A LONG THOUGH

ON UPRIGHTNESS

 

 

It is my realization that truth and uprightness are qualities that are not merely desirable but even necessary to the growth and development of my mind and spirit.

 

I wish to attain to truth, to true being. However, like is known by like. This means that I can reach truth only by being true. I rise towards truth, true being, to the extent that my own thoughts are true.

 

It has been said that the outer has to correspond to the inner. But it is not always that I can say  outwardly what I know to be true. In this world I must often be silent. That tells me much about what this world is. There are other worlds, however, where I and all the beings not just may and can be true but must be true inwardly as well as outwardly. I am striving towards those worlds. Inwardly I can always be true if I want to and am prepared to make the effort.

 

The more I seek the truth, the more uprightness stands out as a twin sister of truth. To me, upright­ness is an unceasing striving to perceive where the right path goes. It is the ability to see the right path. The right path is right action but also right renunciation. I realize that I often do not act when I should and sometimes act when I should refrain. Uprightness also is under­standing of the degree of purity of my motives. It is easy to ask: “Why did I do this? It is more difficult but more rewarding to ask instead: “How could I have acted differently? Is there a better motive than the one impelling me to do what I did?” 

 

Uprightness means impartial, impersonal judgement independently of my advantage or dis­advantage, sympathy or antipathy, friendship or enmity. The sense of fair play in sportsmanship, and chivalry, are kin to this quality.

 

Magnanimity is the expression of a generous and noble mind. That wondrous quality is alien to all pettiness, vengefulness, envy, calculation, meanness. The fact that it is necessary to the activation of my emotional superconscious makes it still more desirable.

 

Sincerity, loyalty, gratitude are noble qualities which have in common that they require reci­pro­city for anybody to be able to show them to other people. They must not be abused. Being abused they strengthen evil. To allow ruthless cynicism, daring latitude, or unscrupulous cal­cula­tion to abuse noble qualities is to make goodness defenceless and contribute to its ruin.

 

Sincerity is an important factor in our searching, a response organ for the perception of what is geniune and spurious, true and false. It is blunted by fanaticism. Any self-deception whatsoever is positively destructive to the instinct. Untruthfulness is the greatest enhancer of illusoriness.

 

In a 2500-year-old book we read: “The ancients who wished to cultivate their persons first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. From the supreme leader down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered. It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.”

 

Let reality decide my every thought and truth rule in my life.

 

My Augoeides: Lead me from unreality to reality, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality.