Perfection

Pain and Pleasure and Truth.
The Original Trinity.
The Alpha and Omega.

Pain is evil, pleasure is good, this is not a matter of belief, but a fact. All animals seek to avoid the former and enjoy the latter. What significantly sets humans, to varying degrees, apart from animals is the ability understand ever greater pains and pleasures, this is truth. Truth or knowledge is not good or evil, it simply expands perception. Infinite perception is divine, zero perception is the inanimate or dead. The conflict in humanity arises from differing levels of perception, and false/incomplete truths -beliefs- that thrive on the edges of present perception. Humans and some animals, balance the scales of risk/pain and reward/pleasure to extent they can with their present level of perception. A false truth -belief- either unintentional -ignorance- or intentional -lie- throws off these calculations, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

How much pain/evil would you endure and/or spread in your lifetime if you believed that you would avoid infinite torment and achieve infinite pleasure after death due to it? Conversely, how much pleasure/good would you enjoy and/or spread in your lifetime if you believed that you would avoid infinite torment and achieve infinite pleasure after death due to it?

In the later example, the scales are already weighed towards enjoying pleasure/good and/or spreading it with or without the belief of what happens after death, so nothing would really change besides perhaps an inclination to more drastic action due to the stakes being at their highest. In the prior example however, you would expect a strong inversion of nature, in the form of enduring and/or spreading pain/evil due to the belief of what happens after death. It would be understandable then to see a sharp increase in masochists, sadists, and terrorists.

The above are of course extremes, but I used them for illustrative purposes. We most strongly judge things relative to extremes after-all. It is telling that we have so many beliefs about what happens after death, since death is the cessation of perception. Therefore, nothing, anything, and everything could be. It should be easy though to see how lives can be corrupted by such beliefs, no matter if lies or simply incomplete truths. These beliefs do exist for a reason, and that is because people want to believe, that better times -less pain and greater pleasures- are coming right after the next bend, and over the hill. Indeed, belief itself can be pleasurable and lessen pain... and so humans can become trapped in their own psychic web at the edges of their perception.

The greatest pleasure can only be known by transcendence, in fearlessly and endlessly struggling to reach the divine, embracing defeat as the phoenix. Holding not the edges of perception and the phantoms that lurk there as sacred, comforting they may be. Seek to transform them into good and then when possible transcend them, constantly, and eternally. In this pursuit of perfection, sentience -Spirit- finds perfection.