Every mind has its particular standard of good and bad and of right and wrong. This standard is made of what one has experienced through life, by what one has seen or heard; it also depends upon one’s belief in a certain religion, one’s birth in a certain nation and origin from a certain race. But what can really be called good or bad, or right or wrong is what comforts the mind and what causes it discomfort. It is not true, although it appears to be, that it is discomfort that causes wrongdoing. In reality it is wrongdoing which causes discomfort and it is right doing which gives comfort. And for the very reason that a certain thing gives comfort it is right, and what causes discomfort is wrong.
Very few in the world look at it in this way. If those who do well all their lives are unhappy, I would rather they did not do well. Their well-doing is neither well for them nor for another. The standard of right or wrong and good or bad made rigidly on the action is the artificial standard which seems outwardly a moral law, but causes degeneration in the end. The standard of action must be made natural, not artificial. The curse of the present day is the artificiality of life today. People must be taught to consult their own spirit and from their own feelings to find out and make a distinction between right and wrong and good and bad.
When this natural principle is adopted by humanity the greater part of the world misery will come to an end. This wrong and artificial standard is taught today to children at home and to young people at school. They begin to learn that that is wrong which they have heard others call wrong, that is right which they have read in a book that it is right; something is good because their parents have said it is good, something is bad because their friends have told them it is. An artificial standard made in this way buries the spirit, which alone has the right to discern between right and wrong and good and bad. On that day when people will arrive at the freedom of making their own standard by their own feelings a better condition will come.
For those searching after truth, journeying through the spiritual path, this is the first thing to learn, to find out for themselves under all conditions in life what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, not from what they are taught or told, but from their own feelings, which can be perceived by a delicate sense of realizing through life what really gives comfort and what causes discomfort.
Life is not made to be good and unhappy; life is made to be happy and therefore one has to be good. No happiness is to be sacrificed to goodness, but that goodness must be considered the real goodness which in its result is happiness.
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