You have said that, for the most part, humans are doing the best they can. Nevertheless, throughout our many cultures, we have differing values that cause social conflict and even inner conflict. Terrorists seem to believe that their ends justify any means. Some people believe that killing another human is never justifiable for any purpose, even self-defense, yet police sometimes have to make a decision to kill one person in order to save another. Some people are unable to swat a mosquito, but are okay with putting up houses to attract bats that will do the killing for them. I’d like to explore ethical decisions and dilemmas such as these and the principles behind them that play such a big part in the world scene and in our personal lives from one minute to the next.
When I say “You’re always doing the best you can,” it is with regard to victimization. If you are willing to come from the perspective that others are doing their best, then you’re going to be coming from a different angle in your thinking about them and their actions. That’s not saying that everybody really is doing their best all the time.
Thank you for clarifying that.
First, I want to know how you define the words ethics and morality: The dictionary gives them as synonyms, but you make a distinction. Would you say that morality depends on individual or culturally acquired beliefs, whereas ethicality relates to higher spiritual principles?
Ethics are based on culturally acceptable norms, and differ with different classes within a society and between different societies in the world. Ethics are man-made. Morals tend to be security-oriented spiritual philosophies. Do you understand what I’m saying there?
So morality refers to applying spiritual law to how one plays out one’s life and the decisions one makes.
And what is the number-one vehicle for that definition? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with “religion.”
And ends with religion?
That’s right. Essentially what I’m saying is that ethics is the means by which people act in the world and is an outflow of ego, and morality is a means of controlling instinctual behavior for the purposes of higher function. As opposed to higher function causing a change, in the way of functioning through instinctive behavior.
And what term would you use for those higher principles?
I would call that spiritual.
Remember this, too. I don’t like rules. I don’t like tying something down to “Here is how this works.” I don’t like limiting truth by how it functions in any one life, either. Perspective is everything.
That will probably affect the approach to many of these questions.
For most humans, religion has said, “If you do this thing, you will…,” and then there’s some carrot placed in front of that. “You will have a happy life.” “You will be successful.” “You will live forever in paradise.”
Ethics is the system by which one curbs behavior in order to acquire a particular goal. Morality is the means by which one curbs their thinking to affect their behavior in order to choose a particular goal. What are journalists’ ethics? What are a lawyer’s ethics?
They are prescribed rules, in a sense.
Yes. What is considered immoral?
Something that goes against one’s higher principles.
If that is the case, there should never be group taboos. And yet there are, which is why morality is a thought system, as well.
What you really want is to learn your personal morality and, from that, develop your personal ethics. Humans want rules, because then they can put them into their moral-ethical-behavioral system, to have the result—the paradise—that they want in a small or a big picture. And if the rule doesn’t work, then they think the rule is wrong, not their expectations.
I think I’m looking for rules because I want to understand the higher principles, if they exist—because I want to “think like Source,” to get into Source’s head, so to speak. I’m trying to understand those principles by which the Universe operates.
And as much as I not only understand and encourage that, the fact is, all you’re going to find is maybe the foundational reason that humanity made certain principles up, and at any given time, the current version of them. Because there is no getting down to the basics of anything in the realm of form. It’s all illusion.
However, as a Guardian, you are not only asked, you are expected, to behave above the ethics and morals in the world. So, the reason these dilemmas come up is that in order to become your most spiritually effective self, you are not only asked to buy into the ethics and morals, you are asked to use them as a springboard to move higher. So when I say it’s all just illusion, and it’s all just made up by humanity for different forms of manipulation, there are Guardians who automatically say, “Wait a minute! You tell us we must be impeccable. We are stuck with the Law of Karma with regard to all of these behaviors. If they are not rules, why are we expected to move beyond them?” And of course that’s what Guardianship at this time of transition is all about: creating the doorway that allows building one set of principles into the new—what will be.
It would seem that religious and spiritual leaders, even with the best of intentions, guide their followers in ways that can lead to horrible results. How can we understand these higher principles that Guardians should be using without reference to spiritual authorities such as yourself? How do we know within ourselves how Source “thinks” without reference to what you tell us or an Arabian sheik tells us?
You, as a Guardian, you as humanity, you as readers, you as the world as a whole at this point in time, you are always seeking that which affirms your personal experience. You will always seek those who think like you do, express like you do. It takes a function of mastery to be able to leave that behind and enjoy a person who thinks very differently than you do.
