MOTIVES

 
To be an aspirant on the Path — and I do not mean you have to be these things to begin with: heaven help us, we would never get anywhere then — you have to have certain qualifications. The first one is that you have to have discrimination between what is real and what is unreal.

It is the dawning of this that causes one to go on the Path — that one realizes one's confusion and all the things that one does not know and wants to know. It is very difficult to determine what is good and what is bad, what is wise and what is foolish, what is worth-while and what is not.

When you start studying the real saints, their lives and their teachings, you find that they often have a totally different idea about matters that to us have been positive creeds. We think certain things are good and certain things are not good.

You will find that Masters, and God Himself, always judge us by our motives. And, we can have the darnedest lot of motives in so many things that we do. We may give a building to the city. Do we do it to make the people happy and comfortable who are going to be in that building? Do we do it to get our name in the newspapers? Or, do we do it to assuage some guilt feeling we have? Or, do we think we are going to buy a little corner in heaven with it?

There are just all kinds of motives in the least thing you do. Even calling on a friend. Do you do it from a sense of duty? Do you do it because he needs you? Do you do it because you love him? Do you do it because you want something from him?