In our personal struggle between effort and laziness, openness to challenge and fear of challenge, spiritual growth and spiritual decline, good and evil, our conscience can tell us very clearly when we have done something wrong. How does our conscience know what is right and wrong? For that matter, what is the conscience anyway?

We all experience the conflicting desires to do good and evil within ourselves (who doesn't feel a guilty conscience now and then?) If we identify that part of our mind that always seeks to direct us towards goodness as our "original mind", we can then say that the source of our original mind must be God, who by definition is the ultimate source of all goodness. Likewise, we have an "evil mind" that has its ultimate source in the devil. 

True spiritual growth then, is in reality the empowerment and development of our original mind, and the unity of our lives with goodness and our original mind, and ultimately our unity with God. Spiritual stagnation can then be understood as the situation where this movement towards goodness and God is not happening. Spiritual decline then is movement in the other direction, towards evil and selfishness.

It is our responsibility therefore, to utilize the grace we experience in our lives to effect spiritual growth in ourselves and others. We have powerful forces on our side, namely the power of love, God's grace, the force of conscience, intuition, our original mind, our spiritual mentors, and our understanding of the truth and reality. Our opposition has powerful forces too: hate, bigotry, selfishness, fear, ignorance and falsehood. If we can at least recognize that we are in a battle and understand the forces that are influencing our lives, we stand a chance of achieving victory.

It has been said that the devil's greatest victory is to get you to believe he does not exist, because then you will not fight, and if you do not fight you will be defeated.

God's greatest victory is achieved when we can love unconditionally, no matter what, and when we remain faithful and determined to never give up in our quest for the perfection of our hearts.