Definitions: (1) worthy of acceptance or belief <an authentic idea>; genuine; real; (2) approved by authority; trustworthy; reliable; (3) true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character; unique

Synonyms: credible, faithful, official, original

Quotes:
• The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering. — Ben Okri (1959-) Nigerian-British poet
• That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something. — Meredith Jane Monk (1942-) American vocal innovator

Definitions: (1) having or showing kindness, courtesy, charm, good taste, or generosity of spirit; (2) tactful and delicate; urbane; refined; (3) merciful; compassionate; (4) possessing divine grace; virtuous; good

Synonyms: affable, benignant, cordial, genial, mild, sociable, tender

Quotes:
• I might have some difficult questions, but I know God is good, merciful, and gracious. — Jeremy Thomas Camp (1978-) American Christian singer
• When you’ve experienced grace and you feel like you’ve been forgiven, you’re a lot more forgiving of other people. You’re a lot more gracious to others. — Richard Duane Warren (1954-) American pastor

Comment: It is because of God’s graciousness that we were given the gifts of grace. And one of those is the gift of free choice. He gave us choice so we would be able to grow and discover our own holiness.

Definitions: (1) sincere and frank; honest and forthright; (2) real; true; authentic; not artificial; not counterfeit <a genuine manuscript>

Synonyms: (fair) dinkum, natural, unadulterated, unaffected, veritable

Comment: When, on the one hand, one seems genuine and honest, but on the other hand, has selfish motives, their true purpose cannot really be known until time clarifies it. However, you may be able to see through their facade from the outset. If not, wait patiently, eventually the individual will show themself. Remember the old saying: “Actions speak louder than words.”
     Sometimes people say they are motivated by a set of positive qualities and yet are taking steps and actions going against the very qualities they profess to hold in such high regard.

Quotes:
• The essence of Hinduism is the same essence of all true religions: Bhakti or pure love for God and genuine compassion for all beings. — Radhanath Swami [born Richard Slavin (1950-) American Gaudiya Vaishnava guru
• The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. — John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher & psychologist

Definitions: (1) facing and dealing with anything recognized as difficult or painful instead of withdrawing from it; (2) that firmness of spirit that meets danger or hardship without fear; strength of character; unflinching; (3) the quality of being mentally or morally fearless or brave; valorous; intrepid; unruffled

Synonyms: bold, daring, dauntless, enterprising, gallant, hardy, heroic, pluck
     Courage implies firmness of mind and will in the face of danger or extreme difficulty; mettle suggests an ingrained capacity for meeting strain or difficulty with fortitude and resilience; resolution stresses firm determination to achieve one’s ends; spirit also suggests a quality of temperament enabling one to hold one’s own or keep one’s morale when opposed or threatened; tenacity adds to resolution implications of stubborn persistence.

Balancing Qualities: Compassionate, Confident, Curious, Farsighted, Kind, Open-minded

Compatible Qualities: appreciation, attentiveness, experience, flexibility, gratitude, humor, knowledge, preparedness, relaxation, strength, understanding
     NOTES:
• These compatible qualities may also be considered antidotes to fear either singly or in combination. Yet courage and boldness are not really antidotes to fear, they are more positive reaction mechanisms.
• If your focus is good enough, your attentiveness is good enough. You perceive the rattlesnake before it has a chance to bother you. Then you just take a wide path so you don’t even experience the fear because your attentiveness gives you an alternate path.
• You are not as afraid of the things you have already experienced.
• One of the greatest antidotes to fear is humor. When you experience fear, or if your intention is to be courageous, make sure there is a serious quantity of levity involved.
• To be prepared gives you a look into possible futures. If you are climbing a cliff, you may try a handhold but then decide it is a bad choice. This is acceptable as long as you have a good foothold, and your other hand is firmly set. Since you are securely positioned, you can see where your next handhold should be, therefore no fear is necessary.

Parental Qualities: discipline, wisdom

Familial Quality: encouraging

Too Far: Courage is the virtue of facing fear or danger. But excess courage is reckless and foolhardy. And deficiency of courage is cowardice. — Aristotle (384-322 bc) The Nicomachean Ethics {340 bc}
     Note: Aristotle argued that each positive quality represented a golden mean between two negative extremes.

