© 2002 The Brotherhood of Man Library
The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized man is not concerned so much with some specific intellectual belief or with any one particular mode of living as with discovering the truth of living, the good and right technique of reacting to the ever-recurring situations of mortal existence. Moral consciousness is just a name applied to the human recognition and awareness of those ethical and emerging spiritual values which duty demands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day control and guidance of conduct.
Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values.
Spirituality is non-existent to a purely material being.
The Gospel of Jesus is a living spiritual reality.
The evidence of true spiritual development consists in the exhibition of a human personality motivated by love, activated by unselfish ministry, and dominated by the wholehearted worship of the perfection ideals of divinity. Spiritual growth is invariably unconscious.
Sincere recognition of the nature of sin is essential to religious growth and spiritual progress.
Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and goodness, are concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of time and space. But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values.
Prayer and worship are the most potent spiritual-growth stimuli.
Habits which favor spiritual growth embrace cultivated sensitivity to divine values, recognition of religious living in others, reflective meditation on cosmic meanings, worshipful problem solving, sharing one’s spiritual life with one’s fellows, avoidance of selfishness, refusal to presume on divine mercy, living as in the presence of God.
But the great problem of spiritual living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of LOVE. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.
To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. Advanced mortals learn that love is the greatest thing in the universe—and they know that God is love. But the highest realization and the truest interpretation of the golden rule consists in the consciousness of the spirit of the truth of the enduring and living reality of such a divine declaration. The true cosmic meaning of this rule of universal relationship is revealed only in its spiritual realization, in the interpretation of the law of conduct by the spirit of the Son to the spirit of the Father that indwells the soul of mortal man. And when such spirit-led mortals realize the true meaning of this golden rule, they are filled to overflowing with the assurance of citizenship in a friendly universe, and their ideals of spirit reality are satisfied only when they love their fellows as Jesus loved us all, and that is the reality of the realization of the love of God.
The spirit of the Master’s injunction (love one another) consists in the nonresistance (non-existence?) of all selfish reaction to the universe, coupled with the aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit values: divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth—to know God and to become increasingly like him.
God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spiritual content of any value is imperishable.
If you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of sonship and spiritual progress. Every step you take must be one of willingness, intelligent and cheerful co-operation. The domination of the Spirit is never tainted with coercion nor compromised by compulsion.
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never a laugh but the moans come double;
And that is life!
Paul L. Dunbar
No human relation gives one possession of another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.
Kahil Gibran
Spiritual development depends, first, on the maintenance of a living spiritual connection with true spiritual forces and, second, on the continuous bearing of spiritual fruit: yielding the ministry to one’s fellows of that which has been received from one’s spiritual benefactors. Spiritual progress is predicated on intellectual recognition of spiritual poverty coupled with the self-consciousness of perfection-hunger, the desire to know God and be like him, the wholehearted purpose to do the will of the Father in heaven.
Spiritual growth is first an awakening to needs, next a discernment of meanings, and then a discovery of values. The evidence of true spiritual development consists in the exhibition of a human personality **motivated by love, activated by unselfish ministry, and dominated by the wholehearted worship of the perfection ideals of divinity.
Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one’s nearness to God and the measure of one’s usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefore and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love.
Actual spiritual status is the measure of Deity attainment, Adjuster attunement. The achievement of finality of spirituality is equivalent to the attainment of the maximum of reality, the maximum of Godlikeness. Eternal life is the endless quest for infinite values.
The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal.
Spiritual evolution is in experiencing the voluntary choice of goodness accompanied by progressive diminution in the experiencing of the possibility of evil.
Mortal man is entitled to the enjoyment of physical pleasures and to the satisfaction of human affections. Man also is benefited by loyalty to human associations and temporal institutions. But these are not the eternal foundations upon which to build the immortal personality which must transcend space, vanquish time, and achieve the eternal destiny of divine perfection and finaliter service.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal.
Longfellow
Welcome, O life! I go to encounterfor the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.