The Practice of the Virtues

It is easy to separate out the practice of the virtues from contemplative prayer and assign them to two different categories: one the dimension of morality and the other that of spirituality. They are, however, not separate at all. Though they exist in different domains and along different axes, they are to be held together in each individual at the level of the heart for they depend upon one another. The great sacred traditions assert that the virtues, along the horizontal axis, are the means of knowledge, and as such they are declared to be "knowledge" because they are conducive to acquiring a vision of transcendent reality. Opposed to this are such opposites as pride, hypocrisy, cruelty, impatience, insincerity and the like. These are defined as "ignorance" and they blind the soul to Light and veil the Truth. Pride, for example, is not simply immoral, it is a spiritual dysfunction that affects the soul. The virtue of humility, on the other hand, is not exhausted as a pure moral category, it has above all a truly spiritual function--it prefigures the extinction of the "small self" and the realization of the greater Self, that manner of being that conforms with the highest Truth. Here, in space-time, we are asked to integrate these two as a living reality within ourselves.