Goodness

 Goodness

132:2.8 (1458.5)Until you reach the levels of Paradise, goodness will always be more a seeking and pursuit than a possession, more a goal than the experience of having attained it. But even as you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you experience more and more satisfaction in acquiring goodness in part. The presence of good and evil in the world is in itself positive proof of the existence and reality of man's moral will, the personality, which thus identifies these values and is also able to choose between them.

132:2.9 (1458.6)By the time the ascending mortal reaches Paradise, his capacity to identify his self with true spirit-values has been so increased that it has culminated in the attainment of the perfect possession of the light of life. Such a perfected spirit-personality comes to such a whole, divine and spiritual union with the positive, supreme qualities of goodness, beauty and truth, that it is no longer possible for this righteous spirit to cast off any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the piercing radiation of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise. In all such spirit-personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrasting and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually fulfilled: it approaches the purity and perfection of the Most High.

132:2.10 (1458.7)The possibility of evil is necessary for moral choice, but not its actuality. A shadow is real only in a relative sense. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. At the lower levels of spiritual development, potential evil works just as well as incitement to decisions in the field of moral progress. Evil becomes a reality in personal experience only when a moral consciousness makes evil its choice.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book