Luis said (September 26, 2019):

Sorry, but you are totally wrong, you are one of the endless victims of the "culture of the self" initiated by protestant reformers....characters who were supported and financed by apostate Jews and "The Jewish Peril 1936 Paris" revealed.

"Our souls seek God who is Perfection (i.e. Consciousness, a dimension where absolute bliss, truth, beauty, goodness, love, and justice are self-evident.)

Normally, we're like a boat tossed by thought waves and currents. There is no hand on the Wheel.

The first step in self-development is taking the Wheel in hand and setting a new course.

Self-development is recreating yourself according to your ideal.

This is pure new age paganism garb mate.
With "Self" control comes Self-discipline. You become "Self"-God-centered. "

The meaning and purpose of life is to save our souls, something protestants decided to discard, wrongly thinking they are already saved - who received wages in the middle of the month? Of course, having put aside that God through Scripture warns us that we will all be judged according to our deeds and according to what we said and even though....or not!! [Sins of omission

Our task isn't to concentrate on ourselves but on God, and it is here that protestants and pseudo-Christians fall.
Our societies have been invaded by paganism disguised as 'culture', 'science', 'spirituality' and 'health practices and lifestyles' !!

To fool people, they engage in doublespeak, promoting paganism using Christian terms...a tactic already used by the gnostics of the first two centuries.

If you really want to discern how paganism has invaded the west, then read:

"Jesus Christ, the bearer of the water of life: a Christian reflection on the new age"

\---

Thanks Luis

IMO you don't understand Christianity but if your understanding makes you a better person, I am for it

henry

David B said (September 25, 2019):

I believe we have 3 concrete purposes in life, with a few additional options. All you need is one to have a fulfilling life, but having all 3 is ideal.

1 - Spiritual Enlightenment - Monks seem to have a purpose.

2 - Happiness and Hobbies - The most fleeting, but also the most obtainable. Eating good food or dancing can offer short term purpose.

3 - Creating a Family - having children with a loving partner can give purpose to everything, especially one's career.

Optional 4 - Service to others.

G said (September 25, 2019):

As a long-time reader of your site and scrutinizer of you yourself, I'd have to say you have fulfilled your purpose in life. And to the author's title of today's article: "The Purpose of Life is Self Development," I would certainly add, "and Using That Development to Help the World." Henry, you have done that in spades.

And it ain't about being somehow perfect, but rather about a willingness to keep honing one's humanity, and about cultivating sincere generosity so as to offer it to the greater world. Thank you for fulfilling your purpose in life, so many have benefited from that. And yes, it's an on-going process from which none is exempt. Why do some foolishly ignore the challenge?

dd said (September 25, 2019):

We are souls. Souls are 'sparks' of God. Can you evolve a soul? Into what?

There is no heaven or hell as after-life attainments. Religion fabricated that. Darksides and souls are polar opposite invisible substances. Darksides are from hell. Souls are from heaven. When bodies die, each returns to his home, unless we are reborn immediately. Darksides bring down hell on earth. Souls purpose is to bring down heaven on earth.

The bodies belong to souls. Bodies are satanically possessed. So there are 2 kinds of invisible entities in bodies. There is no one-being-in-a-body with a name and ID. The darkside has stolen most of the human bodies for it's use. The purpose of soul is bring heaven down to earth. But first, soul needs to be awakened to the fact of darkside use of his body. Then, he needs to know how to fight back to reclaim ownership of his body. This internal fight escalates. The fighting soul must face off with the darkside masses, and eventually the elites. When the path of soul is clear of the threat of the darkside, then he can freely express his heavenly nature.

So, the purpose of life initially is self-discovery. This changes to fightback. With victory, it changes to bringing heaven down to earth. The evil elites and the evil masses have conquered souls and brought hell down to earth. It's time that souls fight back to reverse that process!

Lorraine Day said (September 25, 2019):

The Purpose of Life is NOT Self-Development. Man can’t make himself better. Sure, he can build more muscle and get into shape, but he can’t make himself morally better. That’s “New Age” - believing that we have it “inside ourselves” to make ourselves better. That’s Hogwash!

We are here for ONE reason ONLY, and the Bible tells us what that is: To glorify God, Isaiah 43:7

Everything God does, he ultimately does for his name’s sake, for his glory (Psalm 19:1-4, Psalm 23:3, Ezekiel 20:9, Ezekiel 36:22-32, John 8:50, John 12:27-28,John 17:1, Romans 1:5, Romans 11:36, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Colossians 1:15-20). God made our purpose, therefore, to glorify God.

And the way that we do that is to study our Bible diligently, pray fervently, and seek Jesus Christ with all our heart. Then as we “behold Him and become Changed into hIs image” He will slowly replace our carnal nature with His character and disposition.

We have NO goodness on our own. The only virtue we have at all is what Christ has put in us.

God says, “Behold, I make ALL new.” Rev 21:5

ML said (September 25, 2019):

We cannot develop ourselves into a state of salvation; we can only avail ourselves of the Free Gift of Salvation and Right Standing that was provided for us in the Death and Resurrection of The Lamb of God, His Own Only Begotten Son, given for our Ransom, and raised for our Justification.

"All of our righteousness is as filthy rags." God is too Holy to admit sin into His presence. All men [and women] are contaminated in their being by right of our being conceived by and born into a fallen-from-grace race. Jesus Himself said that NO ONE could come to the Father but BY HIM. What hubris, what ignorance, to think that any of us could provide for ourselves right standing before a Holy God, out of our own efforts.

There is no other plan, no other path, that avails in this regard, but the one that God Himself has freely and graciously provided; it was provided us by the Godhead before the world began, for Christ was The Lamb Slain From Before the Foundation of the World. It is said in His Word that God consigned all to sin that He might have mercy on all. To snub His Mercy, in terms of the Salvation He has already provided, is to lose all hope.

