‘Progress not perfection’ refers to result not target.
The elimination of self really does mean that. In one’s own perception, the personality has to go. One might continue to seem to others to have a certain nature, but the fostering of one’s position and associated image has to be halted, not just crimped.
If this is pursued, over time, there’s a lot more doing nothing, being quiet, a lot less presiding, taking charge, slathering oneself like Nutella over every edible surface. One takes up less space, does less, sometimes achieves less, but one what does do is more precise, more tailored, more unexpected, and, hopefully, precisely what God wanted all along.
An acquaintance who lives in Japan said she went into a tea place in, oh, I don’t know, Hokkaido, and the chap took five minutes to make the cup of tea. She was aggravated until she realised he was doing it properly, even though she was in a hurry. Something else was more important to him, and that something else was not him and what she thought of him.
I used to see some so-called old-timers in AA sit apart rather than in the middle and be unusually quiet. I thought: do they not have anything to contribute? Why are they holding back? I’ve got a better sense of what is going on, now.