Quotes:
• There are worse things than dying. — Judith Mary Kain (1948-) American empath
• Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. — George S. Patton (1885-1945) American general
• Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. — Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) French-Cuban author
• One man with courage makes a majority. — Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) 7^th President of the United States
• Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. — Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet
• With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. — Dr. Keshavan Nair (1910-2005) Indian professor of surgery

Inspiration: Courage is infectious. It has the ability to buoy the courage of the less courageous.

Reflection: Any means or mechanism that protects you from fear is valuable because it works to some degree. You cannot expect to reach the most sophisticated and appropriate method in one huge leap. Once a technique is recognized as less than perfect, then it is time to face the next step and develop a more polished system for avoiding or facing fear.
     You may look back and say, “When I was a child, I was obedient, and therefore, I avoided fear because I was protected. When I was young, I would cower or run away, and therefore I avoided harm. When I was little older, I would intellectualize, and yet this was just another form of running away. But as I faced my fear, I became more courageous in the way I handled myself and my environment.”

Considerations:
• Courage has a lot to do with the willingness to go through fear. When you have an opportunity, you face the problem with choice: to either go through or not. That’s where the courage comes in.
• We each have a threshold of pain; we also have a threshold of conflict. No matter how well developed your threshold of conflict, you will create or encounter circumstances pushing that limit. Measure your success against your acceptance of, and management of, the conflicts you encounter. This includes reducing conflict by backing off. It also includes facing conflict with clarity and determination – not just willpower – but also finesse and creativity. One must have the energy and fortitude to fight, or the wisdom to hold back and prepare.
• In order to experience courage, you’re going to have to experience situations in which courage is a necessary element. This means difficulty.
     Courage comes into play if you need to leave something secure in favor of something adventurous, unknown, new, or exciting.
     One way of dealing with fear is giving up or releasing it. When you do, you let it pass through you – you accept it but do not embrace it. When you feel its grip, you may process it, or simply push on through it. Whatever you do, you have to control it before it can freeze your resolve.

Observations:
• The real problem with death is lack of faith.
• Fear of the unknown is the greatest of fears. Your own imagination can bring you to your knees. If it does, you may as well pray while you are down there.
• You may learn more from your failures than from your successes. Your failures give you the courage, the knowledge, and the will to change things enough to create success. That is your edge.

Comments:
• Did Rosa Parks generate the courage to sit in the front of the bus at the moment of the decision or was it a lifetime of building courage culminating in the defining moment of her life? It is possible for the former to be true, but more often the latter is the case.
• Fear is negative power, and yet there is a way to switch fear into positive power under your control. Focus on the energy as an object. If you are inside its field, then it has control of you; but if you are outside of it, then you can take possession of it and use it for your purpose.
     If you focus on what can be done or must be done, you can move forward. Test your limits. You may not overcome completely but even a little is progress.
     Accomplishments achieved enkindle enthusiasm and curiosity.

Colors: red, scarlet

Symbol: the sword

Definition: a willingness and ability to work with others; collaborative; greater efficiency through teamwork

Proverb: When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion. — Ethiopian

Quote: Whatever God’s dream that man may be, it is certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates. — Stella Terrill Mann (1898-1990) Author of Change Your Life Through Love {1949}

Reflection: Ultimately the final outcome of racial tension will be one of three separate possibilities: isolation, annihilation, or assimilation.
     Assimilation is accomplished by communication and interaction. Society is strengthened by cross-cultural relationships, cross-societal associations, personal friendships, and the melding of linguistic and musical ideas and attitudes. When assimilation is rendered with a cooperative spirit, the new combination is a strong and unique new people.

Comment: A stable civilization is built on a cooperative society.

Observation: A discussion may begin as a negotiation and, if productive, lead to cooperation; and then, if fruitful, become a collaboration.

Symbol: fish {Teamwork}; geranium flowers

Definitions: (1) showing kindly regard for the feelings or circumstances of others; thoughtful; (2) showing care; deliberate

Derivation: Latin, “examine,” )perhaps based on sidus: “star”)

Quotes:
• Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree. — Marian Wright Edelman (1939-) American civil rights activist
• Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration, and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. — Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) The 34^th President of the United States

Definitions: (1) respectful of the basic human rights of others; (2) courteous and polite; mannerly; (3) proper behavior

Synonyms: affable, complaisant, obliging

Quotes:
• Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society. — Alexander “Sandy” McCall Smith (1948-) British legal scholar & author
• All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. — François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) French theologian
• Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied. — Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755) French judge & historian

Comments:
• When you choose to be civil you are creating civilization.
• Although being civil oftentimes implies an attitude little more than a lack of rudeness, it also implies a willingness to be tolerant. This is the beginning of an acceptance of our unavoidable differences, and a practical step away from the negative toward the positive.

