Becoming a person

74.

Becoming a person

A language of faith, says Hillel, is the language of humanity's ever-broadened, ever refined consciousness. The boor is not conscious of having sinned and so does not aspire to correction, an ignoramus will not seek improvement; the person who is shy does not have the audacity to think that they can learn, the ill tempered person will not succeed in transmitting any of what has been learned and so his or her learning is useless,and business acumen does not guarantee wisdom anyone who practices the gaze of faith has to have enough will, enough daring, to constantly seek to become, to strive to move beyond. One does not pass through the gates of faith in order to stand in place. Instead, you enter these gates in order that your inner landscape be exchanged for others in the course of the journey--to change! And this change itself is the hidden reward held in escrow for the believer. Where there are no worthy persons, strive to be a person. Then, one day, when you cast off your own barriers, you will arrive at a place where there are no people—that is, the place of the inner self, the simple, innocent,and pure will within you—and you will then gather all your strength and, without fear and with supreme effort, you will become the non-recurring human being you were meant to be. When you leave everything you thought you knew about what it means to be a person, and dream of human being anew, then you became a person. This is what it is to become a person.

Hillel