The Virtues of the Heart

“You are such a collection of different personalities; it is no wonder that at times your confrontations end with a falling out. Clearly if you cannot get on together it is sometimes better that you stay clear of each other. However, as you work towards lifting yourself up into the Light, you might consider whether you should re-trace your footsteps and look to repair the damage that has been done. It would be better handled now, as there are not many issues that cannot be sorted out if both parties desire to overcome their differences. You cannot fully progress until you do, and in doing so it would place you another step nearer to being able to express Unconditional Love. When you can achieve success within family circles and with friends, there is no reason why you should not extend that to all souls”.

And so says SaLuSa. Or, if you prefer to speak in Nietzschian terms – “Also spracht Zaratustra”, which deals with many issues of morality and emotional intelligence, most notably the concept of recurrence of the same events, in other words, hitting our heads against the same pillar every time. I am drawing the comparison here – since SaLuSa has a tendency to write in somewhat biblical terms.

What SaLuSa says here is very timely, as human beings tend to carry resentment, anger and malice around for eternity, simply because of a perceived injustice, fight or disagreement. Fear of confrontation after the confrontation as well as guilt, usually prohibits us from re-visiting the event, which caused the mayhem, and declare peace, or at least talk about our feelings and resultant reactions. We prefer to project, rather, our anger and guilt and cause further problems.

It is not a secret that we always expect other people to react the way we do – or base their reactions and rationale on our terms of reference – for that is what we see – not the other point of view. Even when we are right, and the other individual acted inappropriately, we should see their point of view and treat it as an empathetic response.

But do we? No. We keep on doggedly hanging onto our own belief systems and ignore the prompts of spirit to move towards wisdom through the mechanisms of intuition and applied emotional intelligence, which simply means understanding.

Understanding is one of the heart virtues – the heart virtues being the philosophical mechanism with which we apply the energy of Love. Applying the energy of Love means that we live or apply the following empathetic mechanisms:

• Appreciation
• Humility
• Valor
• Compassion
• Understanding, and
• Forgiveness.

These virtues are the essence of Love, and they are also the essence of Universal and Spiritual Laws. The problem is – as human beings, it is very difficult for us to live according to these virtues, simply because we are human. As my mother said the other day (where did that come from?) “It is easy to be human, but it is not easy to be a human being”. As we know – human being or Homo sapiens means “wise man”, or “knowing man” (why did they gender discriminate?) meaning that we can reason, we can speak, we can display emotion, and we can nurture and love on many levels.

We can also display hate, malice, anger and other emotional reactions based on perceived injustice or wrongdoing, which will taint our reasoning. The problem is – all of us are always right in reacting in certain ways. And yes, I mean it when I say it.

Our framework of reference is a very important indicator of our behaviors and actions. And no-one can tell me, as a seasoned counselor, that anyone is wrong in thinking the way that they do – simply because we are, as SaLuSa says, all different. No one can claim that their developmental circumstances and life experiences are the same. These experiences shape our belief systems and create our behavior patterns.

This is how we feel and react – real-time, and according to our own personal set of rules, based on our views and beliefs of morality, social interaction, love, emotions and other mechanisms – some more savory than others.

What SaLuSa does say however – is that we can always be introspective – i.e. retrace our steps and determine why we embarked on a certain action that caused a chain of events to unfold? Usually we are not going to apologize or try to make amends because we feel guilty and fear rejection or further confrontation. So we become apathetic and leave it all be – but not for long.

The guilt forces us to discuss it with others to try and validate our actions, and a chain of gossip ensues. Not long – and the story reaches the ears of others, and what is worse – it morphs out of proportion, non-truths gets inserted as a result of assumptions, and a new set of problems emerge which is ripped totally out of context. To make matters worse – we are all guilty to some extent.

In this fast paced world of ours – it is simply not possible to take time to reflect anymore, before we speak or act out. Our autonomous nervous system, which interacts with our emotional reactions, has been conditioned to react fast and do so unconsciously. We have lost the art of constructive communication, simply because we live a fast paced life.

Here – I am not referring to anti-social behavior, in which case such malice would have been planned – I am simply referring to pathologically adopted behavior patterns – as a result of sociological conditioning. Planning trouble and malice is another matter all together, and falls into the realm of psychopathy. As a friend says – “Do we really have to share this holographic universe with them?”

Yet – the main point I am trying to make is that we act before we think. We should instead think before we act.

Living the virtues of the heart philosophy is actually easy – it simply requires us to understand that we live in a world of consequence. Let us look at them.

Appreciation, on the subtle levels, is focused on a specific awareness that God surrounds our fellow beings as a field of consciousness and that this Consciousness unifies us. If we are unified, it follows that we operate as a collective consciousness at some deeper level, and in this place, we share a common purpose that is richly textured, supremely vital, and yet mysterious, dynamic and uncertain.

This awareness, or even belief, shifts our focus from the small details of our personal life to the vision of our purpose as a species.