Most humans have a tendency to believe what they think and what they do is right, and they will seek out those teachers and teachings that affirm their version of right. Thus, in this world at any given time, there is not any one version of “Truth.” There are a multitude of versions available for humanity to say, “That one is my truth,” or “That one is my truth, and I will defend it to the death.” Because it’s based on, but wa-a-ay separated from, that internal knowing of what is Truth. Which is why I regularly say, “Don’t pay attention to the messenger. Pay attention to the message. Run it through your heart. If you find that this is a truth worth paying attention to, do so, and if not, run as far as you can as fast as you can.”
There is no Truth in form beyond eight thousand versions of “live love,” each version dependent upon the cultural and individual mores that define living that love.
So, are there absolute rules by which we should govern our lives, and to what extent is life about developing these rules, individually, racially, or culturally, for ourselves?
You have seen the sign on a restaurant door that says, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” If you want to eat there, you put shoes on. If you don’t want to put shoes on, you accept that you’re not going to eat there. Now, on a small basis, that’s what you’re doing every day of your life any time that you have what you think of as a morally-based security decision to make—and you believe all of your security decisions are morally-based. You are looking at, “I’m a part of this culture, so I must behave like this in order to be accepted. To go to the restaurant of American life, I must put on shirt and shoes.” It’s either worth it to you or it’s not.
On a much larger scale, the purpose for the sign “No shirt, no shoes, no service” is to separate out those people who are willing to accept that limitation to get what they want. Why would it be important for the Universe to have individuals that are willing to put up with a boundary in order to achieve what they want? I’ll give you a hint. Think transition team; think Guardian.
To make sure it happens.
If you’re going to be in a world that is exceptionally limited and is going to require, because of that, a certain amount of sacrifice and a lot of trust and faith—which is where religions come in—you are going to need individuals who are willing to say, “I will go through this in order to achieve that.” In a very short term, that’s what all of humanity is doing, in their own individual way, but in a bigger picture, that’s exactly what Guardians are doing by being here.
You’re sort of describing the martyr to a cause.
And at any given time that definition of martyr could mean something as simple as self-sacrifice, or it could mean the much bigger sacrifice of one’s life. But, all right, martyr for a cause—as long as you don’t say victim to the cause.
Sacrifice can create an opening for something greater to flow in and I guess that is why Guardians come to the planet, to help bring that about. So to me, sacrifice is temporarily putting off gratification of desires to create an opening for something bigger. The word martyr unfortunately has a negative connotation to me.
And here’s the thing with that: A Guardian is incapable of maintaining that larger picture if the human part is unable to do it. That is the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm.
So that means the effectiveness of the Guardian’s work is limited by what the human can hold in terms of the consciousness.
Exactly.
So much of human conflict is the result of doing faithful service to different ideals which taken by themselves seem admirable. Would you comment on the belief that serving what I believe is good makes it okay to harm a person I believe to be doing evil?
It is not possible for me to explain to you humans’ misuse of Universal principles. A teacher can only have the influence over you that you give. So, when someone teaches you to accept this or that sort of harmful behavior, you still have the choice. The choice is affected by the context of your life; if someone puts out a teaching that says you have the right to eliminate from the world anybody who does not agree, and you are surrounded by others whom you respect and care for who agree with that teacher, then you are going to push aside your own doubt and go with it. You need to look very, very carefully at any teaching that goes against what your heart tells you.
There are all manner of things that you don’t believe now that you used to, or that you do believe now and did not used to. And what you want to be careful of is that you don’t become a hypocrite by saying, “Well, this one doesn’t matter too much, so it’s all right to not believe this and not to do that, but this is the big stuff and it really does matter.” Because the fact is, it all matters. And to go back to the illustration you used, if it’s not all right to kill, then it’s not all right to kill a mosquito. But the justification that it’s all right to kill a mosquito would be the same one that you’d use to kill something higher on the food chain. Until people can see that connection, they’re not going to be following Universal principles; they’re going to follow religious or cultural beliefs.
How do you avoid going overboard in the service of “goodness?”
Remembering that “goodness” is a personally defined perspective.
It is good to save a spider, but when she has a web full of newly hatched babies, saving them all could take the rest of the day and seemingly be contrary to the rules of nature, which call for reproduction at a rate that replaces one individual with another. All species have the capacity to reproduce vastly more than replacement requires, such as an insect which might lay 10,000 eggs. If it is normal for nature to prune these species back so they don’t overwhelm the environment, why is it ethically questionable for us to swat a mosquito or spray an aphid?
