Submitted by PALLAS ATHENA -... on
"Moral" is defined as dealing with principles of right and wrong behavior. It is particularly used to indicate a behavior that is right, such as when we say that we have a moral duty to uphold justice.
Morality is sometimes portrayed as very simple, and in one sense it is. Since morals basically consist of a list of do’s and don'ts, it would seem to be an easy matter to learn to follow them. But life is not always that simple. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where one moral principle advises a certain course of action but another equally valid moral principle advises quite a different course. This is where our ethical understanding comes into play. We identify the specific moral principles and the broader ethical principles that have some bearing on the situation and seek to balance them against each other to arrive at the best course of action. This is a spiritual process, because the mental faculties that make it possible for us to do so are properties of the soul, not the body, and because the results both reflect our spiritual state and impact its evolution.
The word "ethical" refers to ethics, a theory or system for dealing with morality. It also is often used in the positive sense, such as when we speak of ethical practices in medicine.
Ethics and character are closely related. Ethics are the code or principles on which one's character depends. Ethics develop at an early age and can be instrumental to building character. Ethics have two components: belief and practice. Your beliefs and convictions are only the first part of ethics. These beliefs are rooted in your spiritual nature. You may believe that stealing is wrong. You may feel that lying is wrong or that hurting someone's feelings is unsuitable. These are beliefs.
The second part of ethics is how you act on your beliefs and convictions. Yes, stealing is wrong, but it is okay to take a few ink pens and a pack of Post-It notes home from work every week. Everyone does it. Yes, lying is wrong, but a little lie could save your job. What's the harm in that? The second part of ethics, how you practice, is the heart of ethical behavior.
Perhaps the most important word associated with ethics is betrayal. Is there a worse word or act? Ethics demand that you consider this word. When you are making a decision, evaluating whether to act or not, or when you consider the consequences of a decision or act, is there any betrayal? That one word can be your guiding force in ethical behavior.
The difference between the two is subtle: "moral" implies conformity with some established code of behavior or accepted notions of right and wrong, while "ethical" implies a need to deal with difficult questions of rightness and wrongness that may not have stock answers in accepted moral codes. Thus, we can think of ethics as the set of processes by which we decide what is right and wrong, and morality as a set of more or less clear statements regarding what actually is right and wrong. Morals can be the outcome of ethical reflection, although often morals are simply taken as givens because we are taught from childhood what constitutes right and wrong.
Now we come to the most difficult of the three terms. "Spiritual" is defined as that which relates to the spirit, to sacred matters, or to religious values. Most people would probably agree that our outward behavior has a lot to do with our spiritual condition, both through reflecting that condition and through reacting with it to yield either spiritual progress or regression. Thus, the moral principles by which we live and the ethical processes that help us decide in any given situation what actions are right or wrong are intimately bound up with the spiritual.
Thus, the spiritual principles given to us by the Manifestations of God constitute a moral and ethical framework for dealing with whatever life sends our way. This framework becomes even more powerful when we draw upon consultation to bring differing viewpoints, backgrounds, and experiences to bear upon a problem.
On the subject of spiritual ethics, spiritual practices are observed to reinforce a commitment to a set of attitudes and thereby insure the manifestation of these attitudes in society, or to open the mind to spiritual insight to allow change in attitudes and thus improved spiritual and even physical well being. An example of a change based spiritual practice would be a Shamans vision quest.
So ethics are the fundamental pattern behind our life and everything we do? Scary to think many of us don’t consciously know our ethics. Regardless, you will have attitudes, preferences, and beliefs about any experience you have in life.
Would you say that ethics follows behavior or behavior follows ethics? Behavior follows ethics as behavior has no reliable governing factors on a strictly physical level. Even genetic traits can fail to activate due to experiential changes in childhood and development of hormonal shifts in the adult body. Even the practice of spiritual “medicine” changes this. Recent research shows that the principle of suggestion is functionally invalid. That you need not be convinced that something will have an effect, you just have to imagine it will.
So you say we can create anything if we imagine it? You can create in yourself any state you imagine, and your imagination will be inspired by your life. By changing your state of mind or consciousness, you discover that your attitudes about your experience changes, and often you gain intuitive insights into a situation that seemed impossible to handle.
It worked for Beethoven, creating and imagining. I think the great creators of music and movies and such can imagine their creations. Often from an artist’s efforts to reflect some intuitive insight they had into the world without any effort on the artist’s part.
Resources:
Dale E. Lehman
Travis Saunders
Robert M. Sherfield, Ph.D.
- 1725 reads