The Moral Instruction
An Ethical Philosophy
INTRODUCTION
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This little book urges the great work be undertaken by its every reader, which is to: commit to investing the time, effort and energy that is required of you, in both study and practice, to cultivate the learned ability to establish and maintain peace and harmony in your every relation with your mate, relatives, friends, colleagues, and all those you come into association with in the great unfoldment of daily life (which make up what is collectively referred to as your kinship); through your every interaction with them, trigger no one out of ill will or blind habit, and hold no grudge for any past or present annoyance or offense but as close to instantly as possible forgive and express good will instead, which is to: sincerely desire for others, including even your enemies, the same blessings you do for yourself; these are the attainments of love and respect, health and well-being, and recognition and prosperity.
Manifesting such a continuous positive attitude which attracts the forthcoming relations of peace and harmony with your kinship as an effect is the direct result of first having undertaken a single endeavor and brought it to a successful conclusion; which is to: develop your moral character, whereby you may claim your credits and balance your deficits. For the strength and health of our relations, which cement the foundation for the orderliness and advancement of our affairs, are commensurate with the refinement of our moral character; thus, such work is where those who earnestly seek legitimate happiness and contentment must begin.
A presentation and demonstration of the means-whereby the development of such a moral character may be cultivated within you is the sole aim and purpose of this short and concise treatise. It presents the exact instructions for making this great achievement, which results in complete mastery; the benefits being twofold: consistent peace of mind and freedom from strife and distress, and harmonious human relations where harbored resentments resulting from past unresolved conflict are no longer brought into future interactions, which would condemn all involved to states of tension and stress, inciting states of grief and turmoil within each, whereas, a sense of love and respect would have become a reward that had been honestly and deservedly earned, with such conditions manifesting in states of inner peace, joy and happiness.
The Great Problem
This book reveals that all men, through our very inherited nature, are susceptible to thinking sinful thoughts that then lead to us committing crimes against our fellow man; which often result in the penalties of mutual ill will towards each other and disputes and even feuds that go unresolved, or if resolved not without injury or even punishment to one or both parties. Acknowledging these seemingly frequent conditions that arise in human relations empowers us to recognize the need to equip ourselves to be peacemaking diplomats in life, for the betterment of ourselves and that of our kinship.
This is best accomplished by learning to: refrain from unknowingly and unintentionally instigating negative responses in others or issuing them with vindictive intent, which tends to lead to ill will, retaliation and conflict, or simply the gesture of being ignored and silenced; and to: refrain from retaliating when others provoke negative responses in you, whether maliciously or by haphazard.
To realize this plan and design and make it manifest in life, this manual presents and encourages following specific instructions or directives for counteracting these innate inclinations and responses in man and bringing them under the control of our will, such that we may become masters of ourselves rather than remain slaves to our instinctive nature like the masses do.
Man has twenty classified sinful thoughts, each that then tend to motivate a variety of certain destructive deeds, all of which then tend to elicit corresponding and predictable negative responses in others, generating hostility in them towards us; thus, our goal is to practice refraining from these acts repeatedly until we come to recognize the very thought impulses that give rise to them, so that at long last we finally succeed in destroying our unconscious habits through the process that leads to finally consistently inhibiting the very thoughts that preceded the criminal acts originally. This is to achieve mastery.
The Great Solution
In preparation for the acceptance and application of the great work posed as a challenge to you at the onset, along with the persistence required until it has been followed through to completion, you must first be able to identify the acts or crimes back of these sinful thoughts. These revelations will be made plain in this book, along with the consequences these sins and crimes penalize us with.
The great boon of undertaking the great work, which is the true route by which happiness and contentment are procured in life, is this: a progressive frequency in the parries and circumventions of the above stated disputes and feuds, and an elimination of their following penalties to yourself and others, will start to transpire in your life, all as you advance in your pursuit of mastery until these inflictions cease to afflict you altogether.
This will empower you and grant you the motivation to start recognizing and acknowledging when you are currently in the habit of enacting them; which is to your advantage because we can’t stop doing that which we don’t want to do until we have first become aware that we are doing it out of blind habit, and what affects it produces in others. Then we bestow upon ourselves the power and capacity to stop and refrain from them, and we can now exercise that authority with both desire and perseverance, until we finally prevail. It is here our goal to do this.
And in all this, it is imperative that we come to recognize the sinful thoughts we tend to silently entertain, giving us a greater sense of self-awareness as to the presence of our negative unconscious inclinations and reactions, and an acknowledgement of the current state of our moral character based on the facts, so that we know where our current struggles lie and where we need to focus our future efforts in making the appropriate corrections and rectifications.
