If
I were the devil himself, this is how I would keep you in line. First, of
course, I would torture you, subjecting you to horrible cruelty and excessive
pressure. This would keep you overreacting and failing. Then I would appear
before you in a different form, as a "saving" friend or gang of
friends bringing total support and a lot of piggy creature-comforts. You would
find yourself now in an environment in which your slightest discomfort would
be relieved, where you never suffered or went without in a world that treated
you as if it owed you a living. In this way, with a little help from your
"friends," I would turn you into a dull, fat, weak porker ready for
slaughter.
Where there is no adversity, no
poverty or disease, no consequences for personal failing, the soul cannot
learn that sins are sins.
It
can never be free from the pig farmer, the devil himself. A pig doesn't know
it's in hell, it thinks it's in hog heaven; so there it stays, rooting and
wallowing, growing fat for the slaughter-house on the "free" slop the
farmer provides.
Some
of these victims seek only to preserve their comfort, passively sinking ever
deeper into their piggy state. They become addicted to free-loading. Others
react against their dehumanization with rebellion. Sensing a trap, they put up
a misdirected fight, striking out against their "helpful" friends or
against the environment itself. Some guilty souls cannot live in
"perfect" conditions; they feel undeserving and uncomfortable. Or an
easy life threatens them; they need intrigue and challenge, conditions in which
the ambitious ego may grow to a sense of its own greatness. This kind may
vacillate between extremes, struggling for the "good" life, then
feeling unworthy and throwing it all away. And there are those damaged souls,
clinging-vine types, who take pride in being weak, dependent, and useless.
Few
recover from the injury done them by being "helped" too much. The
best in us cannot emerge except through hardship, a working through of our own
problems (of our own making, oftener than not) till we grow strong and wise. Be
wary of those who would smooth your way, and of the impulse in yourself to
smooth the way for others. It is simple to see that no human being can save
another from his sin. You must peck open your own egg, so to speak. No one must
do it for you. The helping hand will bring out of the egg only a very weak or
violent creature with no existence of its own apart from the "helper”.
Remember, suffering prepares the soul for the right kind of help, for
salvation.
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