DWQA QuestionsCategory: Divine GuidanceThe four classic cardinal virtues are temperance, prudence, courage, and justice, but there are many others embraced by different cultures and religious traditions. Can you please give us a tutorial to explain the list of virtues you know to be important for us to follow in our lives?
Nicola Staff asked 4 years ago
You can do well to start with the virtues described in the Scriptures, of faith, hope, and love, because of the over-arching importance they represent. There are other nuances and other variations in the way these, themselves, can be experienced and expressed, but the concepts they represent and their central importance to living a successful life and achieving advancement towards a higher divine outcome makes them a good starting point. As you know, to have a partnership with the divine, which is the central operating principle life is designed around, requires belief, and faith is an important component of belief because of the human dilemma of disconnection. If you do not have direct evidence before you there is a living God, this can only be maintained through faith, which is always needed at times as a bridge back to feeling at one with the Creator, and to feel supported and cared about, in having an inner knowing there is a higher purpose for things in a future that matters. This is quite hard for many, many, people. So the building of faith is a virtue because it is moving in the right direction. It is moving towards a greater partnership with the divine and that is essential to the success of everything that is of any value. Hope is a lesser virtue in the sense of it having a weak connotation, and this is quite true. Hope is a step down from faith, that comes into play when faith is not rock-solid. Hope is the safety valve, the safety mechanism inspiring a person to reach for higher faith when it may be flagging due to circumstances in the current life. So it is, at times, a key attribute that can save the day. People can live on hope, sometimes for quite a lengthy period before seeing any change in things, and the tangible demonstration that life can get better, and that there is a divine hand capable of making improvements. In a sense, it is the inner yearning for betterment that acts as the impetus to build faith and strengthen the resolve, once the higher faith has been achieved. And this will put the person in a better level of vibration and energetic expression to be successful in their life, and lead to a positive progression that raises them up. Love is all-encompassing, and so it has many flavors, and in and of itself, is such a broad category it is not always that useful as a consequence. And this is why the many types of love can give rise to many attributes considered virtues, because the subparts here have value and having separate descriptions and labels within language for them is quite helpful in defining what is meant and what is important about the expression of love in a certain way, in a certain circumstance. So the next step will be to break this down in greater detail. We feel that using love as the central core is the best way to set out the virtues and have them as a way of tying things together as well, because there is an inter-relationship in all things, in all times and places in human experience, because love is the universal frequency and life force creating everything and giving it motion. It is the flow and flux of love energy that does this. Whether it is rushing in or rushing out will determine the nature of what happens. And the way to rebalance when love is being depleted is to restore the flow of love once again. That restoration gives rise to the demonstration of a virtue in some respect, and the definition for that love replacement constitutes its best explanation for why it is important.