“Though the whole world grumble, I will speak my mind.” – Cicero

The fourth covenant of the Visionmaker’s Code is Be Honest and Direct. 

Perhaps of the covenants we have covered to date, this is the one that may most radically depart from current social conventions.

We live in a world of “spin.” Spin is a creative presentation of facts that are designed to influence and persuade others to see things in a particular way– usually, more favourably or to mask a deeper truth that does not want to be made visible. It is a form of social lying.

In Visionmaking, spin is known as sorcery. Sorcery is the misuse of power to deceive, manipulate or control others.

A Visionmaker is not a politician, bending words to serve popularity or to gain support for some agenda. He or she says what they mean in plain language, and does what they say they will do.

Authentic communication is an act of personal integrity and character. It is a stand that one takes to uphold “the practice of steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or standards.”

Of course, the fourth covenant is balanced by the second: Do No Harm. To review this covenant, please refer to my Post of February 23rd.

Being forthright and doing no harm are not mutually exclusive, as we might assume. A Visionmaker speaks his or her truth in a way that maintains integrity and respects that powerful words carry impact.

Angeles Arrien, the cultural anthropologist and author, provides guidance in this regard:

“Skillful communication means we have aligned content, meaning and context. Blunt communication is an announcement of great content, but poor timing and context. Confused communication often carries good timing and context but poor content, and leads to incongruity between our words and our behavior.”

 

Visionmakers speak from the heart. It is the source of their words and their actions.

Until we return to the heart, and learn to be honest, direct and compassionate with our communication, we will continue to suffer from a global crisis of integrity.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

“The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language…In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

The third covenant of the Visionmaker’s Code is Keep Your Word.

In Visionmaking, words are seen as sacred gifts, because they are a symbolic container for meaning. “We speak words,” goes the old saying, “…but we hear meanings.” When our words and actions are heart-felt they carry a generative impact that cannot be overstated.

That is why a Visionmaker takes their word seriously and does not give it lightly.

It wasn’t very long ago, just one generation back, that your word was your bond. When you gave your word, it was serious business. You kept your promises as a matter of honor.  

Your word and your family name were inextricably linked. Failure to keep your word, failure to honor this bond of trust, brought disgrace upon your family name.

How far we have drifted from this traditional practice of integrity! And how quickly that drift has occurred. Lying, or spinning the truth, like cheating the system, has become “normal.”

A Visionmaker is not a fraud. Standing for the integrity of speech is the Visionmaker’s way to stay connected to the Four-Chambered Heart, to the backbone of character, and to timeless principles that govern action and uphold trust.

Keep Your Word.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

“Caught in the relaxing interval between one moral code and the next, an unmoored generation surrenders itself to luxury, corruption, and a restless disorder of family and morals.” -Will and Ariel Durant

The second convention of the Visionmaker’s Code is Do No Harm. 

Being aware and taking responsibility for our impact on others ensures that we consider more than just our own needs and ambitions. This is the Visionmaker’s way.  It ensures that choices are made with a 360º perspective.

Too late is the insight that harm has been done by a reckless addiction to power, wealth and personal gain. Once trust has been violated, it is hard to recover.

It is not just that there is an individual cost to such ethical lapses. The steady decline of integrity has undermined faith and trust in leaders in business, politics, religion, and cultural industries.

There has been serious consequences for such cavalier deportment. Public confidence is steadily declining and will severely undermine attempts to stabilize the crisis that has beset most of our institutions.

Moreover, it has ‘normalized’ breaking and bending the rules to  support winning-at-all costs. We have entered the “Cheating Culture”, a term that comes from the work of writer David Callahan. He argues that there are four reasons for the escalation of cheating:

 

“The carrots are bigger now — stars in every system make more than they used to and more people will cut corners to grasp those rewards.

 

The sticks are hitting harder — in a leaner-meaner economy, personal integrity loses out to financial security.

 

Many watchdogs are weak and cheaters know that they can get away with it.

 

Our culture indulges it — we’re focused on materialistic ends and more permissive about the means of personal advancement.”

The “relaxing interval” that Will and Ariel Durant described has been abundantly filled with misdeeds.  

