| Code of Conduct |
| Recommended Code of Conduct for supporters of this new spiritual path |
| Introduction As we have stated elsewhere, we still hope and wish that many people will come to love our spiritual philosophy as much as we do, and benefit from it, and decide to live spiritual lives, and walk on the holy path with us. There are people who, for various reasons, think they can live a spiritual life and still indulge in violations and bad behaviours, but this is not true. Living by a set of good and decent moral values is an essential part of walking on the holy path. For many people this means slowly but surely 'cleaning up their act'. We recommend the following code of conduct, as being beneficial for everyone, because living a decent life is valuable in every way, improving mental, emotional and physical health, as well as ensuring that your commitment to the holy path is more than just lip service. We know that examining your lifestyle in order to improve it can be very painful. Often people feel bad about themselves as they assess what they need to change. We remind you that you are a divine being, and you are basically good at all times. Before you examine your lifestyle, spend some time thinking about your basic goodness and identifying with it, and then if you find some behaviours or bad habits you need to change, you can reassure yourself, 'I am still a good person even when I do these bad things. When I stop doing them, I will be able to feel good about myself all the time.' And now a word of encouragement for those of you who already have a set of good values, and are already doing your best to lead a decent and moral life. We know that as you read the following information, you are likely to feel guilty over every least little thing you have ever done wrong, but this is not our intention in writing this. Instead we ask you to please accept our admiration and our support for all your good intentions and good behaviours. The following recommendations are guidelines, not absolute rules, and we know that there will be times in your life when you cannot live up to your own high standards, or ours, but the main thing is that you are trying, and learning from your mistakes, and doing your best. You can feel good about yourself right away, but if at any time when you are reading this you begin to feel guilty, stop and remind yourself how well you are doing overall. If your discomfort continues, we offer to you that you will be able to ask for healing for that pain by the method we explain on the Spiritual Healing page of this website. Here is our list of recommendations. • Give your loyalty to God • Love God, and allow God to love you • Keep good company • Treat others with respect • Expect others to treat you with respect • Treat the Earth with respect • Do not exploit or abuse others • Do not allow others to exploit or abuse you • Do not have any involvement with criminal activities • Avoid any involvement with violations to the best of your ability. • Take good care of yourself • Do not indulge in casual sex • Do not gossip • Dress modestly • Be as honest as you can be, while still being kind • Act with integrity • Spend some time daily on spiritual practices • Treat this new spiritual path and its Spiritual Teachers with respect Give your loyalty to God. Make it your top priority in life to live the way God wants you to live. Some people put money first in their lives, some put having a relationship first, some put their family first. However putting God first means you will have a better quality of life in all its aspects, including your money-making work and all your relationships with others. The basis and foundation of your life and all your activities will be the best it can possibly be if you commit yourself to living a spiritual life. Love God, and allow God to love you. The most important relationship in anyone's life is their relationship with God. God's Love for you can be experienced in many different ways, all so delightful and nourishing, that it is worthwhile for you to spend time thinking about God, and feeling this Love, and enjoying it. As you become filled up with your awareness of God's Love for you, so you will quite naturally also feel a very great love for God. Keep good company. Good company makes it easier for you to walk on the holy path and to develop spiritually, bad company makes it harder. Try to spend your time with people who have a decent set of moral values, and who are doing their best to live by them. Ideally, these would be people who are also walking on the holy path, but in a secular society like this one, they can be hard to find, so others who are living decent lives can also be good company, so long as they respect your commitment to God and to walking on the holy path. Not everyone who says they are living a decent life is really doing so, however, so be aware that you must use your judgement to help you decide who is genuinely good company, and who is showing you false goodness. Another essential requirement of good company is that the person must uphold you in honour and wish for you, your own greatest fulfilment. As well as being careful who you mix with, you can seek out good company by reading books about, or by, holy people, and also by spending time with holy people in meditations. Treat others with respect. Each person springs from the same Divine Source, we share a common divinity. This means that we are all equal in our divinity, no-one is greater or less than you at this divine level. God upholds each person in honour, each woman, each man and each child. Therefore we should uphold each person in honour ourselves. This means we should treat them well, to the best of our ability. It does not mean putting up with abusive behaviours, but it does mean putting an end to such behaviours in a way that still respects the person as a divine being, whom God loves. Treating others with respect also means that we do not lower our standards of behaviour in our treatment of others just because we are angry with them, or hurt by them. As an example, if someone is hitting you, and the only way you can stop them in the moment is to hit them back, then this is a moral thing to do, but hitting them later, when they are no longer attacking you, either as punishment or as revenge is not a moral behaviour. Treating others with respect also means that you do not have prejudices against people because of their gender, age, looks, race, culture, status, or