day 0: the moral law

"the moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys" (10).

"the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs" (11).

Realize: there exists, instinct. What separates you from the pig or the bird, the ant or the lion? These are animals with instincts which also exist in you.

You were created by the same hands that sculpted the life in your world, but it is the breath of the creator that sanctified you, that sets you apart for a greater purpose.

Now realize, this very breath that sets you apart now gives you power over instinct. To follow your strongest impulse and survive, or to listen to the whisper of the other impulse that tells you to lay down your life.

This is freedom.

This very breath has established what is the moral law, a law emerging not from customs of culture but from the truth in which you are trying to find.

When people question what you do, you have no problem attributing the "good" you do as to your own personal derivation of the moral law, but the "bad" you do is quickly diverted away from your compass and happens not because you are by nature a corrupted person but because  of other things: I'm too ______, he/she deserves it, I deserve this, etc.

Look at the "standard" you tried to live by, that you've convinced others to believe you live by. The standard you use to compare others, to elevate yourself on some sort of moral high ground and to humble yourself before others.

Look at it.

Now throw it away.

You can't live by your standard anymore because you have chosen to live not to the patterns of this world but by the truth; this truth that has always been in you and this truth that will set you free.

"progress means not just changing, but changing for the better" (13).