Yesterday was a new moon in Libra. New moon = plant a seed, allow it to grow. Libra = balance, fairness, cooperation.
After meditating on the Libra new moon last night, today I woke up with thoughts around vice and virtue. How can I lean into my consideration for a spectrum of vice and virtue, whilst shifting from a paradigm of rightness and wrongness? This is a continual concept/process that comes up for me, and I’m feeling it strongly lately.
When considering the scales of Libra, one can funnel virtuosity through enforcement of fairness and justice. Quests can grow strong for one to set virtue; expressing values in the form of opposition to an external matter. Seems righteous and sensible, from a certain degree. But is this cooperative? Is it harmonious?
Moving Beyond “Right” or “Wrong”
We see countless examples of how external, oppositional stances show up in our environment. We can render ourselves to have little influence if we believe: “that’s just the way it is.” Or we can understand there is a flow of energy and perspective informing shifts and directions. Do we want our energy and actions to perpetuate divisiveness and further polarization?
Rather than seeing balance and justice as “right” or “wrong” - can we allow a framework to move from one that has increasingly polarizing effects? How can a vice/virtue paradigm be an internal act of balance? Rather than getting consumed in the lure of needing to be “right” and imposing this upon others.
What is virtuous to you? With any subject matter you deem important, you have some working construct of what the virtuous version of this looks like. How do you carry this into your waking world?
Your Internal Spectrum of Vice and Virtue
Can you view manifestation of vice and virtue along a spectrum, not as opposites? That there can be movement along this spectrum. From a vantage point of determining what’s virtuous, you then have vice on either side. Vice from a state of having too much or vice from having too little. Each individual navigates their own alignment.
It can be easy to vilify something. Sometimes is can be less easy to find virtue in something. Especially when it’s something you find displeasing or off-putting. Monitoring these distinctions can be clearer to see when external, but it’s something that can be honed internally.
That thing to which you’re shouting at or coming up against - what is the virtuous zone that your experiential wisdom has taught you? How can you generate from this place of virtuosity within yourself? Or is more complex… are some of your external cues magnifying a placement within yourself toward a vice zone on a particular matter?
Exploration of this aspect of balance and rightful living that can be overlooked if there’s too much external focus. Are you willing to explore your own balance in new ways? What seed would you like to plant related to the essence of Libran values?
Hi James, I enjoyed your pondering about vice & virtue very much. The past weeks I listened to the recordings of ‘Peace Week’ and I believe many people are moving on the ‘heart of paradox’ continuum towards supporting whole~heartedly life. The destructiveness of life denying values is becoming too obvious.
For me beauty, truth and kindness is close to the ‘heart of paradox’ that is at the centre of every creation, while vices & virtues are culturally defined terms and change with fashion.
Globally humankind has to expand beyond polarities to have a chance to ‘upgrade’ our consciousness. How I visualise it are expanding circles of awareness that go beyond right & wrong and so set them in context of the whole.
Are these values, attitudes, actions, beliefs, ideas etc. life affirming or life destroying for the whole? K~now~ing that life is what happens between birth & death as part of the cycle of Creation.