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Advent

The Fall of Man was that he wanted to become like God.
The Salvation is: let God take part in Being Human.

We suffer because we are not perfect. We have a deep rooted feeling, that our knowledge and abilities should be Godlike. We compare us continuously with God’s features, and we measure ourselves in such a way, that we never feel we are good enough, as we are. We want to reach something, but instead are going for the star that is showing us the direction. We try to bring the horizon to the place where we stand. It is impossible. But what is possible, and required from us, is to bear the tension within us, as imperfect human beings, with the ideal of perfection implanted in us.

We can not bear our imperfections. We can not bear that we can not bring love into the world, like the saints have done. We can not bear that we do not possess the power that the martyrs had in their time. We can not stand that we stamp on the corns of others by being absent-minded and hurt those who we love with our uncontrolled reactions.

We would like to bring salvation into the world. We would like to bring about peace and live in harmony. But there is restlessness in us, there are wishes and needs implanted in us which we do not like and which we are not able to get rid of. They are in our genes, given to us by other imperfect human beings, by our parents. We are not able to take them off like we take off clothes, they are in our blood and bones.

We are longing to be recognized, that goodness and perfection should be seen in us. We hope, again and again, that we can get help from others, from the world and that this would enable us to live in the beautiful and the impeccable that is in us. We are disappointed, because the help from the outer world, also imperfect, is not available. We are surrounded by people, who, like ourselves, are in the prison of their helplessness and longing. Other human beings are suffering like us and like us they are waiting for help, while they are veiled in their disappointments and hurts, just like us. And deep in all of us is the slumbering, sleeping and hidden knowledge of the human mission: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48; The Bible - NIV [New International Version]).

How are we able to fulfil this, our innermost task?! We are put in an imperfect world and imperfection is implanted in us, every situation is imperfect – and we should be perfect?! This causes an unbearable tension; the impossible is demanded from us all.

We try to escape. No, that is not me – this is about all the others. In every situation there can be found somebody who is guilty - in the present, in the past, are all the people, who awake the imperfect in us, or who earlier implanted the imperfect in us. And when we see that others have no power to behave differently, we turn the tables and then we feel guilty. We should be perfect, “like our heavenly Father is perfect”. What a presumption! How can I expect to become what no human being can ever become! We poison ourselves and our environment with these tones of megalomania. Our flight into the justification “I am like this” covers the unbearable but does not heel.

It is due to us comparing ourselves with God that we are excluded from Paradise; more exactly, comparing ourselves with the Father aspect of God. Our imagination about God consists mostly only of God as the Creator and the ongoing process of creation in this world, the becoming, is imperfect and cut off from Him in our concepts. THIS aspect of God we do not want to live through. We deny THIS aspect of God. We are not able to recognise the SON in it. The SON can only be incarnated in this world through us. Because we do not see HIM, HE remains through our blindness and our imperfection crucified in us. And the world together with our own imperfections, remains excluded of Unity, as the opponent, as something, which is “not good” basically.

Is there a way out of this seemingly impossible situation? What is it? What can help us to get out of the concepts built by our imagination about God and about our cosmic task?

We did not create ourselves. We did not create the world. We take part with what we are in what is given. Our task is to work with what is given, to make the best of it. We, ourselves, as we are, we are also part of “what is given”.

We mix up guilt and responsibility. We have no guilt in what we became in the past. But we can take on the responsibility in the present for what we are. This is the way of salvation: through this it is possible that the SON aspect of God can be incarnated in us, through us and this way God can take part in Being Human.

There is a Sufi idea: “First the Crucifixion, then the Birth of Christ.” We should take down from the cross of guilt and into us the SON-aspect of God! We should not martyr HIM with the crown of thorns of the criss-cross workings of our associative thinking! We should not flagellate ourselves with the negative emotions of feeling inferior and feeling superior!

In this way Christmas can be prepared in us, the birth of Existence, as it is told in the story about Jesus of Nazareth. In every one of us it can become a true story in the LIVING PRESENCE when we recognise, that

we are not guilty of imperfection;
imperfection is a task.

Agnes Hidveghy 2004