Essays on the Main/About Competitiveness

About Competitiveness

Let us beware of developing competitiveness in ourselves, which is often the desire to defeat others and look better than them.

Competitive success is spiritually dangerous because it builds pride. In other words, through this, egocentrism grows in a person. Whereas, on the contrary, one’s egocentrism must be voluntarily destroyed through one’s own efforts.

People compete for two main reasons: for prizes — or for fame. Now we will talk about the second of these two motives: for it is, after all, the more important of the two from the point of view of spiritual ethics.

Competition is most clearly rooted and manifested in sports. But my advice is that it would be better for athletes to perform not for the sake of prizes or fame, but in order to give the audience spiritual beauty, showing by their example the Path to Perfection! (Of course, we can talk here only about those sports that lead its adepts to paradise).

What a great spiritual holiday were, for example, the figure skating performances in Moscow in the winter of 2020—2021! Both the athletes who performed and the millions of viewers who watched the events, including through television, received spiritual advancement! How many Holy Spirits were present then in the ice rink during the performances! They all tried to help the people who were there! And many of the latter — felt Them!

Real progress along the spiritual Path is not brought about by “mortification of the flesh”, or by chronic crying because of the “inevitability of hell”, or by asking God for “blessings”, or by incessantly begging “Lord, have mercy!”. In the beginning, let us instead realize or, at least, try to feel the states of the Holy Spirits and use these states as Standards for our attunement with Them.

And Their states can be described as follows: Refinement, Tenderness, Bliss, Beauty, Hugeness in the subtlest layers of the Absolute, and readiness to help everyone — with Their Wisdom and Love.

It makes sense for us to strive to become like Them!

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Would it not be more useful for grown-up people, striving to God, to learn to yield rather than try to win?

In regards children, let them compete in their children’s games: through this they develop.

But let those adult embodied souls, who try to eliminate their egocentrism, prepare themselves to merge with God and dissolve in Him, when they are ready for this according to the rest of the parameters of perfecting.

Let’s try to learn to constantly feel God, Who at every moment observes our thoughts, emotions, and decisions! And, He tries to help if He still has hope...