Needleman is a religious scholar who tackles a major dilemma facing twenty-first century people: we know what is good and yet fail to do it. Now more than ever before, we have access to the ethical, moral, and religious resources of all the wisdom traditions to guide us in our choices.
Needleman is a philosopher who knows that the contents of our minds — our ideas about history, language, the body, war and peace, time and space all have an impact on our will to do well. Yet something else is preventing us from moving forward with love and kindness and that is the overwhelming evil in the world brought about by the human propensity for power, greed, selfishness, depravity, and other dark impulses.
Needleman warns us, however, that "Conscious suffering must not be confused with what we ordinarily speak of as 'guilt.' What we are speaking about here is a full experience of seeing, a full confrontation with our being; a vibrant acceptance of our incapacity to do what is good without masking the truth with self-pity or futile vows--an acceptance of the fact that our actions and all our manifestations are a result of our level of being. This act of seeing is the movement that brings the two worlds toward each other--the inner world and the outer world, the world of inner aspiration toward love and justice, and the world of outer action and behavior.
The above is quite a mouthful! Yet I felt that this is one of our greatest faults. Why fault you say? When being raised by our parent(s) we learn how to “do the right” thing, yet there are so many variations on this. If a parent is prejudiced, then we grow up being prejudiced. Needleman tries to give us an explanation as to why we “violate our most cherished values and beliefs.” I agree that we need to listen more, be silent and listen, and yes we do have the freedom to love and act honestly and fairly towards other human beings.