It is worthwhile to manifest spiritual
virtues not only for what we gain through them,
but especially for what we cease to be compelled to be.
As selfishness, fear, attachment, and ignorance
lose their power over us,
our essential nature can manifest itself more and more freely.

A life in which we strongly manifest the spiritual virtues is preferable
because the virtues transform our way of existing,
free us from conditioning
and allow us to live at a higher
level of freedom, lucidity, love and fulfillment.
Why would such a life
be preferable even when the manifestation of the
virtues involves effort, sacrifices, losses or suffering?
I think we can distinguish a few reasons.

1. Because virtues make us freer
The man lacking virtues is often dependent on his own impulses, fears, desires, attachments and reactions.
The one dominated by anger is not free not to be angry. The envious is not free to enjoy the success of another.
The proud one is not free to admit the truth when it contradicts his self-image.
Therefore, virtues are not just moral qualities, but inner powers that free us from psychic constraints.
Detachment frees us from dependence, courage from the domination of fear, sincerity from the need for lies, humility from the tyranny of pride.
The stronger the virtues, the more capable we are of consciously choosing what we think, feel, and do.

2. Because such a life is happier in its depths
Pleasure and comfort are not equivalent to happiness.
A person can have wealth, health, success and comfort,
but to be permanently disturbed by fear, dissatisfaction, comparison or unsatisfied desires.
Instead, someone who manifests love, gratitude, detachment, courage, and inner peace can experience deep happiness even in difficult circumstances.
The virtues do not guarantee the absence of suffering, but they can radically transform our relationship with it.
Moreover, some virtues are themselves ways of living happiness.
Authentic love is not only a means to happiness: it is already a form of happiness.
Likewise, deep peace, spontaneous generosity or freedom from envy are valuable states through their own experience.

 

3. Because virtues give us real power over one’s own life
There is a difference between power over others and power over one’s own being.
One can lead an organization or a country, but be powerless in the face of one’s own anger, jealousy or greed.
On the other hand, the man who has developed his virtues can remain lucid when others panic, can love when rejected, can continue when others abandon and can act correctly even in the absence of rewards.
This is a form of inner sovereignty.
Virtue transforms man from a predominantly reactive being into one capable of consciously determining his conduct.

 

4. Because virtues make it possible
An authentic and deep relationship with others
In fact, people often make fun of it

what is good, beautiful, universally valid,

But when it comes to choosing someone

to trust, to be close to them, or to go on the road with,

be it business, life, collaboration, any kind of collaboration,

Suddenly, they remember that they don’t

than someone sincere, honest, capable, gifted, and so on.
Even thieves, robbers, embezzlers, traitors,

country sellers, drug or human traffickers

– when it comes to themselves

then they want to have contacts and collaborators, serious, and capable good people.

The virtues are a hard currency of the universe

and to benefit from their real value

All that is needed is a wise prudence:
IT IS NECESSARY TO BE GOOD

BUT, AT THE SAME TIME,

IT IS NECESSARY NOT TO BE STUPID!

Without sincerity, trust is fragile.
Without generosity, relationships become transactions.
Without compassion, the suffering of others remains alien to us.
Without humility, love sometimes risks being tainted by the desire for superiority.
Virtues create the conditions for relationships
that are not reduced to the mutual satisfaction of needs.
They allow us to love without possessing,
to help without humiliating,
to lead without dominating
and to be strong without becoming aggressive.
In this regard, virtues have an effect that transcends our own existence: they improve the world in which we live.

5. Because the virtues bring us closer to the truth
This is a particularly important argument
from the perspective of someone hoping to have an inner strength
that is based on the truth of his life.
Pride distorts the perception of one’s own person.
Fear can distort the assessment of reality.
Attachment leads us to see things the way we want them to be.
Envy causes us to minimize the value of others.
Excessive desire can lead us to confuse
what we like with what is true.
Virtues such as sincerity, discernment, detachment, humility, and intellectual courage reduce such distortions.
Therefore, they can contribute not only to moral purification, but also to the purification of knowledge.
In non-dialist traditions, this idea is of major importance:
diminishing egoistic conditioning
promotes the recognition of the nature of consciousness
and direct contact with the truth not through information and reason, but directly, spontaneously, through revelation.
However, a clarification must be made:
the fact that the virtues facilitate self-knowledge
does not mean that they automatically produce spiritual realization (only faciitaza).
Ignoring the virtues or manifesting the anti-virtues, however,
hurts
because it produces obstacles
that make man become more uninspired,
less fulfilled in soul and more uncertain about his future.

6. Because the spiritual virtues
they make the future MEANINGFUL.
WHY?
The future has a number of justified expectations, but they are not certain.
If you know that you have planted seeds in the field,
you can have justified but detached
expectations that you could have a harvest.
Cultivating virtues is essential
because they greatly reduce life errors,
add spiritual merit and greatly increase inner strength,
which makes the future predictably better.

The spiritual virtues are an inner
“steel” that allows the accumulation of true inner
strength and spiritual merit that is not visible, it is subtle,
but that you feel through the fact
that you feel a greater and greater
support in what is good.

