"Ethis Code for Spiritual Guides"-what's y
Posted by:
jbb123
()
Date: July 03, 2003 10:21AM
Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides
[Preamble] People have long sought to enrich their lives and to awaken to their full natures through spiritual practices including prayer, meditation, mind-body disciplines, service, ritual, community liturgy, holy-day and seasonal observances, and rites of passage. "Primary religious practices" are those intended, or especially likely, to bring about exceptional states of consciousness such as the direct experience of the divine, of cosmic unity, or of boundless awareness.
In any community, there are some who feel called to assist others along spiritual paths, and who are known as ministers, rabbis, pastors, curanderas, shamans, priests, or other titles. We call such people 'guides': those experienced in some practice, familiar with the terrain, and who act to facilitate the spiritual practices of others. A guide need not claim exclusive or definitive knowledge of the terrain.
Spiritual practices, and especially primary religious practices, carry risks. Therefore, when an individual chooses to practice with the assistance of a guide, both take on special responsibilities. The Council on Spiritual Practices proposes the following Code of Ethics for those who serve as spiritual guides.
[Intention] Spiritual guides are to practice and serve in ways that cultivate awareness, empathy, and wisdom.
[Serving Society] Spiritual practices are to be designed and conducted in ways that respect the common good, with due regard for public safety, health, and order. Because the increased awareness gained from spiritual practices can catalyze desire for personal and social change, guides shall use special care to help direct the energies of those they serve, as well as their own, in responsible ways that reflect a loving regard for all life.
[Serving Individuals] Spiritual guides shall respect and seek to preserve the autonomy and dignity of each person. Participation in any primary religious practice must be voluntary and based on prior disclosure and consent given individually by each participant while in an ordinary state of consciousness. Disclosure shall include, at a minimum, discussion of any elements of the practice that could reasonably be seen as presenting physical or psychological risks. In particular, participants must be warned that primary religious experience can be difficult and dramatically transformative.
Guides shall make reasonable preparations to protect each participant's health and safety during spiritual practices and in the periods of vulnerability that may follow. Limits on the behaviors of participants and facilitators are to be made clear and agreed upon in advance of any session. Appropriate customs of confidentiality are to be established and honored.
[Competence] Spiritual guides shall assist with only those practices for which they are qualified by personal experience and by training or education.
[Integrity] Spiritual guides shall strive to be aware of how their own belief systems, values, needs, and limitations affect their work. During primary religious practices, participants may be especially open to suggestion, manipulation, and exploitation; therefore, guides pledge to protect participants and not to allow anyone to use that vulnerability in ways that harm participants or others.
[Quiet Presence] To help safeguard against the harmful consequences of personal and organizational ambition, spiritual communities are usually better allowed to grow through attraction rather than active promotion.
[Not for Profit] Spiritual practices are to be conducted in the spirit of service. Spiritual guides shall strive to accommodate participants without regard to their ability to pay or make donations.
[Tolerance] Spiritual guides shall practice openness and respect towards people whose beliefs are in apparent contradiction to their own.
[Peer Review] Each guide shall seek the counsel of other guides to help ensure the wholesomeness of his or her practices and shall offer counsel when there is need.
This draft for public comment was released 10 August 2001. The current version is available on the Internet at [www.csp.org.]
Copyright © 1995 - 2001 Council on Spiritual Practices
Box 460820
San Francisco, CA 94146-0820
USA
Permission is hereby given to reprint this Code, provided that the text is reproduced complete and verbatim, including the CSP contact information, copyright, and this notice of limited permission to reprint.
Your comments are invited and will be considered for future revisions. Endorsements of the Code are also welcome.
[Preamble] People have long sought to enrich their lives and to awaken to their full natures through spiritual practices including prayer, meditation, mind-body disciplines, service, ritual, community liturgy, holy-day and seasonal observances, and rites of passage. "Primary religious practices" are those intended, or especially likely, to bring about exceptional states of consciousness such as the direct experience of the divine, of cosmic unity, or of boundless awareness.
In any community, there are some who feel called to assist others along spiritual paths, and who are known as ministers, rabbis, pastors, curanderas, shamans, priests, or other titles. We call such people 'guides': those experienced in some practice, familiar with the terrain, and who act to facilitate the spiritual practices of others. A guide need not claim exclusive or definitive knowledge of the terrain.
