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Twelve Great Virtues By Richard Kieninger Introduction A tried and true technique
for starting on the road to successful change and diminishing the anxiety of
self-doubt is to gradually build your confidence. Bit by bit you gain
confidence simply by trying one small thing and being successful at it and
then trying another small thing and again succeeding. With each success,
regardless how minor, you can say that something has been accomplished, that
a change in your life has taken place. You will begin to grow confident that
you can change yourself from being what you are today into something greater
tomorrow. As you gain confidence in small ways, you can begin to tackle
bigger things. Soon your successes will outnumber your failures, and you will
have gained considerable confidence and self-esteem. Confidence and success
are mutually dependent upon each other, and they grow together. But remember,
success is not always immediate and always requires effort—sometimes the effort
having to be repeated over and over. Each lack of success is educational. It is a person's emotional
maturity which allows him to sustain his effort despite the strains he puts
upon himself as he grows from what he is to what he strives to become. His growing
sense of well-being and happiness makes him increasingly immune to influence
from lower entities. Acquiring emotional maturity corresponds to finding the
way to satisfy your desires and ambitions without causing harm or pain to
other people. Making the Great Virtues a
part of one's consciousness develops emotional maturity, and the measure of
how well one is maturing is reflected in how one responds to various life
situations as they arise. Not knowing how to cope with life's situations
produces frustration and the feeling of being out of control—blown about by
the whims of chance. Personal acquisition of the
Great Virtues is an inherently slow process requiring considerable patience
and a boundless sense of humor! The ongoing reward is that it builds
character, integrity and morality bordering on greatness and results
naturally in the intensification of extrasensory perception. Twelve Great Virtues Tolerance
is the wisdom of not making judgments on fellow men since we can never be
sure of their true motivations, trials and personal problems. Criticism of
others' beliefs, habits and personalities is unwarranted, self-righteous and
inexcusable. The tolerant man does not measure others only by their errors;
rather he asks himself how he would have reacted under identical
circumstances. Instead of having a critical, irritable attitude toward
another, which can only add to the cross he must bear, the tolerant person is
slow to speak and act lest he detract from his opportunity to spread
happiness and peace into the lives of those with whom he comes in contact. To
detract from the reputation of another by gossip and hearsay is karmically
disastrous. Patience
is the willingness to await the outworking of natural processes. Patience
stresses calmness or composure under suffering or provocation or in
performing a demanding task. Impatience with another person arises from lack
of tolerance and a selfish peevishness to have one's own way. To fail to take
the time to explain to a child or an employee what is to be done and then
jump down his throat because the task was not performed as desired is a
typical example of impatience. Impatience is a major source of irritability
in our world, and much of this is due to desires which cannot be realized
realistically. Kindliness is the sincere desire never to bring hurt to another. It is
consideration of the feelings of others as well as gentleness, sensitive
benevolence and sympathy expressed in word and deed. Forbearance is self-possession and serenity of mind under any provocation and
conveys the patient lack of a desire for retaliation. It is the overcoming of
revengeful reaction to personal affronts and injuries. The nursing of grudges
only breeds bitterness and psychosomatic illness. Forbearance is an attitude
of nonresistance and a bending with the situation. Knowledge of karmic law
provides the comfort that one's desire for retaliation against an offender is
pointless in light of the natural law of action and reaction. The offender
will suffer karmically without our engaging in destructive thoughts; thus
forbearance breaks the circle of repercussions typical of feuds. Forbearance
becomes an exercise in humility, for personal pride and the need to uphold
self are common causes of retaliatory instincts. Charity
stresses brotherly love, clemency, leniency and an interest in the welfare of
others to the extent of giving of oneself. It is wholehearted sympathy toward
the suffering which man must endure until he begins conscious advancement.
Charity precludes criticism of others. Humility
connotes absence of arrogance, snobbishness, pride, boastfulness and
self-satisfaction. Humility does not imply weakness; rather it is the result
of strength, power and true personal completeness so that one need not feel
he must contend for a place in the sun. Similarly, meekness is the absence of
wrath, and it stems from a sense of complete control over one 5 environment.
Humility is the awareness of one's own shortcomings in view of the knowledge
that virtue always recedes from one's present standing and that one has far
to go to achieve even the First Degree of Brotherhood. Devotion
is the consecration of oneself to an ideal or a cause such as to the service of
God. Devotion implies singleness of purpose which supplies an interest so
great that serving the object of one's devotion is a joyful, untiring
experience. The finer emotions of allegiance, faithfulness, loyalty,
steadfastness and reverence are involved in devotion, but to this is added
zeal in service due to love of and personal attachment to the object of
devotion. Sincerity
conveys the absence of hypocrisy, affectatiousness, sham or deceit. The
sincere person is genuine and straightforward in his desire to learn and
practice what is right. Conscientiousness and honorable conduct are closely
associated with sincerity, but sincerity should be practiced with knowledge
of right thoughts and actions; most of the evil and wrongheaded errors
brought upon the Earth have been the result of sincere though misinformed
persons. The acquisition of the other virtues is impossible without sincerity
and the depth of application it affords. Courage
is quite distinct from bravery, which is usually an instinctive response to a
perilous situation and implies lack of fear and bold recklessness. Courage,
on the other hand, carefully takes into account the dangers of a situation in
advance of action and is the product of reason sustained by marshalling one's
powers of moral determination in the face of personal fear. Resolution,
tenacity and determined morale are associated with courage. It is the noble
quality of character which enables one to stand firmly for his convictions in
spite of persecution. Precision
involves exactness, accuracy and definiteness as opposed to purposeless
activity, careless work and hazy thinking. Forethought, dependability,
punctuality and thoroughness are hallmarks of the precise person. To remain a
virtue, however, precision must not become piddling fussiness, or a display
of meticulousness which intolerantly compares those of lesser preciseness and
strips away all beauty from every situation in order to exhibit precision. Efficiency is the ability to deal effectively with one's environment with a minimum expenditure of energy, time
and materials. To become more efficient requires an alert interest in methods
and techniques and the acquisition of skills through practice. Attention to
organization of details and planning ahead are the marks of the efficient
person. Precision is inseparable from efficiency. Discrimination implies the power of discerning the motives of people and their
character, and the ability to see the real truths below the apparent surface
of situations. To discriminate emphasizes the power to distinguish the
excellent and the appropriate; to judge between what is good and what is
better; to weigh alternative courses of action in the light of karmic law;
and to perceive the fallaciousness of teachings disseminated under the guise
of all that is good and beautiful. Intuition is a natural extension of the
power of discrimination. Epilogue |
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