65. Your (and everyone's) Higher Needs

Always look to your higher needs and values. Keep uppermost in your mind your need and quest for :

* Truth
* Beauty
* Justice
* Love
* Peace
* Enlightenment
* Joy

This is a good list of values and it is in a good order. You could do worse than to start off with these. A very useful exercise when making plans for your life (About every 5 years or so) is to list your values and then prioritise them - that is to say for example ask do you value Love more than Beauty or Wealth ? If so put Love as your No. 1 priority. As you get older, these prioities may change a little but the values themselves will be part of who you are. It is good to aspire to these things but not in a selfish way. These are benefits we should wish for all mankind, not just ourselves. We attain them by practicing them and this makes them available for all.

31. On Fighting Battles

A favourite expression of your Grandfather's, Dominic Timothy Mulvey, was "Never fight a battle you can't win." This implies finding out first whether you can win or not. Unfortunately that is not always possible and some battles have to be fought regardless.It is wise however to avoid battles that can't be won or those that give you a Pyrrhic victory. Fighting for justice or for your own corner is terrific but useless fighting - where you end up as the victim - is a waste of time and usually injurs you and sets you back. How do you know when you have lost a fight ? You have lost when you have been injured more than the other guy or when you have lost something precious to the other guy either as a prize or as something destroyed forever by the enemy.