Or: The 7 virtues
When I was younger I thought the word "virtue" was horribly old-fashioned, therefore I just want to call it "attributes for being happy". To discover them for me leads to feel myself happier, more harmonious, healthier and more comfortable.
Like as the 7 dwarves help Snow White to find her prince, the 7 virtues help me to find harmony in my life. It's about the same. So to say. Although, I am not sure if I would have leased harmony with a prince indeed. But that's another story.
The 7 characteristics on the path to the inner midst and harmony:
Sincerity
Sincerity means much more than not lying and always telling the truth.
Exactly seen, there is no such thing as an all-encompassing truth, because everyone takes his own truth as a basis, basing on the own experiences. That what's counting as truth is ones own perception of things and the world around us. How can I tell the truth when it possibly isn't the truth for my counterpart at all?
Sincerity is the realization that it's enough to be authentic. Not disguising oneself. Giving up the insisting on ones own truth and open oneself up. For that, one needs to put aside self-centeredness, as well as the believe to be the measure of all things.
Commiseration
Commiseration is more than pitifulness for someone who suffers. Commiseration is more than generosity and mercy which I show in donating to charities and beggars. To think of oneself to be a "good human" is an ego program of highest level.
To feel with other people means to pay attention to others, to listen actively, grasp the feelings behind the words and to take them seriously. Instead of concentration on oneself and only wanting to offer "well-meaning" advices. The compulsion to help only fills the own inner emptiness.
Above all, it's wrong to attribute the own feelings to others uncritically. Often one thinks he knows how another person ticks, how he feels, how he will react or what he thinks. How often one is wrong in his supposition, because one doesn't dare to ask openly. How often someone is surprised by his/her own partner, as soon as he ceases "thinking for him/her", but inquires what the other wishes or how he/she thinks about the situation.
Commiseration also means to be happy with the other. Giving someone a gift, not for expecting thankfulness or a counter-gift or because a reason forces one, but simply spontaneously in between, because the other is glad about it.
Lenience
Lenience is not indifference.
Lenience is tolerance of something or someone that actually bothers me. To take care of refugees, because one likes to help and find this a good matter, is no tolerance. Tolerance is, listening to people with opposite opinion, taking them seriously and letting their standpoint be valid without judgment.
Lenience requires empathy. Lenience is forgiveness too. Not to be unforgiving. Lenience also includes admitting ones own mistakes, learning from them and accepting ones own deficiency. We aren't born to be perfect, but to be authentic.
Openness
Openness is something else than accepting everything thoughtlessly or driftig in the wind like an autumn leaf from one side to the other. Openness means to be positive about new experiences positively and learn from them, to open oneself for the energy of the universe and to gather power from it. Openness means opening ones heart and letting the world in.
In doing so, one should pay attention to resistances and look at them precisely: Are we listening truly, are we taking a close look truly, do we compassionate honestly? Or is the truth, that we prone to prejustice without an accurate check and assume that all what differs from our viewpoint is reprehensible?
Gratitude
Thankfulness is more than just saying thanks politely. Especially not if one don't mean it, because the gotten gift is ugly or don't suits to one. Has the giver ever thought about what I wish me or what I like? Or is it a courtesy gift?
Thankfulness, which is meant here, is: Being thankful for everything that's good in ones life. Being thankful for everything that happens to one because it helps to develop oneself. Also the sorrowful, the painful is part of my thanks, because I learn most in suffer.
Categories like "good" or "bad" should be resolved. The painful isn't bad inherently. Seeming bad luck may in retrospect turn out as "good luck of having escaped worse". Or a decision was forced, which I didn't snatch up till now, and turns out as beneficial now.
Thankfulness means: To search out the useful and good in everything. To feel the joy of being allowed to make experiences.
Mirth
The wise one has a mirth nature. He has beaming eyes, a clear forehead and smile on his lips.
Mirth is the expression of the innerst being. Not taking the world too seriously. To laugh about something takes away the seriousness and sharpness from a situation. This requires serenity. When anger arises, first take a deep breath into the rising reaction and look at the siutation form a second, opposing perspective.
Go up to things proactively rather than reactively. Look at the situation in a contrary way. Wait calmly, sit it out and look what happens. Detect the humorous in the situation. That's like laughing at situation comic, at the acted mishaps in a stage play. For that, it is helpful seeing ones life as such a stage play and taking the role one plays in it not too seriously.
Love
Love is the highest "discipline" and the hardest to achieve. Love is the most powerful force. What is meant here is the all-encompassing love that is directed towards more than to one object only. For that, to love oneself is part of it, since the divine is within us.
Before we love our enemies, we should be nicer to our friends first.