Virtue or Vice?

People imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice Only by their overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit breath at every moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Cited in Mystical Hours

Again, Br. Teasdale has insights and outlooks he can offer through these words:

“You simply cannot fake it! The American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson here outlines one of the subtleties of moral character: Virtue and Vice can emanate an effect that can be detected. The virtuous express their goodness of character in who they are, and not simply in what they do.

Virtue and vice are both habits that, in a sense, are cultivated over time, and emit a feeling. Virtue is also a path that leads to happiness, which as Aristotle says “accompanies virtuous activity.” In other words, we are only really happy in the long run, if we are committed to virtue, allowing for its character to be schooled and formed by precious wisdom. When we are truly in harmony with the Divine, others, nature, and ourselves we are naturally virtuous and others will know it!”

Reflecting back on the last comments I made about the grab bag, there is a tendency towards “horizontal gluttony.” (a phrase I picked up from Idris Shah, the Sufi author) where we will gladly accumulate ideas, and books, rituals and practices, and hold them in isolation from how we then will live out our daily lives.

Our hunger for techniques will easily get in the way of finding simple practices we can adopt daily; and by committing to just a few, we open ourselves to the depth and dimensions of life and practice that anyone still stuck in the realm of ideas prevents themselves from experiencing.

When I first got introduced to energy healing, psychic phenomena, etc. what fascinated me the most was the direct application of those energies and how, according to Emerson, they can be felt or experienced. Given some allowance for a person’s desire to please, or be approved of by the teacher/healer/instructor etc., once those tendencies are reduced or eliminated, there is still the actual feeling or resonance that remains; and that can serve as an agent to our greater awareness, to our broader and deeper appreciation of our bodily energies, and to experiencing some degree of healing, resolution, or peace from participating in that technique or practice.

Over the years, as an interfaith spiritual director, the moral dimension of “holy work” was revealed, and my directees found that it was more easily perceived: You could sense or come to know or acknowledge that the person was struggling with a habit, a pattern, a gnawing worry or a deep-seated fear.

You could also sense if there was a selfish, unruly, coarse energy around or behind some people that would need further treatment, or that there was a need to be referred to a professional health practitioner or therapist for further care and resolution.