Through the Visionmaker’s Code, and the second covenant Do No Harm, Visionmakers ensure that actions are guided by the wisdom of reflection and the highest ethical standards rather than expediency. 

Those that operate from an ethical code of conduct will be recognized for their integrity and asked to assume greater leadership.

Those that do harm to others and themselves will find their journey of meaning interrupted by conflict, loss…and maybe even jail terms.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

Your work is to discover your work

And then with all you heart

To give yourself to it.

 – The Dhammapada

The Visionmaker’s Code is an ethical framework that supports right action. My last post provides an overview of the seven conventions that guide action. The next series of posts will explore each convention individually.

As we have seen, unethical and immoral behavior, and the abuse of power always result in collective calamity. The news media is filled with accounts of talented people who have been overcome by temptation and fallen hard as a result.  A code of ethics, then, is a necessary source of guidance to ensure that our talent is matched by our integrity.

The first convention of the Visionmaker’s Code comes from The Four-Fold Way, by Angeles Arrien. Follow What Has Heart and Meaning is a reminder that the distractions of bright lights, pretty people, and personal wealth is not the raison d’etre for a Visionmaker. 

The Visionmaker’s first allegiance is to the journey of meaning, which emerges from the heart. Paying attention to what has heart and meaning is the Visionmaker’s way of staying true to the Self, to a purpose greater than the ego, and to avoid the traps that visit those who seek to make change in the world.

Angeles Arrien reminds us that, “Paying attention (to what has heart and meaning) opens us to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgement, and validation.”

It also reminds us of what is truly important in meeting our three primary responsibilities–the responsibility to self, the responsibility to others and the responsibility to the larger world in which we live.

These are things that can be easily forgotten if we are pursuing the cultural dream of what constitutes success-money, sex and power. Too many talented people have forgotten their heart’s dream and their primary responsibilities to grab the brass ring, only to find that it is an empty prize. Or to find that they have broken the law to get it.

Being anchored in the heart, and not in a collective trance of consensus that declares the pursuit of power as the ultimate the prize, allows a Visionmaker to attend to what is most meaningful and in alignment with the singular journey that each of us was born to make.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers,

There are men who can’t be bought.

–Carl Sandburg

We are currently in a cycle of high exposure. All the narcissistic excesses and abuses of the system that were hidden or ‘normalized’ by boom times are now in high resolution.

Scandals on Wall Street, cheating in sports, and corruption in politics are nothing new. However, they take on heightened visibility and repugnance, when the times turn difficult. 

Daily, we are treated to the tearful apologies of those who have been cheating the system for personal gain. We can argue that compassion needs to be extended to them. They are products of a society where it is increasingly difficult to locate a moral compass. Especially when millions of dollars are the prize for bending the rules.

Most of us are fed up with the nonsense of entitlement and double standards that have shaken our political and financial institutions to their foundations.

More importantly, what these times reveal is the growing importance of integrity as a foundation for conduct-and the integrity gap that currently exists in our society.

In an age where so much promise has been undermined by its absence, integrity may seem like a quality belonging to an earlier, more innocent time, unachievable in the modern world. 

Visionmakers reject such notions.

A Visionmaker doesn’t see integrity as a conditional commitment dependent on what is to be gained or lost. He or she sees integrity as a matter of personal honor and the ground on which the journey of meaning unfolds.

Integrity requires a code of moral and ethical principles and values. The Visionmaker’s Code is such a framework and is rooted in three primary responsibilities: the responsibility to self, the responsibility to others, the responsibility to the world.  These three responsibilities were outlined in my post on February 9th.

The Visionmaker’s Code has seven conventions that govern behavior.

1. Follow What Has Heart and Meaning

2. Do No Harm

3. Keep Your Word

4. Be Honest and Direct

5. Be Respectful

6. Mind Your Own Business

7. Assist Others

In my next post, I will begin to address these conventions as a foundation for ‘right action’.

Thank you for visiting Visions.  I hope that these insights help you make your way towards your heart’s desire. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

I had a short wave band on my radio when I was a boy.

At night, in the darkness of my room, I would listen to the evocative sounds of hockey being broadcast from places like the Olympia, in Detroit. The exploits of Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio and Norm Ullman captured my imagination.

