In the surface, the “vices” are ways of bringing humanity down. A way for perdition.
Nevertheless in the world of duality the experience of one extreme means the necessary experience of the other side. How could you know “day” if you have not experienced “night”? In Life, knowing is experience. Without experience there is no “true” change.
That is the journey.

I am not saying that vices are “good.” I am saying they are necessary in the journey of Life as the experience of them will allow us to know, to experience and to transform.
Greed is one extreme. Generosity is another. Our potential to be giving is equal to our potential for greed.
We get confused and biased by the labels we use to describe a human character, but we are only looking at one point, one day of the whole journey. We get caught up with our experience with one person, limiting him to that experience. We don’t see that change is part of it.

For example, if Bruce Wayne (Batman) “developed” anger and guilt through one experience in Life, there is a process to come out of that and transform within himself those energies.
Without that anger and that feeling of guilt, Batman would have never been born. Do we see that? Can we say that anger and guilt are “bad” then?

What would have happened if Bruce Wayne had learned when he was a little boy: “Anger is bad. You must get rid of it”?
Bruce Wayne would have learned to repress anger to conform with a moral code, a perception… but anger would be there.
What would have happened if Bruce Wayne would have been told: “ You must make effort to conquer anger”?
He could have believed that it is in “his” hands ( the “I”) to change BEING at will.
Who is the one making effort? The “I.”
What is anger if is not a supporting energy for that “I”?
How is it possible for the “I” to get rid of a supporting energy, which makes up himself?
That is the deception. Nevertheless, the above is “spirituality” for most; as the time to find about that “I” hasn’t arrived to their journey yet.

Bruce Wayne was meant to be Batman. That was his destiny. In his path, “he found” a teacher when he was ready to transform that anger. Life brought the teacher when the student was ready (as we know) but that teacher was not really a friend for he was helping with an ulterior motive, later on he became Bruce’s enemy.
Shall we judge Life’s method to transform Bruce’s anger?
Why Life didn’t give Bruce an angel to “help” him? Or a saint? Or an “illuminated” one?
Because Bruce Wayne didn’t need that. He was to become Batman.

Bruce Wayne healed his anger and guilt through Batman.

Religious beliefs and moral codes have a “black or white” vision of the different energies that a human could come across, without considering the process of a particular human being.

To label “Lust” as ugly, bad, evil, etc. does not consider the process that every human being will go through. What could be the teaching of experiencing lust?
That love and lust are like water and oil. They don’t mix, they don’t become one.

The typical “medicine” will be to drill in his mind: “sex (or whatever the trigger is) is bad. Don’t do it.”
We may only control our actions, but we cannot control what is natural in a human being. We could repress ourselves by not acting, but without understanding of the circumstances, the setting and the time, that repression will cause damage to ourselves.

Repression is neither “good” nor “bad.” There are times when it is useful and times when it is not. To be able to recognize timing, is part of the inner wisdom which appears as we experience Life in its different facets.
That insight is not learned through holy books or holy teachers. It is the consequence of all experiences that we have had in many Life times. Openness by acknowledging all of those different perspectives of Life, is what minimizes the size of the “I.”

Accumulation of “vices” will make someone a vicious man, but that is the “natural” path as well, for being vice less. It is just a matter of time. Paradoxical!
It will happen as the size of the “I” diminishes. This is not a mental, intellectual exercise, but it is openness of the heart.
Every man is in a different stage of his journey. There is no goal in that journey, all there is; is the journey itself. The words “goal,” “destination,” “objective,” “perfection,” are all beliefs of an intellectual mind when related to Life itself. Those words have the power to make the life of many a very dissatisfied one.

Who is Batman?
Anger, compassion, guilt, forgiveness, millionaire, who experienced in his own skin what is to be poor, a playboy, a faithful man to a woman, a philanthropist who builds weapons; loneliness, aloneness, intelligence, stupidity, ironical sense of humor, seriousness… it is that type of integration, that type of openness and acceptance of the different roles and experiences in his lifetime which will give him the insight to know. It is not about rejection of one side of the coin and acceptance of the other. It is about integration, for in that integration there is healing, acceptance and the opportunity to change, to grow.