High ideal
A transformer of our instinctive impulses
October 18th 2014
Instincts are formidable life forces. If we try to stifle them, either we don’t succeed and we exhaust ourselves in the struggle, or we do succeed, which is no better, since we dry up the springs of life within us. So, how should we control our instincts? By cherishing a high ideal, for it is the best transformer of energies. When we place a very high ideal in our heart and soul, our energies cannot avoid passing by way of it, and our ideal takes on the task of giving our energies another direction, of directing them higher.
You may be wondering what processes lead to this transformation. You do not need to know. When we eat, we do not need to know the detail about the changes that occur, first in our mouth and then in our stomach and intestines, but we sense that we have received forces. It is the same with the high ideal: if we support it with our best thoughts, feelings and wishes, it changes our instinctive impulses, and the energies produced by this change in turn support our psychological and spiritual life – and our physical life too, for nothing in us is separate.