I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the futility of the mortal trying to do better. “Perfection is gained only by perfection” (S&H 290:19-20). That which is imperfect can never become perfect, because imperfection is nothing, and nothing cannot become something. The belief of old theology that starts with something less than perfect that has to work its passage back to perfection is forlorn. It leads either to self-satisfaction, which is the Pharisee enjoying a personal sense of goodness, or to the Publican bewailing a personal sense of failure. Neither aspect of personal sense is true.
Not one single thing that appears to be taking place in the dream of material existence, good or bad, is ever other than mortal mind’s upside down view: and it is never true. This is why we do not extol, condemn or tinker with the dream. We “…live above corporeal sense and correct it” (S&H 167:7). That is, we stay with the eternal spiritual fact—that which is true from the standpoint of unchanging Principle—and let this efface, outshine, melt the mirage of mortal experience. You are not a dream character, called a mortal, trying to change the circumstances of its dream.
The fact is unchanging abundance: Life piled high with immortal fruits; a teeming universe of Mind, with nothing lacking; the purity of Soul, unimpaired by a single mortal element. You are not identified with that which is but the objective state of material sense (S&H 283:13-24).
Nothing in your Life is open to question. Your innate perfection is inherent in the Principle before the mirror, and not in something separate. “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The substance, intelligence, capacity, is always in its Principle and not in idea, just as harmony is in the principle of music and not in the notes.