At a more practical level, appreciation expresses itself in the small gestures of gratitude that support relationship loyalty and bonding. The deeper levels of appreciation make the relatively surface level expressions genuine because they stem from the frequencies of soul instead of the motives of the ego or mind.

Humility understands that the being that represents you – your fullest identity – is not represented as a chain reaction of the ego mind. Rather, it is the presence of love embodied in human form, and this love expresses itself in the virtues of the heart, the pure intellect of the contemplative mind, and the co-creative pursuits of the heart, mind, and soul.

Humility is the expression of this love frequency knowing it extracts from what already exists in a higher dimension, and in this dimension love is not a thing of sentiment and emotional heaviness. It is a liberating force that acts according to the archetype of God: All is one. All is equal. All is divine. All is immortal.

Valor is generally used in the context of war, but it is, as an element of love, linked with the act of speaking truth to power, especially when an injustice is committed. It is common in today’s social order to pretend ignorance of the injustices of our world.

Self-absorption in one’s own world is a key threat that undermines the expression of valor, while guilt and fear of consequence are the others.

Compassion, as many teachers have told us, is about the deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled to the desire to relieve that suffering.

In the context of the new intelligence that is seating itself on our planet, compassion is an active desire to assist others to align with the new fields of intelligence that are manifesting in the three dimensional world, aware that their desire and ability to align is distorted by their social enculturation; it does not accurately reflect their intelligence, spiritual inclinations, or purpose.

The planet we live on is an intelligence. It is both physical and intelligent, and has high frequency energetic structures just like us. It is shifting from the 3rd dimension to the higher 4th dimension and it has been planning this before humanity was even seeded on the planet. It is part of the evolutionary cycle of planetary systems to transmute accumulated densities from one dimension before passing into a higher dimensional grid.

Compassion therefore is extended to both our fellow beings and the planet itself with the realization that we are part of one another’s destiny if only for a single lifetime.

Understanding that it is a fact that we are composed of love at our core structure, and it is this love frequency that is the basis of our immortal consciousness or soul, is important. All of the lower densities are shadows of this light and operate in time and space, which provide a veil of density and separation from this core love frequency. The worlds of time and space alter or cause separation from this connection we feel to the core energetic structure we all are composed of.

This is the paradox of being a human being; our innermost structure is divine love and our outermost structure is a means of experience for the innermost structure.

Unfortunately, we have become conditioned by the outer vehicle to identify with it more than the Soul person – our true self – inside.

Forgiveness operates out of the construct that each of us is doing the best we can under the circumstance of our life experience and the degree that our love frequency saturates our human instrument.

When a person operates from the heart virtues and the rich textures of its authentic frequencies, forgiveness is a natural state of acceptance.

When a perceived injustice enters our experience – no matter how significant or whether we perceive ourselves to be the cause or the effect – we may initially react with the sharp emotions of victim hood or annoyance.

This emotional clutter and distorted emotional reactions can quickly be transformed by experiencing

• Understanding, followed by
• Compassion, followed by
• Forgiveness, followed by
• Appreciation.

This is the equation that transforms the darkness of victim hood or co-reaction into the essence of light, leaving behind only the purest frequency of love stripped of all-purpose.

Forgiveness is really the outward expression of understanding and compassion without the heavy sentiments of duality.

When we look carefully at the virtues of the heart, and what they express – we can see immediately that the philosophy operates on a non-judgmental platform. Furthermore – these virtues form the basis for our own existence – therefore, they from the basis of God’s love for all that creation.

Lifting ourselves out of the darkness and murky emotions that sometimes surrounds us – implies that we release form the ego-mind, and get it to align with our purpose – not it’s purpose. Not that the ego is all bad – the balanced ego can only be good, but enculturization and social conditioning has allowed the ego to dictate for us.

Understanding this, allows for us to reprogamme our reactions towards others, and consciously replace our dysfunctional thought patterns with those of the heart virtues.

We need to understand that all that happens to others and us is consequential, to the extent that we have not planned it – it is simply unconscious behavior patterns being played out because we have adopted it as habit. Therefore – consequence dictates most of our actions, as a matter of fact, ninety-five percent of them.

Through practicing the heart virtues – we can transcend the ego-mind, and be loving, forgiving, understanding and compassionate, without resorting to violent outbursts when we need to defend ourselves against injustice.

We are after all aspects of God, and therefore should have the same inherent qualities.

Let us use this new energy being seated on our planet – and co-create consciously with Love, Understanding, Compassion, Valor, Forgiveness and Humility. This is what SaLuSa is trying to tell us.

We can transcend our outer Self and troublesome emotional environment. We simply need to align ourselves with the energies of a benevolent God, which is inherently also ours.

So, retrace those steps, be introspective, think about your actions, become aware of them, and change them into benevolent actions of Love, through understanding and forgiveness.

It does not take much, just some humility, and forgiveness of self and others. Life is to short. Time on this world is short. And therefore – be kind to yourself and others by offering the hand of reconciliation whenever you have the chance.

It is a spiritual imperative.

Much Love