7. Because the virtues allow us

to control and transcend our ego

and thus “not corrupt our power”.
The ego is a personal power, but if we identify with it
what is often mentioned in journalism in the words “Power corrupts” is happening
In fact, power does not corrupt everyone.
Only some. Or some.
Many defects are manifestations of a limiting identification with one’s own individuality.
Pride expresses exaggerated concern for personal importance.
Greed expresses the tendency to accumulate for a self perceived as insufficient.
Jealousy and envy express the difficulty of accepting the freedom or fulfillment of another.
On the other hand, love, compassion, generosity, humility, and detachment diminish the centrality of the ego.
From the perspective of nondual spirituality, this is essential.
Virtues are not the ultimate goal of spiritual practice, but they can remove some of the obstacles that prevent us from recognizing the essential Self.
But I would add an observation: virtues can also be confiscated by the ego.
Man can become proud of his humility, attached to his detachment or convinced of the superiority of his own purity.
Therefore, authentic virtue also involves overcoming identification with the image of a “virtuous man”.

8. Because a virtuous life
is safer and less vulnerable
In the face of changes that are always possible
Wealth can be lost. Health can deteriorate. Beauty gradually disappears. Social status can be destroyed.
But courage, wisdom, love, patience, discernment and detachment are resources that can sustain us precisely when external circumstances become unfavorable.
They are not invulnerable, nor do they eliminate all the limits of the human condition. However, they are less dependent on circumstances than many of the things that people spend their lives for.
In this regard, the development of virtues is an investment in what can remain valuable even when we lose almost everything else.


9. Because virtues make it possible
The Manifestation of Love
and of good on a larger or even gigantic
scale A man who manifests the virtues powerfully can become an important support for many others.
His courage can inspire the fearful.
His generosity can lessen suffering.
His discernment can prevent serious errors.
His integrity can generate trust in a community.
Moreover, when the virtues manifest themselves naturally, man no longer needs to constantly force himself to do good.
The good becomes the spontaneous expression of his way of being.
This seems to me to be one of the highest forms of character development.

 

10. The argument – perhaps – the deepest:
because the virtues allow us to
to become what we can really be!
Here we enter into a deeper philosophical and spiritual perspective.
There is a difference between a life in which we are content to satisfy the desires that arise

and a life in which we pursue the development of the highest possibilities of our being.
The first is mainly oriented towards obtaining pleasant experiences.
The second is oriented towards the transformation of the one who lives the experiences.
We do not only aim to have a better life,

but to become beings capable of living life in a superior way.
In this perspective, virtues are expressions of the maturation of consciousness.
The more we manifest love, lucidity, inner freedom, courage and discernment,

the deeper and richer our experience of existing becomes.
From the perspective of Abheda, we can go even further, formulating a spiritual thesis:
Spiritual virtues are ways in which the deep nature of our being

it begins to manifest itself less and less obstructed by the conditioning of the ego.

The shock question that often breaks down consciences:
Why choose virtue if the lack of it, sometimes,
Could it bring us advantages?

First of all, the virtues also bring great advantages.
The biggest!
But I usually don’t bring them right away.
That’s the only difference.
The reward is huge, but later or… a little later.
Yes, lying could make us rich,
selfishness could protect us,
and the lack of scruples could bring us strength…
It is not enough to simply say that virtuous people
are always happier

or that good deeds are always rewarded.
These claims cannot be proven
, and there are numerous counterexamples.
A person of integrity may be persecuted.
A generous person may be exploited.
A brave person may die defending someone.
Here appears the fundamental
distinction between comfort and the universal good.

If virtues were valuable

only for the benefits they bring us,
then we should give them up when the advantages or comfort disappear.
But if love, truth, inner freedom, and good have value in themselves,

then their manifestation may be preferable

even when it involves sacrifices.
For example, if we are honest and, necessarily, at least a little wise,

a long, comfortable life,

but dominated by cowardice, lies and selfishness

is not, in fact, preferable

a more difficult life, but lived with love, courage and integrity.
This is not a mathematical demonstration.

It is a fundamental choice

looking at what we consider to make a truly valuable existence.
And this is precisely where, in my opinion, lies the core of a man’s search.

 


An essential distinction:
manifest the virtues
It doesn’t mean becoming moralistic

The strong manifestation of virtues
should not be confused with the repression of impulses, moral rigidity,
or the constant
attempt to correspond to an external ideal.

Genuine virtue must be accompanied by intelligence and discernment.
Compassion without discernment can foster destructive behaviors.
Courage without discernment can become recklessness.
Discipline, Justice, and Truth Without Love
can become cruelty.
Misunderstood humility can become servility.
Detachment can degenerate into indifference.
Therefore, it is not the mere intensity of a quality
that makes it a spiritual virtue,
but its harmonization with truth, love, freedom, and discernment.
This is important for the system of the 12 Abheda virtues:
they should not be developed as 12 separate performances,
but as complementary manifestations of a unitary inner transformation.
Thus, a life in which we manifest with power the spiritual virtues

is preferable because

allows us to be freer, more lucid, more loving, stronger inside,

less conditioned by circumstances

and more capable of living the profound fulfillment of existence.

But the ultimate reason is not that virtues help us get more out of life,

but that they fundamentally transform the quality of the being who lives that life.

It Is Worth Manifesting Spiritual Virtues
not only for what we acquire through them,
but above all for what we cease

to be forced to be.
As selfishness, fear, attachment and ignorance
they lose their power over us,
Our essential nature can manifest itself more and more freely.

IN MY OPINION, THE SPIRITUAL VIRTUES AND ABILITIES

THEY ARE THE HARD CURRENCY OF THE UNIVERSE!

Leo Radutz