Emotions and Ethics deals with two direct relationships not often adequately recognized. The first is that between character development and spiritual awakening. The second is that between personality refinement and spiritual self-expression. The evolutionary process of recognizing and developing these relationships traces a course through the animal, human, and angelic possibilities within our own individual souls.
You will know only so much of the Divine, this section seems to say, as you yourself can become. You will see its actions in your own life to the extent that you master your own baser nature and cultivate your own latent spiritual nobility. You will see its benign presence in the world around you to the extent that you first, see the working of evolutionary laws in human experience and, second, consciously place your own maturing intelligence into the service of that evolutionary development. Purification of motive and act must precede reliable revelation.
Within our hearts, this section says--under the agitation's, doubts, and desires--is a reliable source of individualized ethical guidance for daily living. We can know what is best in a given situation and we can respond creatively and positively to its needs by drawing upon spiritual resources from within. But to make use of this guidance, we must first acquire enough self-discipline to discern its voice among the many that contend within us. And we must acquire enough strength of will to act as it would have us do. Only in doing this do we truly become it. And only in ourselves becoming it do we come to the calm, unshakeable certitude that it is.
Editorial policy with regard to selection and placement of the material in this section is the same as that mentioned in the introductions to Perspectives and The Quest. Likewise, (P) at the end of a para indicates that the para also appears in Perspectives, the survey volume to this series.