The Great Message
The message you now read may be summed up with a single preachment: Cause not others to feel that which you do not wish to feel.
Disputes and feuds originate as a result of one party in an interaction or relation triggering a instinctive negative feeling in the other through their negative conduct (oftentimes without being aware of it); then the recipient retaliates and tries to make the other feel as negatively as they did; and so on may the match continue to volley.
We call this the dangerous dynamic, and this book seeks to elucidate how to foil and eradicate the dangerous dynamic from transpiring in your relations with your kinship, by: becoming more aware of how you currently and maybe unconsciously trigger people (such that they harbor ill will towards you at best, and retaliate at worst); [41] and to refrain from retaliation yourself when others, again, either consciously or unconsciously out of blind habit, try to trigger your instinctive negative reactions.
This is accomplished by achieving mastery over all your sins, both in terms of their admission in your consciousness and the following expressions in the great unfoldment, such that you cease to act and react, and then ultimately cease to even think, in the instinctive negative ways that then automatically cause others to feel that which you do not wish to feel. To manifest this admonition and condition in daily life, you must familiarize yourself with the sins and crimes set forth in this book and then work at refraining from thinking and acting them out, until the task has been successfully carried out to completion. Then you shall have achieved the level of consciousness necessary to usher peace and harmony into your relations and life.
Thus, with that ambition in mind, let us traverse the grounds and investigate each sin and their corresponding crimes, considering the incentives which make us prone to foolishly partaking in them, the instinctive negative responses they tend to trigger in others, and finally provide prescriptions for overcoming them.
The Great Initiation
Every man who commits to taking up the great work outlined in this book, and follows through with unrelenting, persistent action, becomes an initiate. And when he has reached a consistent conclusion, a new exemplar will have been initiated into the great brotherhood. The path that leads to this status and station is this:
Read through each of the sins, and their corresponding crimes, that make up the bulk of this book; and as you do, do your earnest to check yourself for their presence within you: you will find that some you immediately know you are innocent of, and are gestures or acts you would never partake in; some you will know you are guilty of, and you will recognize that they require your immediate corrective measures; and some you will think you are innocent of, but are objectively guilty of. The last are the most difficult to recognize and may require outside aid to bring them to your attention. And finally, once discovered, action must be taken to filter every one of these acts out of your every interaction with your kinship. Unfailing perseverance will become necessary to bring this work to completion.
So welcome to the great work, initiate! It is my prayer that the knowledge and wisdom contained in this little volume will bring many blessings into your life.
Chapter 1:
THE SIN OF JEALOUSY
1. You shall not find fault with others;
Lest an argument ensues over who is the reason for the disharmony and discord in the relation, achieving nothing but only winning their resentment and ill will.
Fault-finding induces the recipient to put themselves in a defensive position, with us in the role as their adversary and opponent who must now be defeated or escaped from; conditions which are absent when good will and harmony abide. Our instinctive negative reaction to being found fault with is to instantly reject the claims and look upon the bearer of it as ignorant and stupid to misjudge us. Now we start giving the instigator counter-arguments, explanations and reasons for why they are wrong about us, or else we will begin finding fault right back, and blaming the instigator and their behavior for our tumultuous state of the relation with them; and in some cases, the grudge is harbored silently and the relation finds itself plagued with unresolved passive-aggressive tensions towards one another.
The transgression of fault-finding seeks to manipulatively frame us as the head of the relation with our recipient, having authority and control over their choices and future; and when others treat us in such ways, we resent it, rebel, and pledge to withhold our cooperation from them, or cooperate with begrudging resentment, as their very act generates ill will; thus, we fail to even gain their good graces and willing consent for leadership.
The remedy for the crime of fault-finding is to come to a recognition that you and everyone else has both virtues and faults, and that our short-comings are usually unconscious and habitual, making them next to impossible to control in the heat of the moment, let alone recognize and see in the first place. This realization should lead you towards sympathy for people and a desire to understand them, as to why they think and act as they do, rather than finding error with them. It serves as a reminder that small faults are better off overlooked when no real harm comes of it.
2. You shall not bribe others;
Lest your selfish hidden agenda be uncovered, bringing you shame and resulting in your loved one alienating you.
