through which the Light shines, so clearly,
so beautifully. Take then, the jeweler's tool and trim here; remove the
dross to reveal the ideal form beneath—polishing, polishing
a little
more clearly, a little more purely each day—because this is the Path,
the quest for excellence.