If one quality had to be singled out as being primarily required to live an ethical life, it would without question be courage. This courage Aristotle considered to be “the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

Indeed, so many good intentions get crushed by the fear to expose oneself or to break the bonds that tie us to others! So many ambitious programs are carefully reflected upon and put forward only to wane and erode away in the face of weariness! Because courage is essential every step of the way: to make the inaugural move that marks the beginning, to dominate the fear of exposing oneself, to spontaneously assert one’s freedom while remaining loyal to the initial impetus, and finally to survive the long solitary struggle against despondency.

Keeping a logbook can prove useful in many ways for the practice of ethics. It provides precious help in the process of self-knowledge.
The first reason why putting down experiences is useful is obvious: in addition to helping us fight against forgetfulness, it helps us focus on our daily experiences, encouraging us to analyse them and to set up plans of action for the next day, so that we may correct our mistakes.
Example: I am playing with my 5-year-old daughter and my 8-year-old son. We split into teams, my son on one side, my daughter and I on the other. Slowly but surely I get carried away and I forget that my opponent is an 8-year-old child. I win hands down, as my daughter watches with admiration, and I don’t even give my son the chance to score the couple of points that would have allowed him to save face. Only at the end of the game do I suddenly realise the negative emotion that has invaded me—it looks a lot like pride. Too late. My son is humiliated, he doesn’t feel like playing anymore and will refuse to play this game from now on.

If ethics is about principles, practicing ethics is about method. In this field, we can assume that not just any method will do. So we have to figure out which method will be the most efficient to get us closer to our goal of progressing towards spiritual perfection.
For the purposes of this post, I will assume that the reader is familiar with the various psychological forces at play in the paradigm of the process of perfection, and in particular with the concept of imperious self (IS), which may be defined as an impulsive force systematically opposed to spiritual progress. The IS is protean—it creeps in through the cracks created by our moral faults or lack of attention. It takes on different looks depending on the person and the circumstances. One day it will oppose itself to your spiritual work head-on, and the next, like a chameleon, it will pass itself as a spiritual thought and deceive your reason.

After reading the interview with Bahram Elahi on altruism on this website, I was struck by the idea that “Those who care about their process of perfection should include the practice of altruism in their spiritual program”. In my first post, I tried to understand what altruism really was and how to tackle this practice in a daily program. Now I would like to explore the second half of the question: why practice altruism?

Some time ago, on this website, I came upon the interview with Bahram Elahi on altruism. One sentence in particular caught my attention: “Those who care about their process of perfection should include the practice of altruism in their spiritual program”.

Over the years that I had been “interested” in my perfection I had sensed that trying to help others was a practice that conformed to divine ethics. Only now, however, did I grasp the importance of this practice, expressed in the term “should”, and the notion of a “spiritual program”.

I decided to focus more deeply on the matter and at once was faced with two questions: why and how.

Prof. Elahi regularly lectures in Europe and North America. In October 2010, his talk in Paris focused on two key concepts in Ostad Elahi’s thought: self-knowledge and Perfection. Self-knowledge refers to active, concrete, in vivo knowledge of the powers that constitute our being, a knowledge that becomes more refined through the practice of true ethics, based on correct divine principles. According to Prof. Elahi, everything else results from this, including the level of development reached by the “metabrain”, as well as the understanding and freedom that one can enjoy here and in the other world.

In order to gauge the ethical quality of our conduct, there are many factors to be considered, such as the motivation and intention behind a certain course of action. But how does our intention matter, if in most cases we are not even sure what it is? In what sense can intention affect our spiritual growth? These are delicate issues. Here are some reflections from one of our readers that we found worth sharing.

There is more to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) than the American icon we know today. A printer by trade, he became famous as a gifted inventor, a scientist, a civic activist, a statesman, a diplomat (he was the first American ambassador to France), and the author of several essays on matters ranging from politics to marriage or the game of chess. Now, besides having invented the lightning rod and counting among the Founding Fathers of the United States, Franklin led a personal quest into the spiritual roots of morality—an aspect of his life which is perhaps less commonly celebrated.

To do good, as we all know, is not only helping, supporting and comforting others. It is also and above all doing it with as selfless an intention as possible, by trying to put aside our own egotistical interests. I say “as selfless an intention as possible,” since experience shows that perfect selflessness is an ideal hardly ever attainable. Making this an absolute condition for a truly ethical act, may hinder our motivation for something that we know is out of our reach anyway. To speak of acts as-selfless-as-possible is not only to recognise that what seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition

Effort is generally defined as the amount of energy we must expend to achieve something that can be difficult or even painful. It is generally agreed that “in the absence of effort there can be no result”. Conversely, “any effort must necessarily produce some result”. But some results may not seem quite enough to us. Indeed, we often take for granted that self-development programs, coaching techniques and the like naturally lead to quick and palpable results for those who seriously commit to changing themselves. In practice, however, things are far from obvious, and high expectations can be the source of major disappointment. How should we deal with the fact that, most often, the actual results of our efforts are not what we expect them to be?