Bribing others with gifts and favors tends to trigger in the recipient his greed and his immediate desire for something for nothing; and as is seen with greed, the results can be disastrous in regard to longevity. Our instinctive negative reaction is to secure resources, whenever expedient; but if we accept that which have not justly earned through our honest effort, we train and condition ourselves for ultimate failure, as we weaken our faculties for rendering future useful service. Not only that, it causes us to become dependent on a source of which the administration of their benefits are not under our control. Thus, when finally deprived of them, we might be devastated by the end result and bring the relation to a complete end, as it was only transactional.
The transgression of bribing with gifts and favors wins feelings of gratitude from others in the moment, and provides a good emotion within us of being generous; but it ultimately comes from a selfish ambition, and one that will leave us worse off, not better. Our aim in all this is to win the love and esteem of our kinship; but by investing the time and effort into bestowing them with the blessings and boons we think they require in return for it, we miss out on actually developing the relation that would bring about the emotions of mutual love and respect.
The cure for the crime of bribing is to recognize that love and respect cannot be bought at any price, or with any good gesture. Giving gifts and favors are appreciated in the moment; but the novelty soon wears off, and when the person realizes that we had ulterior motives, we will be met with resentment because we weren’t true and honest with our intentions. Seeing this truth will give you a motive and a reason to cease this kind of conduct. However, don’t take this as a preachment against sincere and genuine generosity; but we must know our motives.
3. You shall not flatter others;
Lest the recipient recognizes your insincerity and comes to resent you for stroking their ego as a ploy to win their love and esteem.
4. You shall not cast accussations at others;
Lest your suspicions result in your loved one resenting you for suspecting them of being disloyal to their trust, which is an assault on their character they won’t take kindly.
5. You shall not undermine others search for love;
Lest your loved one discovers you have been putting stumbling blocks in their relations with other loved ones, resents it, and starts withdrawing from you.
6. You shall not gossip about others;
Lest your negative words about someone find their way back to them, triggering their resentment and perhaps causing them to end the relation.
7. You shall not stalk and spy on others;
Lest your acts be discovered by your loved one and they resent your possessiveness, and you sacrifice their trust, whereby they will likely get creeped out by you.
Chapter 2:
THE SIN OF ENVY
8. You shall not criticize others;
Lest they retaliate and you start a feud that continues into the future, bringing you loss of reputation and general good will.
9. You shall not seek to discredit others;
Lest they resent you for questioning their character and worldview, while you frame yourself as their adversary they must now defeat.
10. You shall not discourage others’ efforts;
Lest they resent you making yourself their adversary and enemy who’s in opposition to their prosperity, garnering ill will towards you.
11. You shall not sabotage others;
Lest you destroy a good work, and through the law of retribution, the results swing back at you to then destroy your efforts to prosper likewise.
12. You shall not compete with others;
Lest they recognize your insecurity and need for external validation, having felt the need to out-perform them to get a temporary relief from an inferiority complex.
Chapter 3:
THE SIN OF INTOLERANCE
13. You shall not condemn others;
Lest others witness your lack of compassion, and when you are in a position where forgiveness is desired, you will be judged with the same bitter attitude you exhibited.
14. You shall not bully others;
Lest you give seed to a grudge that will come back to haunt you, and you also win the ill will of all those who witness your unfair attacks on weaker victims.
15. You shall not shame others;
Lest your words that framed them as a lesser human causes them much guilt and self-loathing and anger and hatred towards you for eliciting them.
16. You shall not mock others;
Lest others witness and you develop ill will in their minds for framing yourself as morally superior to those you made fun of.
17. You shall not shun others;
Lest you develop a reputation for being a rigidly self-righteous and judgemental person, whereby opportunities and cooperation will start to elude you.
18. You shall not censor others;
Lest
Chapter 4:
THE SIN OF LUST
19. You shall not philander;
Lest you violate perceived trust, break hearts, and generate bitter, revengeful people, with your ill designs being spoken of to others, bringing you a questionable reputation.
20. You shall not commit adultery;
Lest you destroy the trust of the person who should be most important to you: your life mate.
21. You shall not ogle others;
Lest you creep people out by being looked at as a sex object without the recognition of them being a thinking, feeling human being.
Chapter 5:
THE SIN OF GREED
22. You shall not leech off others;
Lest
23. You shall not cheat others;
Lest
24. You shall not steal from others;
Lest
25. You shall not drive sharp-bargains with others;
Lest
26. You shall not enslave others;
Lest
Chapter 6:
THE SIN OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
27. You shall not seek to reform others;
Lest
28. You shall not refute others’ beliefs;
Lest
29. You shall not proselytize your beliefs to others;
Lest
30. You shall not meddle in others’ affairs;
Lest
31. You shall not chastise others;
Lest
32. You shall not command and order others around;
Lest