Psychomachia Perception Born, 7 Deadly Errors & Virtues Print

The Psychomachia (Battle of spirits or soul war) is a poem by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius, from the early fifth century AD. This piece, Perception Born is one of 8 pieces reflecting the original 7 deadly sins as errors. Errors may be undone, however, sin is cast on a perceptional foundation of guilt and remains as is as much as we believe it so. Within each belief put in place in the errors of lust, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, gluttony, and envy, [order from left to right] perception is born and we move further from knowledge and certainty. With this "eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainly has gone. The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. And now they go to find what has been given them to seek." Furthest from the truth we go. Now lust is celebrated as being pseudo-love, greed is seen as ambition, sloth as giving yourself a little bit of 'peace', wrath as taking control of your destination, setting your sails, pride as an integral character trait of success YOUR success regardless of how or who gets flattened on the pathway to it, gluttony becomes an appreciation and gratitude for what you have more of, and envy making our way UP the social ladder to ensure our daily gratitude that we 'have' what 'they' don't... now our self-esteem is measured on our ability to win at these characters to ensure 'someone' else loses to our benefit and in the eternal search we bolster our self-esteem, touted by many a renowned speaker as the cornerstone of personal growth, with perceptual uncertainties ending up incredibly lonely in our search for certainty. Now indeed sanity is replaced by insanity, purity smeared with false perceptions and we forget the real truth as the foundation in our ancient birth. Where love, kindness, diligence, forgiveness, humility, temperance, and gratitude were a matter of fact. Where there was no need to question 'who am I' or 'what is my purpose' we just knew. ACIM