What are the benefits of living a virtuous life? Living on a divine path not only seems hard, but is often seen as likely to be joyless, and even a life of self-denial and deprivation. What is your perspective of the benefits?

The entire life experience is a continuation of the soul journey to higher learning, growth, enlightenment, and the exploration of possibilities adding to the individual reach, adding to the individual accomplishment and maturity and the collective benefit of all who are interconnected in this endeavor—first and foremost being Creator, as you are an extension of us and bring back to us many joys and even new learning from your creative efforts. This will be hard for people to understand and accept but is very much true, that we learn through you just as you can learn through us. This is the true meaning of partnership with Creator: it is a two-way street. When you live virtuously, you embrace our way of living and you are in harmony with us. This greatly increases our ability to interact with you directly when we are on the same vibration or wavelength, so to speak, it removes barriers, and conversely, when you stray from a virtuous path you are becoming more discordant and communication is more strained and can be inaccurate or absent. If we are unable to meet you on your level, being virtuous in all you do maintains this working relationship and the status of you and us as partners—it is really that simple. The benefit to you is that when you call on us, we are much more readily able to help you and to do so swiftly and surely because there is not a gap needing to be overcome. If you have fallen off the path through allowing dark thoughts to creep in and then ask for help, we, in many cases, must allow that distance that has developed to be maintained because, in a sense, you are choosing it through your life choices. So even though you arrive at this state indirectly, it is nonetheless your doing and we must honor your choice to struggle. We understand this may not be a conscious decision and choice on your part, but that is part of the learning and the challenge of life—to understand the consequences of one’s thoughts and actions. That is why virtues, when described, can be a true godsend by pointing the way towards attributes that when cultivated will help you avoid error and making many missteps that will slow down your life journey.