Yesterday, we have been discussing about the role of virtues in accomplishing our Dreams. This is in furtherance to that.
When you wish to Accomplish Your Dreams, you need to affirm silently to yourself that you are loveable, you deserve to be loved even when in error. Forgive yourself for past sins. Allow yourself to feel new and act differently in the future. View your past faults as temporary clouds covering your innate sun of goodness. As you breathe in, draw the necessary lessons and wisdom from your past. As you breathe out, let the synthesis of your understanding affect your attitude and behavior in your everyday life.
Love and accept the vice you are working to resolve as well as the vice opposite to it. Contemplate the simple truth that by loving and accepting the extremes, we effortlessly embody the middle way that is a synthesis of both qualities. Doing this, you will reduce the possibility of the vice reoccurring and should it reoccur its negative potency will be lessened.
Now, we may think over the vices regarding other peoples. The outside world and other people in particular, act as mirrors to our inner state. If someone with a particular vice creates a negative reaction within you, you can be sure that you have a corresponding inner problem regarding the associated virtues. Such people act as a useful guide, showing you where to direct your efforts of reintegration. Making an effort to love those around you will have a direct effect on the corresponding parts of your own nature. Making an effort to love your inner aspects will have a corresponding effect on how you view others and so how they react to you. Now I may make it clear what I mean when I say “love other people”. It does not mean that we do everything for them or always put their needs above our own. The love I am talking about is virtuous love: all the virtuous opposites are at one with it. For example: prudence as well as generosity and steadfastness as well as flexibility.
You must try to accept others despite their faults. For that, you may relax inwardly and outwardly and allow the problem persons to be new: don’t hold onto any negative expectations about them. Inwardly declare that you forgive them. Visualize them surrounded by the lovely light of unconditional love. Imagine the light actually penetrating their temporary negative behavior and outer personality: penetrating gently and beneficially to the painful and rejected parts of their personality. Actually love and accept those parts of them that they presently cannot do. Know that in doing so, you are helping your own inner qualities resurface.
I mean to ask you to refine the virtue matrix that you constructed earlier. Your matrix will then, more and more accurately reflect your own inner mind and the conceptual universe. There is a part of your nature that is ever virtuous and ever conscious: your true nature. Your true nature already has a perfect understanding of the virtues. By deepening your everyday understanding of the virtues you naturally attune to that pristine part of your nature. This attunement is like a bridge that allows your true nature ever greater expression in your everyday life.
According to the principles of simplicity and completeness, every virtue in our matrix should be of the same order of complexity. The chemist acknowledges the vast variety of substances but in his periodic table he only includes the simple chemical elements.
Water is not a chemical element: it is a compound of two chemical elements. In the same way, some of the concepts that you consider to be elemental virtues may actually be a compound of two or more other virtues. If you have a virtue in your matrix that you are not sure about, you should check to see whether or not its quality and meaning can be made up from a combination of other virtue elements. If so, then, it can be safely discarded from your matrix as its compound qualities are already present within your matrix in a purer form.
If you know the quality of a virtue, by inferring it from its opposite quality etc, but you cannot think of the correct name for it don’t worry. It may be that the language you are using has no name for it. This is the fault of the imperfect language and not the universal matrix! In any case just simply make up a label for it out of a few appropriate words, eg “OPPOSITE VIRTUE OF …”. This will suffice as a handle for your inner exercises and that is the most important thing. Each virtue does have a more scientific name which describes its meaning more precisely. There is an even more profound name for each virtue, we may find out in further discussions.
Be happy – Continue to explore out virtues to Accomplish Your Dreams.