Two days working new employment calmness settles in. I am being advanced, moved into better places. The fruits are obvious. I am at ease, confident, finding others drawn to me, while I move about efficiently within a healthy professional culture promoting such behavior. The new professional environment, attained without searching, is overwhelmingly obvious in the fact it is something lacking from my life. Opportunities for advancement, international possibilities, a team approach based upon individual improvement, all come together to present spiritual openings. Recovery is being elevated to new dimensions, remnants of mental illness being further exorcised. I am convinced if we function based upon weaknesses and brokenness, we move into mental illness. Nietzsche moved into mental illness further and further with a life dedicated and dependent upon reason and free will. There is no enlightenment or spiritual prosperity for a life concentrated upon wisdom, spiritual growth, when that life is strongminded in resolution to do everything for itself. A mad person who sees themselves as Napoleon will never truly know themselves, nor will they grow through counsel. The obstinate self-absorbed individual centered within domination will never be able to advance in a healthy understanding of reality. The fruits of the Holy Spirit unable to nurture. Such broken individuals can speak of the spiritual life, offering advice, attempting through sheer effort to be a spiritual person, yet it is the workings of a life devolving into insanity. In truth, they are a source of destruction, at best stagnating into mediocrity. I was speaking to my son yesterday, swept away by our conversation on the professional life. He has been granted the opportunity as an engineer of being named as a project manager for a focus upon quality for a large scale printing machine his company designs and manufactures. With vigor and excitement, he spoke to me of seizing opportunities. His dedication to self-improvement through his professional vocation astounds. His vernacular of the spiritual life in describing his professional views are impressive, allowing conversation between us to bond and enrich our father/son relationship. Grace builds upon nature. He.speaks emphatically of patience and hope. I related, understanding, suitably explaining the Catholic truths within the Theological Virtues. He listens. He is excited for me to experience a professional rejuvenation. He is authoring a list of management books, based upon self-improvement as a means of professional advancement. He strongly recommends to expand my reading to his favorite managerial writers. I am delighted he identifies capitalism centered within ethics and morality, Milton Friedman economic philosophy, as the strongest social and civil movement; the social responsibility and accountability of a prospering free market economy as the greatest means for all within society to advance spiritually and materialistically. Once again, submission to a proper societal hierarchy, social order and structure demanding humility and love elicits the greatest, and sanest, growth for the individual and the group–the self-centered delusion of dependence upon one’s self or others stagnates, pushing even those of the highest intent into madness.
Milton Friedman: “The two ideas of human freedom and economic freedom working together came to their greatest fruition in the United States…We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else. We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good purposes…We are again recognizing the dangers of an over-governed society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.”
How does Assumption Abbey play into my professional advancement? I am committing to six months of an intense dedication to employment. Through the winter, I am going to be an overtime fiend, dedicating all of my time to establishing myself at work. I will be able to work massive amounts of overtime, producing weekly income hovering around fifteen hundred dollars a week. Continuing to reside with Carter, I will bank the money, amassing substantial savings. Naturally, my contemplative life will reside interiorly, tantamount to my employment efforts, centered, with the assistance of my son, upon self-improvement leading to professional fulfillment and promoting interior growth. It all coalesces nicely; humbling, demanding responsibility and accountability. After six months, continuing to remain in contact with Assumption Abbey a decision is made. As my son and I articulately hammered out, my choice is based upon strengths: a bountiful mindset, fruitful and geared for enlightenment. I have two options in front of me, both able to receive the blessings of God, a promising life with a quality company—the possibility of advancement to a life in Spain, a spiritual dream, or the consecrated life loving and humbly embraced at Assumption Abbey. It is a mature choice of strength and goodness, truly a proper investigation of Divine Will; an appropriate discernment allowing assured compliance with the profound loving mysteries of God.
