We need to self-assess and occasionally and often seek feedback from impartial, objective friends and enemies: we need to conduct periodic self-wellness (and for others, the community, and the nation too) checks, to make sure that we are spiritually and morally virtuous if fact, not just in rhetoric or proclaimed statements of self-excellence.
When, at an earlier date, we were doing well spiritually and morally, we automatically assume we stay that way for the remainder of our lives, without much effort to stay well, or even need to conduct periodic self-checks.
This failure to continually self-assess if immoral, arrogant, and foolish. We can be wrong or deluded about how we are and are doing today, right now. We may not have consciously or overtly switched directions, openly and deliberately selecting spiritually and morally repugnant choices, but we can incrementally slide into evil and wrong-doing, self-degrading over time without even being aware of our declining state.
It is much more likely and difficult to avoid that slide when one is popular within a group, true-believing in a cause, living ensconced in a hierarchy, or worse, to rule that hierarchy, one of its elite rulers.. To be a member of the ruling class is to wield much power, and the human proclivity to amass unwarranted and sickening power to us is an addiction that none can dissuade themselves from surrendering, yielding to indulging in such temptations.
It never hurts to listen, really listen, to what enemies, detractors and dissidents are saying to us and about us.
If we have declined, the sooner we know about it, and admit our sinning, the sooner and easier we can recover from such a slide towards personal corruption.
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