sexual orientation. None of these differences are violations, and people who are different to you in these ways are still equal to you in their divinity and have a right to be different and still be treated with honour. Only bad behaviours and violations need be judged as bad or wrong. Expect others to treat you with respect. If you think of even the most magnificent people, you can acknowledge that you are equal with them in your divinity. So do yourself just honour. If people treat you badly, do what you can to stop them. Do not place yourself knowingly in situations where people can or will treat you badly. Remind yourself often that God loves you and upholds you in honour, and so everyone else should treat you with respect and consideration because that is what you deserve. Treat the Earth with respect. We are as much a part of the Earth as any mountain or beetle. If the Earth is sick, then to some extent we are sick too, and if the Earth dies, we will surely die. We cannot separate our own wellbeing from that of the Earth. We should, therefore, at all times, only take from the Earth, what the Earth can afford to give, and only then what we can genuinely use for our sustenance, comfort, fulfilment and pleasure. To take more than that of anything is a violation. So treating the Earth with respect means making full use of everything you own, not buying new things while the old ones are still in good condition, choosing belongings made of renewable resources where possible, having only the belongings you can really make use of, and selling or recycling items you no longer use, where possible. Do not exploit or abuse others. We live in a society where innocence and kindness are often abused, when they should ideally be honoured. We recommend that you do not take advantage of people, even when you could get away with doing so. If people are innocent and trusting, do not betray their trust, but treat them extremely decently. If people are kind to you, do not take advantage of them, but show them your appreciation. Do not steal, or pilfer, do not 'borrow' and then not return the item. Do not criticise people when you don't have to, do not hit them, do not force them to do what you think they should do, when they don't want to. Do not lead them astray into immoral or unlawful activities, nor into activities that are not good for their own welfare. Do not allow others to exploit or abuse you. We have met many people who do not really know what is and what isn't abusive treatment, apart from very obvious things like being robbed, raped or beaten up. We recommend that you educate yourself in this important field. A good way to start is to notice whenever you get unpleasant or upsetting feelings because of the way others treat you. Find out from books and support services whether there is something abusive in the treatment. For example, many people think that they are being selfish if they don't do what another person wants, however often the fault is not in them but in the other person who is being abusive with their demands. Another example; criticism can range from a genuine complaint about your behaviour, to an abusive attempt to manipulate you, and some criticism is just plain nastiness, and you will benefit enormously if you learn how to tell the difference between constructive and abusive criticism. As you learn what is and isn't abusive treatment, you will also be able to learn how to stop people from treating you badly. Do not have any involvement with criminal activities. People who are living by a set of good and decent moral values will obviously not become involved in any criminal activities. Many people who are involved in criminal activities justify their actions in all kinds of ways, such as telling themselves that it's not that bad, or that the law is wrong, or they need the money, or that society doesn't care about them, so why should they care about society. No such justification, however, can excuse a person who is trying to live a spiritual life from any involvement in criminal activity. The only spiritually justified exceptions would be to stand up against laws that even a saint would agree are bad laws. Avoid any involvement with violations to the best of your ability. A violation is something which does harm to another person, or other living being or to the Earth. While it is usually obvious what is a crime, it can be far more difficult to decide what is and isn't a violation. Because you are a divine being, you do have within you a guideline to let you know when something is a violation, but your own beliefs and social pressures of various kinds, and justifications given to excuse violations, can still cloud your good judgement. We recommend you do the best you can, by staying away from obvious violations, and emphasising and acting on your own innate goodness at all times. Within each person, there is a wise and powerful and loving saint. Often violations are easier to detect if you ask yourself, "Does the saint in me approve of this behaviour?" and "Would other people think I am like a saint if they knew I was doing this?" Take good care of yourself. Whenever you have to make a decision about anything or anyone in your life, or taking part in any activity, it will be easier for you to stay on the holy path and to take care of yourself if you ask yourself, 'what does my loyalty to God and my own greatest fulfilment tell me to do about this?' Remember that you will always be the most important person in your own life, and the one with the most interest and motivation in making sure that you have the happiness, welfare and fulfilment you want. So always put yourself first in your own life, and make sure that everything you choose to do is in fact conducive to your own welfare, of course without harming others to achieve your own goals. To paraphrase the old song: 'Take good care of yourself, you belong to God'. Do not indulge in casual sex. When sex is an expression of love and devotion between two adults, whether of the same gender or of the opposite gender, who have made a loving commitment to each other, then it is a spiritual activity. We recommend that if you meet someone and wish to have a sexual relationship with them, that you first get to know them for about two years, and make a meaningful commitment to each other, and have other ways of showing love and devotion to each other, before you enter into a sexual relationship with them. Our society