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PERSONAL EVOLUTION
Evolution implies movement from a less perfected state to a greater one. The purpose of personal evolution is to achieve increasing spirit dominance of the personality. Human existence is designed to facilitate this movement by providing a suitable environment.
Consider the following:
1. Is courage desirable? Then we must live in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
2. Is altruism desirable? Then life experience must provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
3. Is hope desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
4. Is faith desirable? Then the mind must find itself in that troublesome predicament where it knows less than it can believe.
5. Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then we must grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
6. Is idealism desirable? Then we must struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings that stimulate the reach for better things.
7. Is loyalty desirable? Then we must carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The value of devotion lies in the implied danger of default.
8. Is unselfishness desirable? Then we must live with our incessant desire for recognition and honor. We could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. We could never lay hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to contrast with the good.
9. Is pleasure desirable? Then we must live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present possibilities.
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