reason for discipline part deux

in reply to a comment made on an earlier post:

there are two parts to being Godlike: mastery over environment, and mastery over self.

the first speaks of an unstoppable force, while the second speaks of an immovable object. contradictory, but inspirational, for you only know your capabilities through your possessions by conquest, but you only know your strength in the giving up of that power, a release of the crutch you have every right to use. as in the case of all so-called paradoxes, the issue lies in the impossibility of one of the defining premises. in this case that i want to highlight, the supremity of God, only the immovable object exists.

i believe God can rape your soul, as you said, if he wanted to, but the reason why im not Jansenist is simply because i believe God is more defined by the second power. he specifically and repeatedly withholds exercise of the first power in deference to his own gift of free will to us. there are many instances in the bible where God is said to have hardened men's hearts or turned their minds, but i find it much more reasonable and convincing in all of these examples where God is undoubtedly the instigator and influencer rather than the author of the compliant and/or defiant decisions of man. it is through this understanding which i read all cases of God hardening or opening people's hearts.

in essence we are driving at the same point, except that i wanted to draw a much clearer picture of what the first power is--its pervasiveness in my own humanity as well as of that in the reader himself or herself, by extension also that of the many people in high places. it is born of the repeated exercise of free will coupled with a hunger and thirst for things well beyond our mortality. we are definitely in the position to bite more than we can chew.

while the first power is easy, the second is rare. hence the completion of a goal to Godliness must in the end always involve a renunciation of one's own power in deference to the free will of another. it is the ultimate gift, a sacrifice of one's own free will. in religion, the goal here is to make God the recipient, a return of the gift, like the returning of the prodigal son, who says no, i did not need this, but please, let me stay in your house instead.

THAT...is the reason for discipline.

law of conservation of time

time moves regardless, and life is a game of its management. jobs are a way of converting time into a storable form--money. a while later this money is then spent, a deconversion into time as we wish to experience. so while the world moves on around us, we as individuals may not be able to experience it in the way we want, if we do not have time--money in the bank.

each person also spends time differently, or utilises time in his own currency. it is therefore all the more necessary that each man earn his own wage so that he can spend according to his will. this explains the necessity for jobs in the cycles of life. but this fact does not deny the existence of jobless men. should one neglect earning his own time, then his inevitable expenditure of it necessarily involves sponsorship by a benefactor, a second party willing or unwilling.

as lifespan increases, one wonders how much work one has to put in to create sufficient storage for retirement. it is already meaningless as it is in the current situation where people work for a third of the day, sleep for another third, and only have a third left to share between fulfillment other duties and personal time--the reason for work in the first place. it just does not seem like a valuable trade for effort if the time spent earning does not at least equal the time earned.

therein lies the key to happiness: at the end of the day, we must always have our eye on the meaning of our toil, lest toil become our meaning. time spent doing things we love to do must at least equal the time spent doing things we have to do. truly happy and successful people always have this in common, be it having disproportionately high paying jobs, or having jobs which they dont consider as jobs.