Virtue

32 posts · 4 participants · started Feb 14, 2015, 4:09 PM

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   BonitaParticipant
   Feb 18, 2015, 2:12 PM

   Here’s another definition of virtue, it’s about choosing to do God’s will:

   16:7.10 Moral acts are those human performances which are characterized by the highest intelligence, directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends. Such conduct is virtuous. Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven.

   Also implied in the quote is that virtue is characterized by the highest intelligence used in discriminating between ends and means.  I take this to mean that one’s intentions and motivations are crucial to utilizing one’s highest intelligence.  We are told that our highest intelligence comes from the Holy Spirit, our supermind endowment –  the soul.  Virtue comes from thinking with the soul level of intellect, not the self-centered material intellect.

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   BonitaParticipant
   Feb 19, 2015, 3:05 PM

   16:7.10 Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven.

   Reading the UB just might be God’s will for an individual.  Words have transformative powers if they are internalized and allowed to reach down to the spiritual root of the soul.  Within the soul each person has enormous help with this process.  It’s resistance to the process that is evil.

3. E

   emanny3003Blocked
   Feb 19, 2015, 10:15 PM

   Bonita wrote:

   16:7.10 Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven.

   Reading the UB just might be God’s will for an individual. Words have transformative powers if they are internalized and allowed to reach down to the spiritual root of the soul. Within the soul each person has enormous help with this process. It’s resistance to the process that is evil.

   Word symbols are dead and cannot be internalize or take root in the soul. The Living Word is a living seed that can take spiritual root in the soul. The words in TUB have no power to transform because God is the only power and that power to transform is the Living Word of God.

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   BonitaParticipant
   Feb 20, 2015, 12:30 PM

   0:12.13 We are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience — God-consciousness.

   Words are part of language and language is a valuable means of communication.  It’s so valuable that God gave it only to humans, humans with personality.  Words and language are one of the ways that personalities relate with one another.  But when divine personalities attempt to use words to communicate with human personalities, there is difficulty because human words do not always have the proper divine meanings.  But as stated above, this lack is made up by the presence of the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth within the human mind.  These spirits of Divine Presence are personalities capable of communicating in ways other than language, and in a receptive human mind, are capable of attaching divine meaning to words, also known as truth.  So human words in a book written by divine personalities have all the potential to be comprehended in terms of divine meanings and values.  The transformation of the meaning of those words occurs within the soul, it’s called spiritual insight.  And all we can do, when it comes to spiritual insight, is to discover, recognize, interpret and choose.

   So reading a book filled with words pregnant with divine meaning is a valid exercise of one’s spiritual insight. Spiritual insight allows a personality to discern truth and the discernment of truth leads to virtue.

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   emanny3003Blocked
   Feb 20, 2015, 12:41 PM

   Bonita wrote:

   So reading a book filled with words pregnant with divine meaning is a valid exercise of one’s spiritual insight. Spiritual insight allows a personality to discern truth and the discernment of truth leads to virtue.

   Does God discriminate against His children that have language but are illiterate or have no access to books?

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   BonitaParticipant
   Feb 20, 2015, 12:46 PM

   5:5.13 Eternal survival of personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all desire God, then is survival assured. Limitations of intellect, curtailment of education, deprivation of culture, impoverishment of social status, even inferiority of the human standards of morality resulting from the unfortunate lack of educational, cultural, and social advantages, cannot invalidate the presence of the divine spirit in such unfortunate and humanly handicapped but believing individuals. The indwelling of the Mystery Monitor constitutes the inception and insures the possibility of the potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul.

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   emanny3003Blocked
   Feb 21, 2015, 12:52 AM

   Bonita wrote:

   5:5.13 Eternal survival of personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all desire God, then is survival assured. Limitations of intellect, curtailment of education, deprivation of culture, impoverishment of social status, even inferiority of the human standards of morality resulting from the unfortunate lack of educational, cultural, and social advantages, cannot invalidate the presence of the divine spirit in such unfortunate and humanly handicapped but believing individuals. The indwelling of the Mystery Monitor constitutes the inception and insures the possibility of the potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul.

   But as you said on another thread, “even a CAVEMAN can do it”.

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   BonitaParticipant
   Feb 22, 2015, 3:09 PM

   We’re told in 16:7.1 that virtue is indigenous to human personality. That means that virtue is native to personality.  All personality comes from a high source, and one would assume that is the reason virtue is it’s native state, if not tampered with.  This blows away all the teachings of original sin.  Humans are born with virtue.  It behooves us to nurture it at all costs.

9. M

   MaraParticipant
   Feb 22, 2015, 4:18 PM

   But virtue is not automatic.  It is volitional.

   21:3:14   If ever the authority or administration of a Creator Son is challenged, attacked, or jeopardized, he is eternally pledged to uphold, protect, defend, and if necessary retrieve his personal creation. Such Sons can be troubled or harassed only by the creatures of their own making or by higher beings of their own choosing. It might be inferred that “higher beings,” those of origin on levels above a local universe, would be unlikely to trouble a Creator Son, and this is true. But they could if they chose to. Virtue is volitional with personality; righteousness is not automatic in freewill creatures.

   Virtue is righteousness — conformity with the cosmos. 16:7:6  

   Only a personality can know what it is doing before it does it – can look before it leaps.  16:7:3

    

   It has always been difficult to grasp the differences between personality will and creature will.  But I did find this achievement to think about.  It is doable.

   111:5:4   Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in eternity — all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the creature personality consents — chooses — to subject the creature will to the Father’s will. And already has the Father chosen to make a fragment of himself subject to the will of the creature personality.

   Creature personality consents to subject the creature will to the Father’s will?  Hmmm.

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    BonitaParticipant
    Feb 22, 2015, 5:07 PM

    Mara wrote:  But virtue is not automatic.  It is volitional.

    Sure it is. The quote says that virtue is indigenous to personality.  This goes along with morality awareness.  Personality is from God. Personality comes to us already in a virtuous state.

    I believe you might be thinking of character.  Character is NOT indigenously virtuous.  Inherited characters can be base or noble.  What one chooses to become, the nature of the character of the soul, is a matter of choice.  But the personality itself is a unique and original pattern of virtue himself.

    And once the Adjuster arrives, that personality becomes an active and functioning agent of virtue.  Otherwise, what would personality unify toward?  It unifies according to its Origin, which is virtue, led by the Source himself.

    The psyche of a child is naturally positive (103:2.5).  That is because both mind and personality are indigenously positive unifying factors of selfhood. It’s only when one resists or fights against their God-given nature that they become negative or unrighteous.

    16:7.1 Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality.
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    BonitaParticipant
    Feb 23, 2015, 3:55 PM

    16:7.6  In the day-by-day life of mortal man, virtue is realized by the consistent choosing of good rather than evil, and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature.

    In the above quote, it says that opting for goodness over evil allows us to realize virtue, the virtue which is indigenous to our personality and revealed by our Adjuster.  It’s evidence of our original nature, proof of our parentage, so to speak.

     

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    BonitaParticipant
    Feb 24, 2015, 3:03 PM

    48:7.19 Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.

    I think this quote tells us a lot about the volitional part of virtue.  Our personalities may come from God with native virtue, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it.  We have the power to deny it.  But even when we accept our virtuous heritage, we don’t actually acquire, or own virtue as a personal experience, until we socialize it.  That means to share it; sharing is another word for service.

     

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