The sounds of static as the dial traveled the distances between the signals…and then Radio Free Europe, broadcasting its messages to the dour countries behind the Iron Curtain. 

Languages I never heard before, wondering their origin and who spoke in such staccato bursts… then the signal fading out. 

I could usually find the BBC World News Service, and a pirate radio station broadcasting off the English coast or from a border town in Mexico. To a small boy living in a small town in southern Canada, the world outside seemed like a mystery calling to be explored. 

You could hear Destiny’s voice broadcast from all parts of the globe, urging you to make the thrilling expedition to adventure.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

Do not be fooled by these times. Fear wants us to believe that our possibilities have been substantially reduced, if not eliminated. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Visionmakers are not merely passengers riding a roller coaster that is careening out of control. That is giving too much personal power to the circumstances and betrays the singular journey of the heart that we have been born to pursue.

A Visionmaker makes the circumstances that he or she wants through an allegiance to creativity over acceptance, courage over fear, and enterprise over entropy.

Easy to say, harder to do? Maybe. 

One of the biggest challenges is to release ourselves from the collective trance of consensus that fuels herd mentality. This is a false belief that we are caught up in a system in which we have no choice and are therefore victims of larger cycles that will ultimately destroy us. That kind of thinking ensures a platinum seat on the roller coaster. 

Second, we must gird ourselves against the daily drama and the ups and downs that provide a means of negative bonding with those around us. That doesn’t mean that we should plant our head in the sand and pretend that calamity isn’t happening.  Rather, it’s the necessary detachment to observe what is occurring without being sucked into the vortex of crisis and lose our proactivity as a result. Fear seeks a following and is upheld through an infection of collective agreement.

Third, Visionmakers have no business allowing current circumstances to dictate their future.  One needs to be ready to pluck the future from the fingers of chance. Stay focussed. Being overwhelmed by fears about how things are and where they might be leading is an unnecessary distraction.

Visionmakers remain focussed on the journey of meaning, manage the conditions they meet, and remain ready to act. In this way, we become much larger than our challenges and our actions spring from a full and strong heart.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

Death is our constant companion on a journey of meaning. We can either be terrified by the thought, or recognize the presence of an ally in helping us understand the difference between what is deeply meaningful and important and what is, ultimately, of little consequence.

Our culture prefers not to look Death in the eye. As individuals, we would rather forget that it remains our constant companion.  It seems easier and more comfortable just to concentrate on Life. To do that is to deny that our journey of meaning is time-bound, and that every moment we have is a blessing.

The impermanence of existence teaches us to respect it. It reminds us not to take for granted what we love. The great gift of life is the opportunity to create meaning with every step of our journey.

The Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus warns us not to be lulled into a false belief that we can put off living until tomorrow. He suggests: “What do you wish to be doing when it (Death) overtakes you? If you have anything better to be doing…get to work on that.”

Mortality requires that we turn to the heart to initiate two great transformational journeys–the journey of life and the final journey of death which carries each of us into a mystery.

The journey of life can be illuminated through Death’s counsel, which reminds us to act on what matters most and to take action with commitment and purpose.

The Roman philosopher, Horace urges us to “Believe every day that has dawned is your last.” Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, supports Horace’s advice: “And you will give yourself peace if you perform each act as if it were your last.”

By performing each act as though it were the last, the Visionmaker does everything with focus, economy, and excellence. That is the secret of the ability to act with purpose.

Imagine being told we had just months to live. We would waste no time on trivialities, diversions and distraction. We would be deeply committed to doing only what matters most.

Living as though every act is our last act creates the kind of clarity, urgency and commitment that shatters the status quo, returns us to the heart, and generates a breakthrough.

As always, your insights and comments are most welcome. Thank you for visiting Visions.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

However many holy words you read,

However many you speak,

What good will they do you

If you do not act upon them?

 

–The Dhammapada

There are three sets of responsibility that every Visionmaker observes: self, others and world. It is not enough to simply watch others act during difficult or troubling times. A Visionmaker chooses the way of engagement over passivity to alter the status quo.

