Living Ethics

Essen­tially, Liv­ing Ethics is a for­mula for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. It is built over time by over­com­ing your hard­ships and through your hard won expe­ri­ences and learning.

Eso­ter­i­cally under­stood, the Liv­ing Ethics must come from your own soul and con­scious­ness; you must fol­low your heart.

In your early life, you may have felt this as your con­science, which we are all born with (unless you are a shell.) Later it becomes your Guid­ing Prin­ci­ple. Even­tu­ally, you will come in con­tact with your Solar Angel who guides and directs you on your path of service.

Once that con­nec­tion has been made, you will never lose it. This is why the path of Liv­ing Ethics is pro-survival.

When all of life seems to be crash­ing down around you, you will have that link to the Super­mun­dane worlds. You will live in this world, but not be of it. You will fol­low your heart in all mat­ters and seek to expand your field of service.

Even­tu­ally, you will become a liv­ing flame.

How to Apply Liv­ing Ethics in Your Daily Life

1.  Pro­tect your true Self: If you lose your­self but gain the world, then every­thing else is lost.

• Beware of self-deception. Any time you deceive your­self, you are in dan­ger. If you are doing things which you don’t approve of, you are cre­at­ing a con­flict within yourself.

When Christ said, “A house divided can­not stand,” He was refer­ring to your inner unity and keep­ing your inner cham­ber protected.

• Beware of iner­tia. When­ever you stop striv­ing, you fall into iner­tia. When you become trapped in your suc­cess and think that you have reached the pin­na­cle, this is the great­est trap. When you think you are some­thing, you are really nothing.

Iner­tia is a state of con­scious­ness in which you can­not make a break­through into a higher con­scious­ness. When you stop expand­ing toward Light, Love and Beauty, your Soul contracts.

The Teach­ing states, if you’re not mov­ing for­ward, you are mov­ing backward.

• Avoid hatred. This is the most poi­so­nous arrow because in hatred, your heart degen­er­ates. With­out the fiery pro­tec­tion of your heart, you will become a pawn in the hands of manip­u­la­tive agents. And even­tu­ally, you will become a slave.

A great Sage says that there are Cos­mic winds and elec­tri­cal storms that can attack your flame if it is not pro­tected. Pro­tect the Self by loving.

• Beware of depres­sion. Depres­sion is iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with your petty inter­ests. A sim­ple anti­dote to depres­sion is to get out­side your­self; call some­one and cheer them up, play music and dance, read inspir­ing quotes from the world’s philosophies.

This is not to say that peo­ple do not need pro­fes­sional med­ical help. If you have faith in your­self to solve the prob­lems that cause your depres­sion, even if it’s as sim­ple as chang­ing your per­spec­tive, you will min­i­mize and even elim­i­nate your depressed state of mind.

• Honor your respon­si­bil­i­ties. As the say­ing goes, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” If you shirk your duties, they will find you one way or another. When you escape your respon­si­bil­i­ties you dis­tort the bal­ance and equi­lib­rium of Nature. When this har­mony is bro­ken, a per­son is open to any kind of attack.

Accord­ing to H.P. Blavatsky, the first sign of awak­en­ing and enter­ing into higher con­scious­ness is the sense of responsibility.

2.  Dis­cover your Inner­most Self. Con­tem­po­rary life makes this almost impos­si­ble. All our outer activ­i­ties con­sume our time, but do we make any effort to find out who we are?

If you are trapped and feel as though you can­not expand, ask your­self why. This is the process of self-discovery.

There is light in you. Your virtues guide you to your inner Self. We all have them, but it takes aware­ness to apply them in life. Your great­est asset is in know­ing your own heart. When you know the mys­ter­ies of the heart, you will know the hearts of others.

Your heart is your great­est pro­tec­tion. With­out heart, mankind will destroy this planet, once and for all.

Med­i­tate on virtues: joy, cre­ativ­ity, ser­vice, hon­esty, endurance, seren­ity, patience

3.  Be inde­pen­dent. When you depend on oth­ers, you stop rely­ing on your­self and your own inner resources. Look first within your­self, to regen­er­ate your emo­tions, mind and body. When you are inde­pen­dent, you become trust­wor­thy — when peo­ple trust you that is the great­est honor.
The world needs war­rior spir­its. To be inde­pen­dent is to be a warrior.

4.  Dis­cover your­self. Try to lib­er­ate your­self from the habits of your speech, your think­ing and your body. Detach­ing from the things that pos­sess your time, money and behav­iors, is the first step toward per­sonal freedom.

5.  Review your­self and your life daily. Take into account your actions daily and see where you could have done some­thing dif­fer­ently. Where can you cor­rect things that you know are wrong? When you refuse to be a pup­pet to your blind urges and dri­ves, your petty thoughts and your insin­cere actions, then you are on your way to blooming.

Ref­er­ences: Talks on Agni (Vol. 1), Torkom Saray­dar­ian, pp. 224–233.