I was listening recently to an audiobook from AW Tozer, and in one of his explanatory passages regarding the human condition he used the phrase ‘Circular Progress’. What a great description of so much of our activity.

Ever wondered why as individuals we can spend years striving, only to end up back where we started? How we go from austerity to austerity? How we have war in Europe, once, twice, thrice?

Ever wondered how nothing changes, even whilst the scenery changes, the technology changes, yet somehow, nothing changes?

Businesses make circular progress, less so individually, certainly collectively, raising hundreds of millions to deliver a sandwich quickly, or make a simulacrum to escape to, or a platform for gossip.

What is progress? Launching something ‘new’? Doing the same thing, but bigger? Progress implies a moving towards something, achieving an aim, or becoming more or less of something. But if the somethings are without substance, just the increase of numbers, or some other dull metric or activity, is that really progress, in the meaningful sense of the word?

To make progress is to move towards an improved or more advanced condition. But if one’s comprehension is flawed it’s almost inevitable that movement in any direction will not be progression in the truest sense, any more than a goldfish swimming in a bowl. Activity does not equate to progress. Acquisition does not equate to progress. Doing less and having less is more likely to achieve authentic progress than any increase in activity and consumption.

A familiar human trait is a dissatisfaction with our present condition coupled to an incomprehension of what an ideal and satisfying condition could be. So we do more of what we were doing or we try a different way of spending our time and a different way of moving numbers, and soon that looks and feels just the same as before.

Progress without knowing the destination is impossible, or at least would be, if the destination itself were not calling us and perhaps even subtly we hear, although as a singular strategy for travel I do not recommend it.

If we progress like the pilgrim in the book, towards a known place, even not knowing where that place is, the place can still be found.

Let us say the destination and place is a country called God, and that progress is the journey towards God, until arriving and entering into God, and thereafter progress is the continued journeying within God in order to know God better. This is progress of a most transformational and meaningful nature, for what could be more profound, more important, more vital?

The path is straight, and narrow, and hard to stay upon. And yet this is progress, linear, from alpha to omega, a true progression from one place to another, from lower to higher.

I recommend this country of which I speak, and I recommend the journey to it, providing meaning as it does, and being of many adventures.

It is not a circular journey, one does not return, indeed one would rather live there forever and journey there within for there are delights and extraordinary happenings and beings and explorings beyond counting, and it becomes one's new and ancient home.

As all journeys taken, it is not without cost, but the price is rendered naught by the wealth therein obtained, and besides, all within is free.

So much better than swimming in circles.

Bird Lovegod is MD of EthicalMuch

How to break out of going around in circles - Bird Lovegod