The status quo, a state of stasis where there is neither motion or development and where there is little hope of change, seeks to freeze us in its numbing cold. The proof of its conquest is when we give up taking action out of a belief that we can no longer make a difference. Passivity is not Visionmaking, nor is falling for the lie that we are impotent in effecting change.  The truth of the matter is anything can be changed, ourselves included.

A Visionmaker takes his or her responsibilities seriously. 

Responsibility to the self requires that our choices and actions be in alignment with the heart’s vision and our greater purpose, whether it is to take care of our families, make a contribution through our work or leave a legacy through charitable acts, to name a few.

Are our actions in alignment with the full, strong, open and clear heart, the guide to a singular journey of meaning that we were born to make?  Are these actions woven together by a moral and ethical framework that ensure we uphold character and do no harm? Do our words and actions unite to form a powerful force for positive change?

These are the responsibilities to self that a Visionmaker seeks to uphold on a daily basis.

Responsibility to others requires that we seek to serve a greater good other than just our own personal ambition or profit. We examine our choices from the perspective of how our actions may impact other people or the collective good.

The Visionmaker accepts mutual gain as one measure of a good choice and strives to generate creative solutions to difficult circumstances where there may be conflicting agendas, needs and courses of action.

“Ethics is reverence for all life,” wrote the Nobel Prize winning medical missionary, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. His is a name you don’t hear much anymore. His sentiments as well seem to have been lost in today’s world, where self-interest has become religion. Had this dictum been ascribed to on Wall Street, the world economy might be less precarious.

Responsibility to the world we live in demands that we recognize the interconnectedness of all the paths–human, animal and ecological–and that we tread as lightly as possible upon the earth to ensure sustainability for ourselves, our children, and those generations to follow.

Change is required in how we share and use the planet’s resources so that the economic crisis is not followed closely by an ecological catastrophe.  Of course, we are currently pursuing this outcome as we drive hard to exhaust the environment with conspicuous consumption and unconscious waste.

A Visionmaker holds the firm belief that one person’s positive vision, executed faithfully through consistent and purposeful action, can change the world. Waiting, watching and commenting on what others are doing or not doing, is not action. “Turn to you work,” advised Miguel de Unamuno, the Basque philosopher, in an earlier post. Yes, and let that work reflect that we have taken the Visionmaker’s three responsibilities to heart.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

These are times that call for courage.

Courage, is the capacity to maintain clarity, optimism, resourcefulness, and bold action despite external pressures and circumstances. “Move from within,” says the Sufi poet Rumi, “don’t move the way fear wants you to.”

The capacity to move from within rests in our allegiance to our own powers-our knowledge, skills, experience, gifts,talents, and creativity. Each of us has been given abundant resources to follow our heart’s desire, even when the journey grows challenging or difficult.

In the face of such challenges, we must remain vigilant to our commitment to our personal powers rather than succumb to the spread of fear that passes from person to person via the media, water-cooler conversations and our own self-talk. Doom and gloom is everywhere. It is easy to be engulfed by economic catastrophe and get wrapped up in the daily drama around us.

 But that is not the way of the Visionmaker.

Visionmakers are respectful of circumstances but refuse to be dominated by them. For every challenge there is a solution, for every downturn there are ideas powerful enough to overturn it. Visionmakers see the ups and downs of living as normal. They remain sober-minded, focussed and generative in any circumstance. They are committed to inventing the future rather than being victimized by it.

A Visionmaker defends the heart against the invasion of fear, recognizing that seldom is fear successful when we have the courage to face it.  Cultural anthropologist, Angeles Arrien reminds us that ”whatever you can face, you can handle.  Otherwise it wouldn’t be there.”

The purpose of fear is to constrict energy.  It enters the mind and infects the heart.  Once the heart has been stricken with fear, it begins to close down and we lose our bearings and the courage to act. We begin to be filled with doubt, second-guess ourselves, and worry that we are no longer sufficient to handle our circumstances. It is here that we fall.  We allow ourselves to be overmatched by giving ourselves away to fear.

Don’t move the way fear wants you to. Even if a neighbor, politician, news anchor, union leader, boss, co-worker, family member or friend wants you to. Take a stand against being swept away by a collective trance of consensus.

Move from within, from the heart, and give thanks as you make your way forward towards destiny.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.