Training in Compassion 15: Five Virtues: Determination

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues:

• Determination,
• Repetition,
• Owning Your Nobility,
• Reproaching Your Demons, and
• Aspiring to the Impossible.

Today we focus on determination.

When we are exhibit determination to live compassionately we learn to take ourselves seriously as dignified spiritual practitioners. Your strong determination will teach you that, whatever your shortcomings, you also have within you a powerful energy to accomplish the spiritual path and the way of compassion.

What is it that you most would like to accomplish or manifest with this one short, precious life you have been given? We want to be good people, and we want to fulfill our highest human destiny.

At our best we all have high purposes, noble goals, even if we are modest about them. But we forget them. We get lost in the details, absorbed in the problems.

To practice strong determination is to intentionally stay connected to our higher goals and to remind us that we truly are spiritual practitioners; we are heroes; we can make effort; we can do what needs to be done to live a noble life.

The concrete practice is to concretely remind yourself. Compose your words of reminder, forthright, resolute, and bold.

"I am a spiritual warrior, and though this may not be apparent to others, inside it is clear to me. I refuse to be stuck for good with my ordinary limited point of view; I'm leaving that behind. I'm going forward!"

That's the spirit of strong determination.

So compose your words of determination and repeat them to yourself from time to time.

Such affirmations don’t do much by themselves, but in combination with attention to all the other trainings in compassion, these words will facilitate your growth.

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For the full version of this post: SEE HERE.