Where does your current technology, which can extend life no matter what the quality, fit with this?
I’m not sure.
Well, think about it for a moment. Why would it not be right to swat a mosquito or spray an aphid if it’s interfering with something that’s important to you, if it’s making your garden less productive or passing along a disease that you don’t want? You justify based on your perception of worthiness. “My needs are more important than that mosquito’s needs.” In your society you have adapted that behavior, and it shows up in your medical technology, for instance, in which I can keep you alive even if you are unproductive, a drain on society and not happy with your own life. It comes from a lack of respect for life in both of those situations. And that, not the swat, is what’s dangerous.
When choices must be made between two human lives or between the life of a human and another mammal, how should we be guided? Is the “value” of a life associated with a level of consciousness or awareness that an individual, or a species, might have attained, or the amount of “good” it is doing? How does the Universe assess the value of a life?
The Universe does not assess a value. So where does that value come from? It’s a self-preservation, personal-security matter. I’m not saying there is no value. I’m saying the Universe does not assess a different value in one place than it does another. Nature has a certain valuation, and humans tend to use that as a way of basing their own valuation. In nature, to use a rather trite phrase, “survival of the fittest”—which is not always accurate, you know—is often thought to be the rule. Humans have taken that, and so, when they run you over with their own desires, if you’re strong enough to deal with it, then you move up in the food chain. If you’re not strong enough to deal with it, then too bad; your weakened genetics make you unworthy. And it’s all a part of “If you believe the same thing that I do, you are good, and if you do not believe what I do you’re not good.” It’s all designed to keep you in line, or, when it’s you putting that out, make the argument that you’re right. It is not based on where the Universe is coming from; it’s based on your fear of insignificance.
But we do have to make choices. Spraying aphids is an example. It can come down to the question, Do I eat the apple or do I let the worm eat the apple—taken to the extreme, does it survive or do I survive? So what should guide us there? How do we make that decision. Is it fair—is “fair” even an applicable concept in discussing whether my life is worth more than the worm’s?
As far as the Universe is concerned, no, it’s not an applicable concept. But insofar as your human needs are concerned, it is, and insofar as your Guardianship is concerned, it is. And the reason for that is that it’s all a part of functioning within this dimension of form. In this dimension, you are not adhering to a Universal principle; you are adhering to a Universal principle as understood by form, which is greatly limited. More than that, understanding is based on each particular level of consciousness. The human understanding of it is of course going to be based upon the survival of the human. The worm’s version of it is going to be based upon the survival of the worm.
The worm doesn’t even ask. The human has the capability of asking the question.
So which one of those is right? It’s a contextual answer. The worm has all it wants out in the abandoned orchard that nobody pays any attention to anymore. It doesn’t have a good life when it weasels its way into an orchard where aphids are sprayed and mosquitoes are swatted. Does it make the worm bad because it got into an orchard where it will surely die? It was just doing worm things.
The pertinent question to me is, Does it make the person bad for not having compassion for the worm and carrying it to the abandoned orchard?
Yes and no. It depends upon the awareness of the human. Do you know the Hindu sect that does not harm any life? And yet, that’s not true.
You sweep the sidewalk in front of you, and you’re still killing insects that you don’t want to step on.
And, unless you acid-washed your body, you are a living symbiotic host.
And if you do acid-wash your body, you destroy all that life.
And all multitudes of beings. It’s not possible to give yourself an excuse by claiming an innocent heart. “I’m doing my best to revere all life. The only life that I harm is by an unconscious mistake. Therefore I am very holy.” No. Therefore you are very legalistic. Therefore you are very egotistic. Therefore you are very unable to function with higher consciousness in the world that you live in, because in the world in which you live, the rule is “Live love,” not “Save all life.” I love you more than you can possibly imagine. Therefore [ironically] I have never hurt your feelings or called you out on bad behavior. But that’s not true. It’s because of that love that I say to you, “Wait, don’t go there.” Because the love of Source is an active function of living here, and living here is going to mean you are going to make some decisions that are going to have an effect on all life around you, and it’s going to have an effect that some people will say is evil and wrong and some people will say makes you a saint and worthy of paradise. And some people will say, “Just do what you’re here to do,” and keep on doing it.