Spiritual practices, and especially primary religious practices, carry risks. Therefore, when an individual chooses to practice with the assistance of a guide, both take on special responsibilities. The Council on Spiritual Practices proposes the following Code of Ethics for those who serve as spiritual guides.
[Intention] Spiritual guides are to practice and serve in ways that cultivate awareness, empathy, and wisdom.
[Serving Society] Spiritual practices are to be designed and conducted in ways that respect the common good, with due regard for public safety, health, and order. Because the increased awareness gained from spiritual practices can catalyze desire for personal and social change, guides shall use special care to help direct the energies of those they serve, as well as their own, in responsible ways that reflect a loving regard for all life.
[Serving Individuals] Spiritual guides shall respect and seek to preserve the autonomy and dignity of each person. Participation in any primary religious practice must be voluntary and based on prior disclosure and consent given individually by each participant while in an ordinary state of consciousness. Disclosure shall include, at a minimum, discussion of any elements of the practice that could reasonably be seen as presenting physical or psychological risks. In particular, participants must be warned that primary religious experience can be difficult and dramatically transformative.
Guides shall make reasonable preparations to protect each participant's health and safety during spiritual practices and in the periods of vulnerability that may follow. Limits on the behaviors of participants and facilitators are to be made clear and agreed upon in advance of any session. Appropriate customs of confidentiality are to be established and honored.
[Competence] Spiritual guides shall assist with only those practices for which they are qualified by personal experience and by training or education.
[Integrity] Spiritual guides shall strive to be aware of how their own belief systems, values, needs, and limitations affect their work. During primary religious practices, participants may be especially open to suggestion, manipulation, and exploitation; therefore, guides pledge to protect participants and not to allow anyone to use that vulnerability in ways that harm participants or others.
[Quiet Presence] To help safeguard against the harmful consequences of personal and organizational ambition, spiritual communities are usually better allowed to grow through attraction rather than active promotion.
[Not for Profit] Spiritual practices are to be conducted in the spirit of service. Spiritual guides shall strive to accommodate participants without regard to their ability to pay or make donations.
[Tolerance] Spiritual guides shall practice openness and respect towards people whose beliefs are in apparent contradiction to their own.
[Peer Review] Each guide shall seek the counsel of other guides to help ensure the wholesomeness of his or her practices and shall offer counsel when there is need.
This draft for public comment was released 10 August 2001. The current version is available on the Internet at [www.csp.org.]
Copyright © 1995 - 2001 Council on Spiritual Practices
Box 460820
San Francisco, CA 94146-0820
USA
Permission is hereby given to reprint this Code, provided that the text is reproduced complete and verbatim, including the CSP contact information, copyright, and this notice of limited permission to reprint.
Your comments are invited and will be considered for future revisions. Endorsements of the Code are also welcome.
"Ethis Code for Spiritual Guides"-what's y
Posted by:
rrmoderator
()
Date: July 03, 2003 11:24PM
When seeking a "spiritual guide" some practical questions and criteria can be applied that have to do with specific behavior, practices and the dynamics within a group.
See [www.culteducation.com]
Warning Sings, as those outlined above, make sense when shopping for a "guide" or group.
The problem is so many gurus, "guides" and groups have no meaningful accountability, despite their stated principles and/or codes of conduct.
How will such stated codes or principles be effectively enforced? Perhaps that question should be answered in advance before becoming involved with a group or leader.
Solid checks and balances through meaningful accountability and financial transparency is often an effective way of insuring your safety within a group and the ethical conduct of "guides" and leaders.
Rick Ross
Moderator
See [www.culteducation.com]
Warning Sings, as those outlined above, make sense when shopping for a "guide" or group.
The problem is so many gurus, "guides" and groups have no meaningful accountability, despite their stated principles and/or codes of conduct.
How will such stated codes or principles be effectively enforced? Perhaps that question should be answered in advance before becoming involved with a group or leader.
Solid checks and balances through meaningful accountability and financial transparency is often an effective way of insuring your safety within a group and the ethical conduct of "guides" and leaders.
Rick Ross
Moderator
"Ethis Code for Spiritual Guides"-what's y
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: July 04, 2003 01:40AM
also be fact-checked.
Many spirtual guides claim to be disciples of celebrated spiritual teachers or saints, but their claims turn out to be bogus.
Or the guide will make claims that cannot be verified--Gurdjieff did this constantly. Or the guide will win your trust very quickly and to such a degree that you feel ashamed to fact-check the claims.
