Virtue
The Chinese Taoist teacher, Lao Tsu, described the Four Virtues
of what he called the virtuous life. If you live according to
them you’ll be living the true human life, which will predispose
you to the experience and realization of oneness. That means it
is not just understanding of self not just having certain experiences;
it means living, acting, interacting in a certain way. So what
are these four virtues?
- The first has to do with love and respect for your Essence
and Being: to live a life that implicitly loves and respects
what is genuine in you and everyone…
- Another of the four virtues is sincerity: being sincere in
your life, not lying to yourself. To be sincere is to be earnest
about exposing your self-deceptions about who you really are,
and what you want and do not want, what you feel and do not
feel, what scares you and what doesn’t, about what is
actually happening in you and in your situation…
- The third virtue or quality is what is called delicacy. It
is the nature of the ego-self or personality that it is thick-skinned,
thickheaded, hard, and tough. This hardness, toughness, thickness,
and dullness is the circumference, or the boundary between you
and everyone else and the rest of the universe. So that’s
why you need to become more refined, more delicate. You need
to have more gentleness, more vulnerability, more receptivity
and permeability…
- The fourth quality or virtue is what is called helpfulness.
Obviously, helpfulness is based on oneness itself. To be helpful
means that you are aware that you do not work only for yourself;
your work is for everyone. If you only work on yourself without
helping other people, you are not doing the Work. It is as simple
as that. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 106)
