I remember as a boy watching “Perry Mason” on TV. In the opening credits Lady Justice is prominently pictured, and I was always confused and bothered by that image. “Justice is blind” seemed contradictory to the usually exhaustive legal investigations before a trial. If justice is blind to the circumstances and motives in a case, how could there be justice?

As I got more life experience under my belt, I came to see that what is meant by “justice is blind” is that it is “blind” to vested interests, personal moral bias, and other political ethics that would influence or pervert an otherwise just verdict. Lady Justice brandishes her sword at lies, deceit and pretense, and arrives at the truth of a situation that informs the scales of justice to balance fairness and equity commensurate with the crime and punishment, or guilt and innocence.

There is also a moral component driven by the value system of the culture it serves, and that can vary greatly among ethnic groups, nations and their societies, but it maintains a commonality usually found in the spiritual realm. This begs the question, is there a fundamental universal moral code that is driving all cultures and societies to seek freedom from evil, darkness and slavery? Yes, and I believe it is embedded within the DNA of all life forms having the power of choice.

When committing one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins, or violating any of the Ten Commandments, it is assumed the perpetrators made the choice to do so, thus becoming a societal threat to the order of things. This seems absolute, and there is no quarter given to violators, and any denials of wrongdoing are assumed to be lies.

On an individual level, predating any social programming and cultural indoctrination, in our hearts is an inherent sense of right and wrong. It is part of the structure of DNA, and any attempts to go against that moral structure is met with a host of emotions from disdain to horror to rage and rebellion–both within the being and the interacting members of the society. Then the game becomes cover ups, lies and misdirection, and entire syndicates of these perpetrators collude together to play this depraved game.

But, these people are mostly outliers running in secret gangs and arcane societies, well aware of their transgressions, but gleefully “being evil” for fun and profit. In their hearts they also know ultimately the jig is up, and the longer the moral violations, the harder the obfuscation, and the more inevitable the fall. It is this knowing that brings evil to its knees, and the eventual begging for retribution.

The deeper phenomena at work here is the matter of integrity and self-love. In every society there are factions working to undo the moral fabric, who challenge the DNA mandates of morality, truth and justice. This undermining of something so basic is unbelievable to most, and that is what gives these factions permission to do their dastardly deeds. There is that comfort zone of righteous structure that both protects us from and denies us knowledge of evil, giving criminals their platform for all manner of violations of law, whether it be local ordinances or the cosmic order of things.

We tend to look away from crime and evil when it immediately happens in our lives, but there is that side-glancing fascination with it that sells movie and TV scripts. We then can ride the scripted story train to truth and justice, re-assuring ourselves of our righteousness, comforted by the right choices we’ve made.

The trouble with this psychology is that it is anathema to awakening. It is, in fact, one of the main reasons we fight waking up. Not because we are evil, but because on some level we are condoning it in order to reassure ourselves we have chosen not to be evil. This permission we give to evil is at the root of compromised integrity and denied self-love. In a very real sense, allowing evil to play out its perversity and not doing anything about it is the worst kind of slavery.

Yes, fear of the consequences of directly opposing evil is the usual excuse, but that excuse is what evil depends on. Many times, just seeing something and saying something is all it takes to maintain self-respect and personal integrity, and with enough reporting, this strategy can have real power. Many criminals are happy to bring their guns to a knife fight, and if we take them on, unless we’re martially trained, we’ll lose. But, remember, the gangster Al Capone was brought down by his accountant, not by law enforcement with machine guns.

Beyond all that, though, the real challenge is going up against our personal compromises of integrity–the lies we tell ourselves to justify our comfort zones. These violations of self-love reveal how we are complicit with the evil in our lives. It is where we have given permission to those forces working tirelessly to separate us from God. It is the spiritual challenge and Real Work we all face to bring about our Heaven on Earth.

It is the Path of the Heart that is our salvation. That path is built and maintained by what’s right and true in the creation of our highest life. Any compromises of integrity, excuses and procrastinations veer us off that path, merely delaying the manifestation of that salvation, and causing needless suffering. The journey along the path requires the corrective choices we must make to stave off and eliminate the corrosion of darkness.

Awakening means not only seeing evil in the world, it is also the restructuring of our lives to erase it permanently. Know that the quantum particles and waves making up this densest of experiences here on Earth want to naturally assemble in formations of love and justice, so we’ve literally got the Universe at our backs. And that is our “Armor of God”, our Sword of Lady Justice, and the clarion call to gather the power of all the angels and divine beings instantly available to anyone navigating the path of the heart.

We act from love. We follow our heart. We do what’s right.