If you buy into “This is what is worthy of heaven and this is what is not,” then you are not living love. You are living comparative judgment, cultural acceptance, and—here it comes again—egotistical behaviors. There is a big difference between being morally correct and being aligned with Source. What is morally right for you to do right now is changeable. It’s the decision you make that determines the effect on you; it’s not the rules you are following. And ultimately that is by far a harder taskmaster than any religious or personal code of honor. It would be so much nicer if the Universe said, “All right, look, here are the three things that you must live by.” Or maybe “Here are the ten things you must live by. If you follow them, you will be God’s favorite child.” And you know that, of course, even with a list of commandments, religions determine the definition of each one of those according to what it needs and what culture can withstand at the time. And they do that by trying to break it into little acceptable bites, like the “honor your father and mother.”
A Guardian is held accountable beyond a human acceptance of values, ethics and morals. But then what if father and mother do something that is known to be wrong? Should you not honor them then? Although it might be enough for the unawakened to behave in a way that is civilly acceptable and consider that enough, it is not true for the Guardian. And the Guardian has an even greater problem in addition, because the higher into mastery you work, the less leeway there is for you to justify behavior that is not a part of the greater view of love.
Are there differences between the choices a Guardian should make and those that should be made within mass consciousness? By which I mean, Are there situations in which what is right for one is wrong for another?
Absolutely, and I have given examples of those in the past when I say, “but for Guardians that doesn’t work. Guardians are called to a different standard.” Communication is a good example, or functioning within relationships.
But it’s not incorrect for the non-Guardian to act by that higher standard. I mean are there conflicting standards, or is one just a higher perspective that we grow into?
Unfortunately it’s yes for both. And of course that seems very conflicting.
A Guardian is required to fulfill compacts. Humanity is not. For humanity, following some of its compacts can be wrong. So, as an example, a Guardian is required to speak truth. (Quick aside: YOU are not required to speak it aloud all of the time.) Truth, as you know it. To lie is going to bring about negative consequences. It is better to say nothing. Humans, on the other hand, mass consciousness as a whole, often survives through untruth. And since survival is the rule of their life, it is all right for them to speak untruth to survive. That’s radically different. However, it’s based on a Guardian having a different definition of survival. This experience is not about your living as long as you can. It’s not about surviving in the urban jungle. It’s not about catering to your fears in order to live another day. It’s about fulfilling your commitment to bring about the completion of the Plan for this planet and all life force on it. And that standard makes it different. An active Guardian is not capable of consistently functioning by the standards of the world, and trying to do so will cause that Guardian to become ultimately separated, to become unable to function in either world. That’s why it’s such a danger.
When you judge yourself by the world’s standards, you will always find yourself lacking, because the decisions you make every day are not based on the world’s standards. It’s important to realize that, so that if you’re going to be beating yourself up, you’re going to beat yourself up for the right thing.
Is there a moral difference between causing something to occur and, through inaction, allowing it to occur?
As a Guardian, in order to live love here, you are required to develop certain abilities. By developing those abilities, you become capable of creating, magically maybe, what is needed for you to continue on. By not making use of your highest potential and therefore not being able to create what you need to do what you have to do, you are going to be able to justify and excuse having a hard time, in living a less productive and more unhappy life. As a Guardian, by not doing you are going to cause yourself to judge yourself by human standards, because mass consciousness judges itself as worthy or unworthy based upon what does and does not confirm its belief in itself.
The only thing mass consciousness can create by inaction is dysfunction; a Guardian’s inaction creates a lack of life, of passion, a spiritual problem. Inaction in a human will create problems in their everyday experience. Inaction as a Guardian is going to cause you to have guilt and separation from your spiritual self. Inaction is action.
Sometimes even lofty intent leads to bad effects—an act done in love may produce harm, such as feeding a hungry person contaminated food or misreading a prescription in a hospital. Does the karmic consequence of an act depend on the intent or the outcome, or is karma even a factor here?
Karma is not a function of intent; it is a function of action. Every action has a consequence; every thought has a consequence; “every intent” moves you into a different level altogether. As a Guardian you are responsible for your intent. As mass consciousness, you are responsible for the thought and action, and word.
Of course the thrust of this is, where does responsibility for the outcome lie?
I’m missing something here. It seems very clear to me.
The nurse lovingly administers the medication, not knowing it’s the wrong one. The patient dies as a result.
