[Excerpt  Be and Become, © ProCreative, Sydney 2000]

In view of the ideas presented in this book, we might appreciate that we have been unduly fixated on our limited, local physical existence. But simply beginning to believe or recognize that reality is innately nonlocal will not, of itself, allow us to more freely examine the deeper aspects to our psyches.

It will not simply be a matter of believing that we are more able to access and control our subconscious and unconscious thoughts and bodily processes unless we also believe that it is safe to do so. We won’t begin to hate others less, or diminish our prejudices unless we begin to believe that it is safe to more thoroughly know ourselves. And we won’t accept that it is safe to know ourselves, and thus our fellow man until we discard some misconceptions which have had a deep influence upon mankind.

The belief in the ideal of perfection is perhaps the most pernicious by-product of the belief in “separateness” (locality). However, before I begin to explain why a belief in the ideal of perfection is so detrimental, let’s first consider just what is meant by the word “perfection.”

We begin by recognizing that a state of perfection is one that cannot be improved upon. If it could be improved it would not be perfect. Something which is perfect is ideal, complete, finished, pure, absolute, utter. Perhaps most importantly, a state of perfection is also faultless. Few religious people would consider God to have fault, or that He was somehow incomplete or unfinished. The Pope (God’s official representative here on Earth, at least according to the Roman Catholics) is also considered or believed to be infallible. In other words, he is deemed perfect. This belief in the Pope being perfect is, at the time of writing, still a central doctrine of the Catholic Church. Recently an article in a leading Sydney newspaper reported that: