Bible Verse John 3:16?

[Louisa]

I think the world is real too. It seems important. Even if maybe this world includes some layers of confusion and maybe is not the whole truth, it does seem to be the truth.

Maybe it's just like... Not the whole elephant, you know.

I do like to think this world could evolve toward (relative) perfection. Sometimes I'm not so sure how much that is going to happen, but I keep the hope and keep that as my ideal that I like to work towards with my little drop in the collective ocean.

I wouldn't stop being myself, but rather I guess see the higher ideals that I identify with and then try to see how those ideals could be applied in the real world. So try to see how to be my "higher self" I guess I could say. There is such a power in identifying with these wonderful ideals and being something eternal. Suddenly, wow, you are God, or a piece of God, and holy, sanctified and a conduit to bring heaven on earth. So uplifting and motivating to feel that kind of power and eternality and importance in the self. Of course the downfall is when real life problems are a brick wall that you can't realistically overcome. But I guess then Jesus too experienced such. I guess that for me the difficulty comes in when problems seem so complicated that my mind runs circles around them and that's when it's good to be "in the world but not of it" - not that I am actually apart from or better than the world, but just that I can't always understand or influence the world. Then I need to remain anchored in my ideals and dreams, and feel safe and sanctified in God, even when the ideals and dreams I have may never come true.

It seems though that we are meant to be our truest selves and make the most of our unique personalities and personal interests and to act towards the causes and things we naturally feel joy or empathy towards. Trying to serve selflessly seems to be self-defeating oftentimes, because the personal "me" in the equation gets ground down and negated oftentimes, like a martyr or an ascetic. The unique gifts that one has are often best expressed when we follow our joy (guided with empathy, too). Often these things indirectly help the greater whole more effectively than more obviously "selfless" behavior would, I think. So we have creative people, scientists, people who serve or work to maintain our world and community - and all play a part in the whole. The temptation is to see what the immediate emergency is and feel that one must selflessly serve towards that, but it seems like that may not really be in the best interest of the whole, as I have learned when I tried to be selfless myself, and found that it was quite futile. The problems our society faces are so enormous that we need creative, intellectual and intuitive solutions and not just simple love and service and crisis intervention (even as necessary as those are).