is, unfortunately, full of sexual abuses, of which casual sex is one, and we recommend that you take proper care of yourself by refusing all offers of casual sex, no matter how tempting. Do not gossip. When you talk about other people, you have the choice of saying nice things about them, which then gives them psychic support to go on doing well, or dragging them down with gossip, which gives a bad impression of them to the person you are speaking to, and actually puts psychic pressure on them to behave badly. There are times when you need to speak to someone about the bad behaviour of another person, you may need to warn people not to do business with someone who is cheating people, for example, or you may need to tell a counsellor, doctor, or lawyer about your problems at home so they can give you advice about somebody's bad treatment of you, or you may need to tell the authorities of someone's bad behaviours, but when you are just chatting with people, then you do not need to mention scandal or bad behaviours of any kind. Defamatory gossip is always a serious violation, and the worst kind is when people betray their friends, or people who have been good to them, by saying, not good, but bad things about them behind their back. Dress modestly. It is fine and good to be proud of the way you dress, and to want to look your best. It is fine and good to wear attractive clothes. However there is a point where clothing goes beyond being smart or attractive, and becomes sexy, giving off the message 'I am looking for someone to have sex with.' Check the way you dress often, and ask the opinion of others so that your clothes do not give this belittling and dangerous message to others. Be as honest as possible, while still being kind. Generally speaking, it is right and good to be honest, to say what you think, to truthfully say what you did, to give your honest opinion. However there are occasions when your honesty would be unnecessarily hurtful to someone else, not because either of you have done anything wrong, but because, for example you do not admire something another person treasures. A polite avoidance of the painful truth can be better on those occasions than honesty. For example, if a friend is wearing something they think is wonderful, and you think it is dreadful, you will have to decide whether you should be honest, and perhaps save your friend from public embarrassment, or polite, and slightly dishonest so as not to unnecessarily hurt your friend's feelings. However lying with an intent to deceive for your own gain is a form of betrayal, and a violation. Act with integrity. This means that what you say and what you do should match. For example, if you say you are putting God first in your life, but your overriding desire everywhere you go, is to find someone to have a relationship with, then you are not acting with integrity. If you say that stealing is wrong, but then you make friends with people whom you know are thieves, you are not acting with integrity. A person with integrity acts upon the same set of good values in all situations, even when this might be difficult or unpopular. A person with integrity does not put on a 'Sunday face' while in good company, and then lapse into bad behaviours in bad company. Spend some time daily on spiritual practices. We recommend that you at least spend some time each day thinking about how much God loves you, and feeling that great Love. Like any other relationship, your relationship with God will be better if you spend time on it. There are many other spiritual practices that will be of benefit to you, done regularly. Try to establish the habit of doing something for your spiritual nourishment every day, perhaps a meditation, or reading inspiring spiritual wisdom, or doing affirmations. Treat this new spiritual path, and the Spiritual Teachers with respect. All of the above recommendations would help everyone to live a life of high moral standards. We expect that many people will take only a casual interest in our philosophy, but we hope that some at least will come to appreciate it more and more, and decide to walk with us on this new spiritual path. We, of course, live according to this code of conduct, and we hope that these others will realise that they owe it to themselves to live a spiritual life, if they do not already. We would expect that anyone who regards themselves as supporters of our spiritual philosophy and wants to join us on this new spiritual path, will also treat it with respect, and not bring dishonour nor a bad reputation to it with their lifestyle or behaviours, but live according to this code of conduct at all times, to the best of their ability. Also, while we do not expect these people to have the same ideology as us from the beginning, we expect that over time they will come to agree with us and support us on all key issues. At the time of writing these are:- • God is an unmanifest Being, who loves us. • We are ourselves divine beings, and can achieve Spiritual Mastery. • We should give our spiritual lives top priority. • Everyone is equal in their divinity. • Psychic abilities are real and normal and good. • It is good and right to be heterosexual, or homosexual, or bisexual, or transgender, or transsexual, or transvestite, these are all normal and good sexual orientations. • War is a terrible violation • Punishment and revenge are violations. • All abusive sexual behaviours are violations. • The sexual abuse of children is a terrible violation. • Mining is a violation of the Earth and therefore the mining of crystals is not a spiritual activity as crystal sellers claim. • There is no such thing as a bad person, all people are in their basic nature good, and only their wrong behaviours and values can be judged as bad. We emphasise again, that if you have read this code of conduct, and have had your own bad behaviours come to your attention, that you can always remember you are in your basic nature a good person, even though you have done bad things, and that when you clean up your act, you will be able to feel good about yourself all the time. On the Spiritual Healing page of this website we explain a healing method which you can use, amongst other reasons, to ask for healing for the bad things you have done, once you have stopped doing them. Copyright © Spiritual Mastery Centre 2001 Unaltered copies may be made for free distribution All other rights reserved |
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