Ethics Without a Map
Ética sin Mapa
A question about whether liberation leads to more ethical behavior, and how to navigate the guilt and shame that arise in everyday conflicts with others.
Ethics Without a Map
A question about whether liberation leads to more ethical behavior, and how to navigate the guilt and shame that arise in everyday conflicts with others.
I was going to ask: do you feel that somehow you are more ethical in your actions because of liberation?
I don't know.
Fair enough. But from what I've known of you, ethics has always been a high value. So I was thinking: does it get any better as you go deeper, or do you just feel it more like a disease?
The limits of ethical frameworks
A book on ethics can only teach you what is not ethical. It can point out a framework for you to see how you might think things are ethical when they are actually coming from conditioning. That is why I would say that anything in a book that gives you an actual decision-making plan for ethics is itself unethical. A good book on ethics is going to do a lot of somersaults to get you to see that any fixed map for ethics is unethical. And that can be done. I'm sure there are books that are good for that.
But ethical action has to be specific to what is arising in this moment: a choice that you can never have any certainty or guarantee is the right thing. You cannot have that kind of knowing. The choice comes from a deeper not-knowingness. In the moment, the movement with that choice is total: complete not-knowing and uncertainty about whether it is good or bad. Only in hindsight can you perhaps know. And it has to consider the good of everyone involved in that choice.
Less triggering, less temptation
I suspect that because I have very little pain now, things are different. Before, I had a lot of triggers, and so the fight to act according to something I could aspire to as good was much more challenging. In situations involving people, in work and relationship, where I was trying to avoid pain, there was a lot more temptation toward power and toward acting unethically.
Now, when you are not avoiding pain and you have no real need to avoid it, through this kind of understanding of how that changed for me, I could assume I am at that level acting with more goodness and care, because I am no longer in such a struggle with my own triggers. It went from being triggered very regularly, to less and less and less, to a point where I was triggered quite intensely a few times a month, to suddenly being triggered only a couple of times a year. That change was really abrupt.
I can't say whether I am more or less ethical. I really cannot truthfully answer that. But I can look at some context and things that I subjectively know have changed and say it's possible because of this. Before, I needed a lot of things to go a certain way in order to be okay: situations, contexts, certain kinds of feelings and states all needed to be a certain way for me to be comfortable. Now a lot of that is completely gone. I can be in a lot of discomfort and it doesn't make much of a difference.
Can I add something? From my perspective, there are also a lot fewer cognitive biases now. I noticed it starting during the pandemic. He started making really good calls on how to read situations. That has just continued to increase, and it is really rare now for me to see something I think is a cognitive bias.
Navigating a conflict with a neighbor
I want to share a small situation, but it is the kind I look at in myself because there is something in it for me. I told you about the situation where I was playing really loud music and then the neighbor came and slammed the door so hard he was right at the window glass. I was looking at how I was feeling about it and what I wanted to do. The situation is completely understandable: I was disturbing this person on a Sunday morning. But at the same time, his reaction felt like too much. So I was asking myself: how do I want to respond? What do I want to do next? He is my neighbor's partner, so I want to have a good relationship. Some of this is personal convenience, and some of it is genuinely ethical. My conclusion was to message my actual neighbor and say, "I'm sorry about the loud music on Sunday. It was unintentional, and I don't want it to happen again." But I felt the struggle: his reaction was too much, so part of me felt I shouldn't have to apologize, because he also shouldn't have smashed the window like that. Does that make sense?
Separating the two actions
I don't see that situation as requiring a great deal of deliberation. Those small examples are important, but it is straightforward that you talk to them. When you notice the thought, "Well, he banged so loud and it was so shocking, so I don't have to apologize," that tit-for-tat movement is something I would not respect in myself.
Those are completely separate actions. You can say your piece, but you can also say: "Next time, if I'm accidentally doing something too loud, text me, call me, or knock more gently. I found that a bit too abrupt." You can communicate all of that. What matters is where you are coming from in your being when you communicate it. If you are coming from a place of "what I did wrong is now even, because of what you did," that is self-involved and not responsible.
On the other hand, if you don't say anything and you develop resentment, that is also a problem.
That is also kind of unethical, right?
I wouldn't call it unethical exactly. You are just going to create resentment in yourself. It would be unethical if, because of that resentment, you went and punctured his tire. Unethical has to do with others. If you are ruining your evening because you are sitting in resentment, I don't think that is an ethical problem so much as a question of what is happening in you and whether you can communicate it.
You can still communicate, "That was a bit startling." But what matters is that you are not essentially criticizing the other person in their being. If you are in caring and respect of the other being and you communicate, "That action was a bit shocking to me; I'm sorry I had the music so loud, but just so you know, that was a lot," then you are fine. What really matters is where your heart is. You can say really hard things, really difficult, challenging things, even with anger if necessary. But if you are coming from a place where, in your heart, that being is essentially good, and there is a respect for that being, then you are almost inviting a different kind of energy with the other person.
The other person can feel it
People can smell judgment, criticism, and closed-heartedness a mile away. That is going to create reactivity and escalation. You can even say really difficult things and the other person can feel loved.
Obviously, you can say something from a very loving place and the other person can still go and burn a car and destroy the neighborhood. You do your best. But often, when you do come from that deeper place, which is an art to develop (and only you can develop it by working through your own reactivity, your own pains, your own illusions), the other person will have an invitation from a place of love, an invitation to a communion and to a relationship that is loving.
Guilt and shame versus honest communication
What was difficult for me in that situation is that I feel like, because I started the action, I don't have the right to also say that what he did was annoying for me. That is the hardest part for me. The situation had two sides. I know how to address what is my responsibility, but the other side was subtle. It's not a big deal, but I was looking at it.
See those as two completely separate, independent things: free actions, chosen independently by two individuals. You invite a communication by initiating a conversation, which I think you did, with an honest expression: "I'm sorry," and so on. But you can also express your side. The hard part is doing it from an open, heartful place. I see what you are saying: you feel like you are not entitled to it.
If you initiate a conversation about that, you might be tempted to use some form of anger or be closed, because you might have some form of shame around feeling you are not entitled to express it. As a way to avoid the shame or the guilt, you will not be open.
I think that's the struggle for me. Taking responsibility is not the hard part. The hard part is when there is also something I want to ask for myself. That is where it gets difficult.
Look at anything that moves around guilt or shame, and then look at whether your communication, or your avoidance of it, is coming from that. Anything that comes from guilt or shame, or from the avoidance of guilt and shame, is not going to be open. That is different from regret, remorse, and an apology. Guilt and shame are toxic. Always toxic, in this sense.
Great. Thank you. That's where the juice is for me.
And these are the hard questions: how to live and how to love.