Brethren, as it is, Justification is the light and the darkness, the right, or the image of right, that takes away the totality of wrong; the good, or the image of good, that takes away the totality of evil; the white, or the image of white that takes away the vitality of black. When as humans we justify in human terms, we run from the total darkness of the Godless world of men We create for our own peace of mind, an artificial man-made light, an image of rightness to counteract the knowledge of total wrongness in a world that has rejected its Creator. We manufacture an illusion of good, so that all is not seen to be evil. We paint white, that which is in essence black because it has removed its elf from the source of all life and knowledge. We give the semblance of truth to that which we know to be a lie. That is the human game. When a man does wrong and knows he has done wrong, he tries to make it not so wrong by justifying it. He harms another man, feels the guilt, and then tries to reduce the burden of sin against himself; by blaming another, by reducing his awareness of the extent of the harm he has done, by pleading ignorance, by insisting that he only intended good, anything to create some rightness, or illusion of rightness, to relieve the sense of total wrongness. That is the justification of men, the justification of self by self; a man-made light flickering feebly, but just perceptibly in the great void of Godless darkness. And by agreement, in the world of men, they justify each other -except when they MUST blame each other in order to justify themselves. And they alternate between combining forces in fear against the common enemy of total darkness, and fighting one another for the meager and inadequate substitutes of artificial light. A man must feel justified, even if it means the whole-hearted condemnation of another man. If for him to maintain his illusion of being right, another must be shown to be wrong, then that is the goal he pursues. The world of men is the absence of GOD, and therefore the antipodes of Heaven, which is Hell. And man carries a candle in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven. And whenever a man feels wrong in the eyes of GOD, he tries to make himself right in the eyes of men. When he feels the darkness of his estrangement from GOD closing in upon him, he lights a candle of manmade lightness, and fights off the suffocating gloom. He justifies. Every time he makes an excuse for his actions; every time he pretends to himself that what he has done is not as bad as it really feels to him; every time he blames his shortcomings on his background, or his upbringing, or his environment; every time he blames his circumstances on his neighbors, or his employers, or the government, or the weather; every time he blames his failures or mistakes on his friends, or his enemies, or his colleagues, or his lack of education; every time he protects his good and altruistic intonations against the knowledge of his selfishness; every time he blinds himself to the destructive consequences of his actions; every time he makes a show of good will which balies his inner feelings of distaste; every time he makes himself feel pity of remorse, to convince himself of his virtue; every time he shifts responsibility for all the ugliness and wrong around him; he justifies. He carries a candle of illusion into the darkness of reality. For if a man can justify his state of being, if he can find just a chink of light in his world, or if not find it, then create it, then he can continue in that state of being OF that world. That is what it is to justify. If we are wrong and we know without a shadow of doubt that we are wrong, then we MUST cease to be what we are. If what we do is evil, and we cannot escape the knowledge that it is evil, then we MUST stop doing it. No one can do or be that which no part of him tells him to do or be, and if no part of him can find even a pretence of an illusion or rightness or good in an action or state, then no part of him drives him towards it. He has no justification. But if we can find a grain of what seems to be rightness in what we are, or create an image of rightness, even if it only lurks in the back of the mind, then we can go on being what we are. That grain, that image, drives us to continue. And if we can create the illusion of just one shadow of goodness in our actions, or at least a suggestion of inevitability which counteracts the concept of deliberate evil, then we can go on acting as we do. These tiny images of rightness and goodness and choice-less-ness, are enough to give us what we need to continue as we are. They are our justifications. The world of man lives in a constant state of justification. The lie is: "...justification reveals the truth, and therefore it is the right thing to do." Justification is one of the roads of Hell. It runs parallel to another road in Hell called Blame, which is the detonator of all evil. And man carries a candle to light his way. And so as man believes he is moving forward, he moves in a state of illusion. The candle lights his way in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven. In the world of men, countless bright and shiny images, dreams and illusions, bum to keep humanity justified in its estrangement from its Source of Life. Man has, in his terms, justified himself and his Godless state of being, justified his actions, justified his way of life, with everything the world has offered him. But a few, a precious few, have stopped before it was too late. They have remembered the Light of Life. They have recalled its brilliance and its purity, and they have remembered that it was not made by man, but stems from GOD. They have seen the inky blackness of man's self-justification. They have witnessed what he calls his altruism, and seen it as no more than masked egotism. They have looked behind the protested appearances off good intention, and seen the self-interested and destructive motives which they hide. They have looked at man, the mighty lord of all creation in his own deluded eyes, and seen an empty husk, chasing, in ever decreasing circles after an empty dream. They have known the hollowness of man's endeavors on his own account. They have seen the utter futility of his attempts to create a GOD that works on man's agenda. And, they move forward. They have rejected justification. They OWN the Circumstances that surround them. They see what stops them, acknowledging the failure and moving forward. They stand powerfully in the giving of their Word and are responsible for their actions. They seek out a clear space to create profound thought and concepts. They uncover that which is concealed. They reconcile opposites and watch as Blame and Justification no longer become their well traveled road. Alone, they reach into the murky depths of the pool of darkness and feel for a hand and pull on it to reveal the man that does not know he is drowning. And when the man is pulled out of the pool he is bent over barely able to stand, weak, in all of the nakedness of his illusions. And now he looks around him and looks at sights that he can vaguely remember from a long time ago, years past, in his youth; and the man begins to cry so deeply that there is no sound, only the pain on his face, for now he confronts the source of all of his ills, himself.