Love, compassion, humility, integrity, and courage – Understanding harmony

The lowest level of the tree is where the branches are thickest and longest. Herein dwells harmony. Harmony supports the rest of the Me-We Tree by describing the state of Grace that makes all else possible. Anytime that a person is experiencing perceived "negativity," harmony is absent from his life. There are five principles of harmony: love, compassion, humility, integrity, and courage. They are a checklist to follow when not experiencing harmony. The checklist is simply. Simply ask yourself, "In the moment…"

Am I loving?
Am I compassionate?
Am I humble?
Am I in integrity?
Am I courageous?

If the answer is no to any of these five questions, then those questions hold the key to understanding why you are not experiencing harmony. To better understand how to answer the questions, each principle of harmony is discussed in the following.

Love is the awareness and acceptance of self and others as they are. This is love. It is often confused with many emotional states such as caring, affection, lust, jealousy, and so on. Pure love is acceptance with no intent to change. Thus it is possible to love someone or some thing without ever having experienced the person or the thing. I can love another person or people on the other side of the world from me simply by accepting them without the intent to change them to my worldview or likes and dislikes. To test love in the moment, ask yourself if you are loving everything that is then present for you. If not, ask yourself why and what do you need to do to accept whatever you are not accepting.

Compassion is the awareness and acceptance of one's own process as well as the processes of everyone else. "Process" is this context is really the life journey. We each have one, and each one is in a different direction. No one has ours, and it is folly to think that other people should follow us. Letting go of that notion and respecting the other person's journey is compassion. To test compassion in the moment, ask yourself if you are able to accept whatever the other person is being or doing. If not, ask yourself why and what you need to do to accept whatever you are not accepting.

Humility is the awareness and acceptance that we are all equal and unique. Humility is coming to grips that no one is inherently better than anyone else. Who is to say that one person makes a greater contribution than another? We cannot know the truth of another's life. To do so is spiritual arrogance for we are saying that we know what is best for another. To test humility in the moment, ask yourself if you are able to accept the other person as your equal and someone who has uniqueness. If not, ask yourself why and what you need to do to accept whatever you are not accepting.

Integrity is the awareness and acceptance of one's own personal truth. Each of us has a personal truth that is our creation of the world, for you do create your own world. Integrity speaks to taking responsibility for the world that you create. Within that world, you and you alone are the sovereign with absolute power. To attempt to foist off some or even all of the responsibility for your world to God or others is complete folly. This may be difficult for many people to accept for playing the role of victim is very popular and culturally supported in many lands. Nonetheless it is a principle of harmony and without it harmony will not be present. To test integrity in the moment, ask yourself if you are able to take responsibility for whatever is occurring. If not, ask yourself why and what you need to do to accept whatever you are not accepting. Courage is the awareness and acceptance of one's actions.

Courage is akin to integrity for it requires us to be aware of and take responsibility for what we are doing in the moment. There is no room for being "made" to do something by someone else. One of the favorite excuses of the child is, "He made me do it," as if the child is a mindless automaton that has no will. Consciously expressing free will is a courageous act and is the last principle of harmony. To test courage in the moment, ask yourself if you are able to accept whatever you are being or doing. If not, ask yourself why and what you need to do to accept whatever you are not accepting.

Harmony is the state of fully taking ownership of the MeWe Tree and all of its layers. It is the state of heaven on earth and has as many expressions as there are humans alive. For one person it could be found in laying in wildflowers gazing at the clouds drifting by overhead. For another it could be climbing a sheer rock face where each movement is measured in life or death. For another it could be looking in the face of a sleeping newborn. And so on. Applying the five principles of harmony will create harmony anytime, anywhere.

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