If you write one page a day every day of the year for one full year, you will have produced one large book or two books of more than 180 pages each. A little effort goes a long way. Desire, consistency, dedication, intellect and will fortified by the Cardinal Virtues produces a great life that is strengthened by simplicity, the gift of Applied Moral Wisdom and right action. One can never regain the time lost by wrong action. Rather wrong action forces a person to life a life of “catch-up”. 

Gentleness requires constant attention. Wherever love abounds, gentleness flows. That which connects us to the loveliness of life is treated with gentleness in that it leads us to the gift of friends and family, the Scared, the home of our spiritual life. In Living the Gentle Life, therefore, we live the spiritual life. For the deeply spiritual person, gentleness is the guiding attitude. Deeply spiritual people see all creatures as suffused by a Cosmologically Divine Love. For the deeply spiritual person, therefore, every person evokes a gentleness formed in love. Authentic Gentleness cannot be experienced any other way except through Love. 

The love of noise and excitement in modern civilization is due in part to the fact that people are unhappy on the inside. Noise exteriorized them, distracts them, and makes them forget their worries for the moment. There is an unmistakable connection between an empty life and a hectic pace. ─ Fulton Sheen

We live in a “Hurry-Up” world that struggles to move forward because influential people hold it back by feeding on the emotions of “hindsight.” Rather than nourishing themselves with the promise of the future, these people dull the hope of tomorrow by rewriting history with a poisonous ink.

Abstractionism, Agnosticism, Aristotelianism, Atheism, Capitalism, Dadaism, Existentialism,, Humanism, Manichaeism, Marxism, Militarism, Realism, Socialism, and on and on; they all have passed us on the way to the future and we found lacking. Forever Forward my friends.

When I speak about the Spirituality of Executives, I am speaking about the intrinsic qualities that illuminate Moral Wisdom. These qualities include the Cardinal Virtues and the derivative values such as respect, gratitude, fairness, integrity, decency, honesty, kindness, generosity, love, and gentleness.  The more people can order their lives to express these spiritual attributes, the more people can live a more fulfilling and rewarding life.

The prerequisite for Applied Moral Wisdom is a well-formed conscience that characterizes the maturity of adulthood. The Principles of Right Action guide the application of Moral Wisdom. Conscience is never perfect. We all error and previous learning and other influences can hinder the development of an informed conscience. Fear commonly impedes the development of conscience.

Since Consistency of Thought and Action in Applied Moral Wisdom is a good thing, why are so many people inconsistent? They are not. A great number of people ARE consistent in Thought and Action. Unfortunately, they consistently make the poor decision to do the wrong actions. Life is like a box of Syllogisms. Without them, you will never know what kind of relationships you will form. Consistency in thought and action is essential to applying moral wisdom consistently.

Conscience exists along a continuum from infantile to enlightened. Very few people live at the extremes of the Continuum. Enough do, however, to make all the difference in the world, for good or bad. What’s in your Conscience?  Earlier, we discussed the Cardinal Virtues. These are the hinges that open the way to the other virtues. Now we are concerned with the three ethical schools of Applied Moral Wisdom. Think about Ethics as your hammer designed to facilitate the use of Applied Moral Wisdom.

Maturity is not a matter age. It is a matter of enjoying an informed conscience through the living of a virtuous life.  Rather than living as a spiritual person, a person of gentleness, we become more interested in living up to the standards of a competitive world in which only winners are valued as successful.  “Life is short.” I’ve heard this most of my life. Now I am old enough to know that it is true. Now I wonder where the years went. “When all is said and done”, I see that building character is the authentic legacy of every human life. 

The sentiment “Forever Forward” is a call to move forward, to grow, to forever develop oneself for relationship. It is a sentiment ignited by the deep desire to love and be loved, to connect with other human beings, to connect and be respectfully acknowledged.

We cannot move forward in growth if we fail to live a virtuous life. “Forever Forward” is life’s injunction to “Cultivate the virtues”. By doing so, we build our characters.

Think about how we live, how we move, how we learn, how we reflect, how we enjoy relationships, how we eat, drink and celebrate. Everything has an order to it.

There is an order to existence on earth. Life, living, and death all follow one from the other. For human beings, Moral Wisdom makes this work well. Applied Moral Wisdom enables human beings to live a life of moral order.