Yet another trick is to find an accommodating guru who will allow you to use his/her name as endorsement without making any moral demands on you.
Some spiritual crooks have excellent, verifiable credentials.
Another spiritual crook I met (luckily he didnt victimize me because I read his beads and stayed my distance) was a psychiatrist, celebrated for research he had done, had a Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. Brilliant man, superb credentials. But, his priorities were not those of a true mental health professional. The man was actually an adventurer and self-promoter who equated the paranormal with the spiriutual. He pretended to transcend ego, when in fact he served his own ego ruthlessly, has no empathy and has IMO seriously hurt people.
He had professional credentials but was actually a pseudo-professional, because he avoided accountability to his peers and preferred the company of adoring disciples and other adventurers like himself.
A person can have excellent credentials but not have the attitude needed to be a professional or a true healer.
Professionalism means belonging to and being accountable to a community of skilled persons who submit to a code of ethics, put client welfare ahead of quick and easy profit and who communicate with each other and commit to ongoing continuing education. Most spiritual crooks are self serving, hate accountability, despise codes of morality and are 'lone rangers.'
Professionals also stick with just one, or a coherant cluster of treatment strategies. They dont employ a wierd arbitrary salad of techniques, and they dont undermine boundaries by socializing with clients or having sex with them.
Spiritual crooks often disdain boundaries and they often employ a slap dash combination of approaches that conceal their lack of solid expertise. They call this 'integrated' or 'holistic' when in fact it confuses the hell out of people
A healer puts the welfare of a patient or client ahead of his or her own ego-cravings. The healer, above all, does no harm and is ready to call in help. And both healers and professionals are mandated to empower people, not enslave them, and to preserve our dignity, not cause us to engage in behavior that could subject us to ridicule.
Ideally, when circumstances permit, professional healers conduct themselves so that you need their services as little as possible. They dont try to make you sick or keep you sick to ensure that you stick around.
Healers and professionals are willing to earn an honest living, but are not profiteers. Most spiritual crooks are profiteers
Many spirtual guides claim to be disciples of celebrated spiritual teachers or saints, but their claims turn out to be bogus.
Or the guide will make claims that cannot be verified--Gurdjieff did this constantly. Or the guide will win your trust very quickly and to such a degree that you feel ashamed to fact-check the claims.
Yet another trick is to find an accommodating guru who will allow you to use his/her name as endorsement without making any moral demands on you.
Some spiritual crooks have excellent, verifiable credentials.
Another spiritual crook I met (luckily he didnt victimize me because I read his beads and stayed my distance) was a psychiatrist, celebrated for research he had done, had a Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. Brilliant man, superb credentials. But, his priorities were not those of a true mental health professional. The man was actually an adventurer and self-promoter who equated the paranormal with the spiriutual. He pretended to transcend ego, when in fact he served his own ego ruthlessly, has no empathy and has IMO seriously hurt people.
He had professional credentials but was actually a pseudo-professional, because he avoided accountability to his peers and preferred the company of adoring disciples and other adventurers like himself.
A person can have excellent credentials but not have the attitude needed to be a professional or a true healer.
Professionalism means belonging to and being accountable to a community of skilled persons who submit to a code of ethics, put client welfare ahead of quick and easy profit and who communicate with each other and commit to ongoing continuing education. Most spiritual crooks are self serving, hate accountability, despise codes of morality and are 'lone rangers.'
Professionals also stick with just one, or a coherant cluster of treatment strategies. They dont employ a wierd arbitrary salad of techniques, and they dont undermine boundaries by socializing with clients or having sex with them.
Spiritual crooks often disdain boundaries and they often employ a slap dash combination of approaches that conceal their lack of solid expertise. They call this 'integrated' or 'holistic' when in fact it confuses the hell out of people
A healer puts the welfare of a patient or client ahead of his or her own ego-cravings. The healer, above all, does no harm and is ready to call in help. And both healers and professionals are mandated to empower people, not enslave them, and to preserve our dignity, not cause us to engage in behavior that could subject us to ridicule.
Ideally, when circumstances permit, professional healers conduct themselves so that you need their services as little as possible. They dont try to make you sick or keep you sick to ensure that you stick around.
Healers and professionals are willing to earn an honest living, but are not profiteers. Most spiritual crooks are profiteers
"Ethis Code for Spiritual Guides"-what's y
Posted by:
elena
()
Date: July 04, 2003 01:48AM
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