Good manners and finer feelings, courtesy and graciousness--these inhere in one who possesses a true spirituality. It is true that many aspirants consider this to be mere surface polish, unimportant, a cloak quite often for hypocrisy and falseness. That may be so in a number of cases. But even it if were correct of all cases the fact remains that the manners which aspirants adopt, the code of behaviour which they practise, possess a definite place on this quest. Those Chinese and Javanese mystical cults which regarded and used etiquette as part of their way toward inner unfoldment, as part of their yoga path, were not wrong. For it creates forms of conduct which not only refine and uplift the practiser's character, but also can be used to defend his inner life--where he is developed enough to possess one--against society's onslaughts. There is a moral element in it, too. For where etiquette trains a man sympathetically to consider the emotional reactions of other persons to his own behaviour, it transfers his point of view from an habitual selfish one to a more impersonal one. Again by smoothing the relations between both of them, it puts the others not only more at peace with themselves but also with him. Lastly it requires and fosters some measure of self-control. For we are not only victims of aggression from our enemies. We are just as much, or even more, victims of ourselves, attacked by our own weaknesses and faults.
-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 5 : Spiritual Refinement > # 181
