HJ: The four cardinal virtues are truly guidelines for cultivating peace and happiness in ones life. They are profound pieces of timeless wisdom that help gently guide us towards higher expressions of ourselves. They help us access our divine nature and live in harmony with the world around us — in this way bringing us peace of mind, clarity and ease. Now, that being said, there is one major point I would like to make in regard to the practice of the cardinal virtues.
Do not repress thoughts and urges that contradict the cardinal virtues. I am not saying act on them either! However, let them find their natural expression as thoughts. Repressing thoughts is repressing the natural flow of energy in the mind and body, which causes imbalance and various problems, especially if engaged in frequently (most all of us do it daily). We are not our thoughts and so we must not associate out true divine nature with them. Our thoughts are merely expressions of our underlying beliefs, and in this way, can be tools for helping us identify beliefs that originate in some distortion of the ego. By tracing the thought back to the underlying belief, we are able to identify and consciously change the belief to suit our higher nature, if we so choose. When the belief is changed, the associated thoughts stop. So, if you are having ‘negative’ or violent thoughts frequently, then by changing the underlying belief that is generating the thoughts, you can eliminate them from your life. In this way, you do not repress the natural expression of these urges, however uncomfortable they may be. This will only lead to problems. Instead, you want to simply get to the root of the problem and dig it up.
In this way we can make changes at the deepest level of our psyche and hence transform our beliefs to more accurately reflect our true nature and the expression of the cardinal virtues.
– Truth
Four Rules for Living
SOME 2,500 YEARS AGO, Lao-tzu spoke of “the four cardinal virtues” and noted that when we practice them as a way of life, we come to know and access the truth of the universe. These four virtues don’t represent external dogma, but a part of our original nature—by practicing them, we realign with Source and access the powers that Source energy has to offer. According to the teachings of Lao-tzu, the four cardinal virtues represent the surest way to leave habits and excuses behind and reconnect to your original nature. The more your life is harmonized with the four virtues, the less you’re controlled by the uncompromising ego.
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The First Cardinal Virtue: Reverence for All Life
The first cardinal virtue manifests in your daily life as unconditional love and respect for all beings in creation. This includes making a conscious effort to love and respect yourself, as well as to remove all judgments and criticisms. Understand that you are a piece of God, and since you must be like what you came from, you are lovable, worthy, and Godlike. Affirm this as often as you can, for when you see yourself in a loving way, you have nothing but love to extend outward. And the more you love others, the less you need old excuse patterns, particularly those relating to blame.
The Second Cardinal Virtue: Natural Sincerity
This virtue manifests itself as honesty, simplicity, and faithfulness; and it’s summed up by the popular reminder to be true to yourself. Using an excuse to explain why your life isn’t working at the level you prefer isn’t being true to yourself—when you’re completely honest and sincere, excuses don’t even enter into the picture. The second virtue involves living a life that reflects choices that come from respect and affection for your own nature. Make truth your most important attribute. Walk your talk; that is, become sincere and honest in all that you say and do. If you find this to be a challenge, take a moment to affirm: I no longer need to be insincere or dishonest. This is who I am, and this is how I feel. When you know and trust yourself, you also know and trust the Divinity that created you. If you live from honesty, sincerity, and faithfulness to the callings of your spirit, you’ll never have occasion to use excuses.
The Third Cardinal Virtue: Gentleness
This virtue personifies one of my favorite and most frequently employed maxims: “When you have the choice to be right or to be kind, always pick kind.” So many of your old thinking habits and their attendant excuses come out of a need to make yourself right and others wrong. When you practice this third virtue, you eliminate conflicts that result in your need to explain why you’re right. This virtue manifests as kindness, consideration for others, and sensitivity to spiritual truth.
Gentleness generally implies that you no longer have a strong ego-inspired desire to dominate or control others, which allows you to move into a rhythm with the universe. You cooperate with it, much like a surfer who rides with the waves instead of trying to overpower them. Gentleness means accepting life and people as they are, rather than insisting that they be as you are. As you practice living this way, blame disappears and you enjoy a peaceful world.
The Fourth Cardinal Virtue: Supportiveness
This virtue manifests in your life as service to others without any expectation of reward. Once again, when you extend yourself in a spirit of giving, helping, or loving, you act as God acts. As you consider the many excuses that have dominated your life, look carefully at them—you’ll see that they’re all focused on the ego: I can’t do this. I’m too busy or too scared. I’m unworthy. No one will help me. I’m too old. I’m too tired. Now imagine shifting your attention off of yourself and asking the universal mind How may I serve? When you do so, the message you’re sending is: I’m not thinking about myself and what I can or can’t have. Your attention is on making someone else feel better.
The greatest joy comes from giving and serving, so replace your habit of focusing exclusively on yourself and what’s in it for you. When you make the shift to supporting others in your life, without expecting anything in return, you’ll think less about what you want and find comfort and joy in the act of giving and serving.
The four cardinal virtues are a road map to the simple truth of the universe. To revere all of life, to live with natural sincerity, to practice gentleness, and to be in service to others is to replicate the energy field from which you originated.
Wayne W. Dyer, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development. Wayne holds a doctorate in educational counseling from Wayne State University and was an associate professor at St. John’s University in New York.
esp
March 30, 2013
While I was reading two things passed through my mind:
Gentalness seems a bit of a stretch considering how many times I’ve dealt with people who gentalness isn’t going to do anything but result in me just getting walked all over. Maybe some of this is all the time I’ve spent in 3d talking but if when dealing with people who’s goal is to distroy you and/or make you suffer those are people who need some pretty harsh treatment up front and harsh enough to show them you mean business at that. I don’t beleive peace with other’s is possible unless people are will to start from where they really are (and sometimes that means going through some kind of war first). Forgive me if that sounds a bit harsh, cruel, or even 3rd demensional but as peace goes my freewill isn’t on the barganing table, and neither is that of anyone else I care about (person or animal) and when I say that I mean business, and I’m absoutely sincere about every word.
Now that I’ve had my ever so possibly egoic reaction to suggestion that has really been a almost completely outside of any kind of common sense (let alone good sense) in my life thus far. Unless I were to find out that over who knows how long languges itself has been so completely tangled and twisted and mangled that it is as meaningless and useless as I’ve often suspected in which case maybe you are talking about something completly different than what I was taught.
The second thing that caught my attention was the fact that as you pointed out that people regularly have thoughts outside of these guidelines. I’m telepath and I’m pretty new to having any consciousness of this ablity (I still can’t tell my thoughts from those of other humans, and the same deal with feelings (first break from my families messy emotions was when I had a non-coperail entity talk me through a sheilding technique)) anyway the notation I found here was that alot of people might have thoughts that aren’t all that virutous and they should not try to surpress or repress them but instead just let themselves think them but when we can’t tell who’s thoughts we’re even dealing with doesn’t that change the rules. It’s not mine why do I have to let it keep flowing through me as if it were? Why should I be willing to endure that as though it were mine? And for that matter how does tell anyone tell their vibes from someone else’s, muscle testing helps me but it’s taking me to long to catch it that way when I am dealing with other peoples vibes, and it’s been pretty ugly when that does happen, is that one of those things that will just develop over time? Please forgive me if I’m getting off topic but it’s kind of hard to avoid assuming you are thinking bad thoughts when you keep picking up peoples bad thoughts mistaking them for your own.