You must not cherish the illusion that if you want to follow the straight path, if you are modest, if you seek purity, if you are disinterested, if you want to lead a solitary existence and have a clear judgment, things will become easy… It is quite the contrary! When you begin to advance towards inner and outer perfection, the difficulties start at the same time.
I have very often heard people saying: "Oh! now that I am trying to be good, everybody seems to be bad to me!" But this is precisely to teach you that one should not be good with an interested motive, one should not be good, so that others will be good to you – one must be good for the sake of being good.
It is always the same lesson: one must do as well as one can, the best one can, but without expecting a result, without doing it with a view to the result. Just this attitude, to expect a reward for a good action to become good because one thinks that this will make life easier – takes away all value from the good action.
