What Should One Be Proud Of?

When we learn about the way nature works, how it is a single force of love and bestowal that creates and sustains all reality, and how our every desire, thought, characteristic, and quality is nature’s making, then we eventually realize that we have nothing to be proud of on our own. Our every strength, talent, and quality, both positive and negative, was given to us from nature. Even the wisdom and effort that we need in order to shift from our inborn egoistic state to an altruistic state that is in balance with nature, also comes from nature. It is thus meaningless to take pride in our intelligence, strength, or abilities, because we did not create these qualities ourselves.

We might then ask, can we be proud that we do good deeds for others? But who gives us such strength? If we analyze correctly, we see that nature gives us everything, the wisdom, ability, and even circumstances that let us act.

So where does our personal role come in? We are the system through which the laws of nature act. Our role in this picture is to build the right conditions so that the altruistic and integral laws of nature can work through us. We can then take pride in becoming a correct vessel for the work of nature through us, in making ourselves a conduit for nature’s force of love and bestowal to flow through to others and to the world.