Depending upon the system of rules of that society, that nurse may or may not be required to pay a price, but even with unintended outcomes, that consequence will show up as punishment for itself depending upon where that individual is working in their own spiritual process. You may be forever guilty and upset by that, even though it is not your fault. And that’s because you acted within the process, and a certain amount of that action is going to require you to be responsible. If you live in a society—which you do not—that says, “No problem; no consequences” that version will never show up. But you do live in a society that seeks blame. Where you have a society that seeks blame, you are, within yourself, going to accept some of the consequences, whether they are—I want to say “whether or not they are right,” but if they are right in your society, they are right.
You’re answering in a culturally bound framework, and I’m trying to get above that.
I’ve already said to you, there is nothing above that. Life is life.
Are you saying in this instance that in the Universe’s perspective there’s no difference between murder one and manslaughter?
Yes, I am saying that. The Universe is not looking at the action. Humans are looking at the action. The Universe is looking at what created the action.
The person’s intent. But I thought we just determined that the intent is irrelevant.
No, the intent is a higher function than thought, word and deed, and if you’re looking at it for mass consciousness, you can only look through thought, word and deed. But if you are looking for yourself, you as a Guardian, then you are looking at intent rather than thought, word and deed. You are called into action for the intent; mass consciousness is called into action for what caused them to make that action.
Well, humanity says, “You’re receiving this punishment because you’re responsible for this death.” The Universe says to us, “You are innocent because of your intent. Your intent was in service of life but something went crazy, something went awry.”
No. It’s more like the world saying, “You are responsible for this,” and the Universe saying, “For what?”
There are things you consider bad that I don’t: Triunities, nudity, masturbation—these are silly ones, and yet there are cultural taboos all over them. What the Universe is looking at is where you make that decision, not what that decision is about, not what moral code you are basing it on in this particular life.
If you lived by yourself as a hermit on a mountain—never seeing anybody—you would be just as responsible for your life as you are right now. There are no breaks; there are no easier ways. But the acting out of it is how the world judges it easy or not.
Well, it gives a different context. The accepted common reality makes all the difference, because it’s back to perspective on a large scale. It’s telling me that as Guardians we need to look beyond that.
We need to be aware of how mass consciousness lives within those realities and be able to function with that, but be able to go beyond it, too.
Yes. Yes.
On the trip to Brazil, someone in our group expressed an interest in going piranha fishing. To me that seems incongruent, that a Guardian would get enjoyment out of taking the life or inflicting pain on another creature. It seems like this relates to those ideas about right and wrong. I also wanted to ask, Is a vegetarian diet any more compassionate than a diet of a carnivore? A vegetarian has to take plant life.
Both of those questions recognize that there is a bigger picture that needs to be looked at and that your personal judgment of it may or may not be accurate.
You are responsible for what you know. But you are also responsible for what you don’t know if you are refusing to look at a particular perspective.
You mean if you’ve chosen ignorance.
Yes. You don’t get away with that. But you will never have all-knowing. There will always be things that Angela has learned and mastered but Stuart has not. Therefore she cannot judge Stuart because she does not know why he does not know it. At the other extreme, you have access to that knowing, and if you are purposely resisting that knowledge, it doesn’t give you an out.
There are a lot of things in your world that someone would look at and see as the equivalent of piranha fishing. To a vegan it’s possible that wearing leather shoes is unacceptable, but that’s acceptable to a vegetarian. But to the cow, it doesn’t matter if you’re vegan or vegetarian; to a plant, it doesn’t matter if you’re vegan or vegetarian. But due to your need to justify your beliefs, you will put on the label vegan or vegetarian and force yourself to live by those constructs so that you don’t have to think through every bit of it.
You cannot live in this world harmlessly. By being here you are creating change of one sort or another everywhere you go.
But is there a difference between that and knowingly participating in an activity for personal gratification, knowing that it’s inflicting pain.
It is not possible for a Guardian to do that. A Guardian can participate in the action, but is not free of the consequences, and the consequences are bigger because it’s a Guardian.
What sort of consequences does a Guardian suffer?
Well, you go piranha fishing, knowing that it’s going to create harm no matter how you justify it—after all, the world needs a few less fish, or mosquitoes, or snakes.
But you will not forget it. You will think about it and feel badly about it. You will build walls so that you can stop thinking about it, and separate, and you will eventually become a hardened person because of that tiny thing. You pay greatly for it. I would have no need to speak to anybody personally about things going on in their lives if there were not times in which you choose to inflict pain in one way or another.
