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Friday, July 13, 2012

The Search for True Love (Part 7)




Working on a More Presentable Temple

In this section about working on you so far, I’ve been writing about the easier to understand external part of you that you need to work on.  For those of you who believe you are more spiritual, I need you to bear with me because I will in later sections be getting into the inner parts and deeper parts that we need to work on.  For now, I ask you to pay attention to the external that we ALL need to work on as I am explaining here, because it is often the spiritual ones who neglect the outer parts in the name of being “spiritual”.

Frank is a friend of mine who tends to be attracted to girls who look nice and dress nicely.  However, he is the type of guy who doesn’t have a clue about how to dress and he doesn’t put any effort into figuring out how to match his outfits.  At one time, he complained to me after he was rejected by the thousandth girl why these good-looking well-dressed women don’t like him back.

Since we have known each other for such a long time, I did not hesitate to tell him that he need to put some effort into dressing himself better.  I told him that he needs to dress better to accentuate his looks.  His natural looks are being hidden underneath his distractingly mismatched outfits.  Also, he is a nice guy underneath the badly dressed surface.  He needs to sprinkle some good flavoring on the outside to enhance the nice guy that he is underneath.

This is common sense to many of you.  If you want to attract someone who is well-dressed, you naturally need to be well-dressed yourself.  However, Frank who is too lazy to work on himself in something as simple as his outer appearance responded, “They have to accept me as I am.  I am not going to change.” 

It almost sounds like a legitimate excuse to continue in his frustration of repelling the good looking women he is attracted to.  However, it is not a legitimate excuse, because his mismatched outfits are not who he is.  I know him very well and he is a nice guy who is hardworking and generous, and he is also seeking a spiritual connection with God.  I am not telling him to change who he is.  A nice guy seeking spirituality is who he is, and I am definitely not telling him to change that.  I am just telling him to change his mismatched outfits and stop using “being myself” as an excuse to take the easy way out when it comes to grooming. 

Although most of you (especially women) understand this, there are some of you (usually male) who obstinately cling to the excuse of “I am going to be myself.”  Well, I am not saying to not be yourself.  What I am saying is to be the best you possible, inside and outside!  Stop using “being myself” and “accepting me for who I am” as an excuse.  If you are honest with yourself, you are using that as an excuse to continue with your laziness in not keeping up with your appearances.

Okay, let me really drive this point home with a more extreme example.  Take the case of the slob who doesn’t bathe regularly, who doesn’t brush his teeth daily, and who smells really bad.  He in defense says, “They have to accept me for who I am” while complaining, “Why are women not attracted to me?”  Well, the absurdity of this excuse of “being myself” should be obvious to every one of you by now. 

It’s not that he is being himself, but he is being the worst him possible, or the least presentable him.  Well, as ridiculous as this slob’s excuse is to everyone one of us who hears this, Frank (although not as extreme as the case of the slob) is just as ridiculous in using the same excuse.

As someone who has been developing spiritually for at least two decades, let me now speak to you who are fellow Christians and spiritual beings.  Some of you declare to yourselves and others that it’s not important to develop and maintain your physical being and external appearance.  Your justification is that you only focus on the “spiritual.” 

Imagine yourself as the keeper of a Church or Temple of God.  Now, as the keeper or steward of God’s Temple, would you neglect the physical appearance and state of the Temple and allow it to become run down.  Would you let things be broken and not be fixed?  Would you leave it with a leaky roof and broken stairs?  Would you let it be infested with roaches and rats?  After all, it’s the spiritual that matters.  The physical doesn’t matter.  Most of us in response to that would say, “That’s absurd!”  You can’t use being ‘spiritual’ as an excuse to let the Church or Temple become run down (and consequently repelling people away from it.)  Keeping the physical state and appearance goes hand in hand with spirituality.

Well, I got news for you.  Your bodies are temples of God.  “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God…  Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”  (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20)

Just as you can’t neglect the physical state and appearance of a church or temple, you can’t neglect the physical state and appearance of the temple that is your body.  You can’t neglect the physical and justify it by stating that you only need to focus on the spiritual.  When you neglect the physical, you are not being spiritual.

It pains me to see servants of God neglecting their physical temple, or their health, becoming overweight and developing serious diseases that are preventable.  As “spiritual” as they may be, it baffles me that they don’t see that the physical goes hand in hand with being spiritual.

So, by now, you know that working on you involves working on your physical state and appearance.  With that established, let me also say this.  Don’t go overboard on decorating your external appearance.

I could just see someone overcharging her credit cards buying a lot of brand name clothing and shoes she can’t afford in the name of “working on the temple”.  No, don’t go overboard to the other extreme!  A Church, or a Temple of God, should not spend their entire budget on the appearance of the building.  Also, it should not overspend time and effort.  In the same way, you should not over-do it in focusing on your looks.  There must be a balance.  Don’t go overboard in spending too much time, effort, and/or money on your appearance.   But don’t spend too little effort like Frank in the upkeep of his appearance.  Either extreme is bad.  You should have a balance.  Find your balance.

Find your balance of maintaining a more presentable Temple that is you, but you also need to work on improving the inner you, as I will talk about in another part of this “The Search for True Love” series.

To be continued...

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Copyright: © 2012. This document is the sole property of Amadeo Constanzo. Other free teachings from Amadeo Constanzo can be found at life.SpirFit.com and SpirFit.org