No other effectual plan, no other effectual path, exists, but the one outlined for us in His Holy Word.

Bruno M said (September 25, 2019):

An Adaptation of a Clandestine Military Commando's Prayer:

I am an earth angel alliance Commando. As my brother Commandos before me, I am proud to step into history as a member of the Prayer Warrior Special Operations Command. I will walk both with pride and humility yet with my head held high. My heart and attitude will show my allegiance to Jesus and Mary and the combat legions of Angels, to all of humanity, to country and to comrades. When unable to walk another step, I will still crawl another mile. With Salvation's freedom my goal, I will step into destiny with confidence under the Angelic Warrior Special Operations Command and the leadership of Archangel Michael and Mary, Aeiparthenos, Virgo Potens, for She is more terrible than a special op team on a combat mission in full attack mode.

Ken Adachi said (September 25, 2019):

For me, I'll stick with the classical raison d'etre that physical life is a schoolhouse to acquire spiritual lessons (which you keep on demonstrating in these essays) which burnishes the soul towards closer union with God.

After we graduate from this planet, we move on to other planets, in other dimensions, where the living is considerably easier, but physical nonetheless. After we make the Rounds on Planet B for a few millennia, we graduate up to Planet C where the accommodations are even MORE luxurious.

And again, as we catch on, and build up our spiritual bank account, we then graduate to Planet D and into the Penthouse Community of physical worlds where everything is simply WONDERFUL for a lifespan of maybe 200, 300 or perhaps 400 years. Oh Man, are we having a Good Time!!!

However, it gradually dawns on us that we could be even HAPPIER if we got closer to God and the only way that's going to happen is to gradually shed the physical model and start in at the Ground level in the non physical spheres and work our way up THAT ladder for a while towards less and less dense worlds until we finally move into pure Light consciousness and achieve union with God (that's the Reader's Digest version, but true all the same.

The ancient Hindus figured it out a long time ago; as did Edgar Cayce, who laid out a similar scenario of how we go up the ladder of spiritual advancement in his writings.

On the Nature of thought, Thought is the vehicle which drives creation. All things created spring from thought, including your reality, which is a product of your thoughts. Change your thoughts and you change your reality. If enough of us changed our collective thoughts in the Right direction, we could change our collective reality - and turn the JWO on its head in the blink of an eye (to coin a phrase).

Peter R said (September 25, 2019):

A little late for Self Development and the money printers love it if we do nothing more than that. The purpose of life, presently, is to defend civilized culture from the money counterfeiting savages, before they rob
the last wealth from us with their fake money and their communist minions pulverize Western culture with Cultural Marxism.

JG said (September 25, 2019):

As Jesus said in Mark 10:18 (CSBV)
"Why do you call me good"?
"no one is good but God alone".
Jesus himself here does not even equate himself with the good of God.

St. Paul with the same kind of humility declared himself "the least of the saints" in Ephesians 3:8.

As long as we are in the flesh we'll always fall short of the mark.

Humility is the trademark of a righteous person. Like St. Paul we should think of ourselves as less than others and not more.

We cannot achieve peace of mind and happiness until we replace our worldly desires with righteous desires.

Essel said (September 24, 2019):

When I read the title, I thought it was a sentence put in the mouth of an illuminati agent.

And I thought to myself that you denounce a watchword that is very well understood and followed and that makes it possible to make the herd swallow everything else, that you denounce constantly and sharply: "Look constantly at your navel, and let me quietly spill everything from top to bottom during that time!"

The men you are talking about do not obey God in any way, they run after themselves; they think of themselves as God by defining the purpose of their lives themselves.
But no, I was wrong (although I still hope so).
God did not create us gratuitously without any merit on our part, so that we could choose ourselves without compensation for the gifts He gave us. He asks us to be a (pale) reflection of Himself by doing good and avoiding evil in such a way as to make His glory, which is in a way, the ostentation of Good, burst forth. So, if we have thanked him in this way during our earthly life, He allows us to contemplate him from the front and to participate in his intimate life.
Of course, if, as all gnoses falsely claim, we ("our soul" if you will) are already made of divine matter (a "plot", a "spark" of God), other-wise if we are divine ourselves, there is no necessary effort on ourselves to gain closeness to God, and then, why not spend our lives licking ice cream in vanilla if we like that, striving to become a great painter, etc?

Alas, it is easy to demonstrate that the contingent beings of us are not intersecting the only necessary Being, existing by himself that is God: we do not exist by ourselves, for if this were the case, be certain that, master of my essence, I would not age, I would not fall ill and die!

"Vice begins with the presumption of making oneself master of one's own life." (S. Augustine, De Spiritu Et Anima, Book I, n. 11)

--

You quote Mt 5:8 ("Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect") but you interpret it yourself, and in a material sense although all the acts and words of Jesus must above all be read in a spiritual and moral sense (even if material and temporal consequences follow from it). The perfection we must seek is that of conformity to what He asks of us and not that of our body or the painting we paint for entertainment.

Thus the Ancient Hebrews expected a messiah who would be a brilliant king giving power and worldly glory to the kingdom of Israel. They saw a man come in who was deprived of everything and who preached the great value of poverty and things that went against the ideals they had forged for themselves....

But nowadays, almost all men are like these ancient Hebrews. They rejected their Savior in order to worship themselves in personal development and in the vain and unrestrained search for material well-being. This phenomenon was perfectly understood and explained by Gougenot des Mousseaux in his book on the Judaization of goyim by the diaspora. If they do not convert before they die, they will go to hell, which made Jesus cry.