Definitions: (1) having distinctive importance; momentous; renowned; (2) marked by nobility of thought or action; distinguished; dignified (3) unusual in ability of achievement; highly gifted; illustrious; superior; eminent; (4) impressive; remarkable; grand (5) proficient; skillful; (6) excellent; splendid; fine; (7) enthusiastic

Synonyms: celebrated, extraordinary, great-minded, majestic, powerful

Quotes:
• To be great is to be Godlike. And since the quality of greatness is wholly determined by the content of goodness, it follows that, even in your present human estate, if you can through grace become good, you are thereby becoming great. (28:6.22) — The Urantia Book {1955}
• Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. — Frank Herbert (1920-1986) Dune {1965}
     Note: The word ‘sardonic’ is said to derive from the sardonion plant that grows in Sardinia, which when eaten produces convulsive laughter that can end in death.

Divine Definitions: (1) The personal aspect of deity; (2) The One Uncaused Reality; (3) The first, best, and highest being in existence; (4) The embodiment of sanctity

Comments:
• Divinity is the unifying and coordinating quality of deity. Divinity is qualitatively comprehended as love, truth, beauty, and goodness. Divinity is correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry. Divinity is manifest impersonally as justice, power, and sovereignty.
• God started it all going. He lets it run its course with the aid of of more sophisticated beings who He also created that have specific responsibilities in the scheme of things. God is supernatural, above nature, as well as in nature, but nature is not God.

Quote: God is the shortest distance between Zero and Infinity – in either direction. But God, being without dimension, is not a line but a point. Therefore, God is the tangential point between Zero and Infinity. — Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) Elements of Pataphysics [The Science of Imaginary Solutions] {1911}

GODLY
Human Definitions: (1) filled with love for God; pious; devout; religious; (2) aspiring to conform to God’s design or will; (3) metta <loving-kindness>; (4) theophile <one who loves God and is love by God>; theosophy <the knowledge that God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations>

Quotes:
• Why indeed must “God” be a noun? Why not a verb . . . The most active and dynamic of all? — Mary Daly (1928-2010) American theologian
• God is Love, and whenever you reach out in loving kindness, you are expressing God. God is Truth, and whenever you seek truth, you are seeking God. God is Beauty, and whenever you touch the beauty of a flower or sunset, you are touching God. — Peace Pilgrim [born Mildred Lisette Norman] (1908-1981) Steps Toward Inner Peace {2021}
• Man has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has always created its God conceptions out of its highest recognized values. Every intelligent creature gives the name of God to the best and highest thing he knows. (102:8.4) — The Urantia Book {1955}
• God can only do for you what God can do through you by means of your thoughts and ideas. — Catherine Ponder (1927-) The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity {1962}
     Note: And your persistent decisions to yield to your higher ideals.

Tip: Since everyone has God within, treat everyone like God.

Comment: There is always someone who is stronger or smarter or wiser than you are. Many times it is only your perception of them in relation to your perception of yourself.
     If they truly are godly, they will not flaunt their superiority. Any superiority is most probably specific to one area or is a superficial difference. They may be older, or more experienced, or female while you are male, or Polynesian while you are Inuit. But even though you may admire, or even envy, those strengths and differences, you need not push yourself down while elevating them.
     Remember you are also growing and are better in some respects than many others. There are also people who are better than those you admire.
     Why is it differences are often a justification to either deify or to demonize the other?

Color: blue

Definitions: (1) refined or polite; noble; (2) heeding the need of others with delicacy and sensitivity; generous; kind; (3) able to handle a situation smoothly; self-composed, serene; patient; (4) mild; moderate

Synonyms: meek, pacific, peaceful, placid, quiet, softhearted, tender

Balancing Qualities: Determined, Strong

Maxim: Gently in manner, strongly in deed.

Quote: The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. — Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) American naturalist

Comment: We associate gentleness with the sense of touch; but even though we cannot physically touch most people, we can touch their hearts with the kindness of a smile, touch their minds with an encouraging word, or touch their funny bones with a sense of humor.

Symbol: the unicorn {Gentleness and Longevity} (Chinese)