Right Action Law #9

'...Right Action is grounded in soul knowledge, not the man-made world's aims or values. Very few have the patience for the 'waiting and becoming' that precedes Right Action...'

                       Cynthia F. Davidson from Wisdom Wheel Right Action card

(To order cards, stones or a poster visit www.thewisdomwheel.com)

Right Action isn't about goading yourself into doing more and more. We are human beings, not human doings, after all. Sometimes no action is the Right Action. Too quick to seek approval, curry favor, or make money, we do things we have not thought all the way through to their final consequences. 
In your heart you know what Right Action is, though if you refuse to listen to your heart, that wisdom is harder to access. Right Action is not about self-righteousness, dogma, or following arbitrary rules others made either. It's about your personal code of ethics and whether you use it to guide all your actions.

Love was our last Law, and it's worth remembering that Right Action becomes easier to see when Love directs us. And yes, even moving your money from a big bank into your local community credit union, is an example of Right Action, unless you find big faceless banks easier to Love. Social justice is one area of Right Action that takes others into account as well as ourselves.  

For the next ten days, make Right Action your watch word. See what happens when you practice asking yourself before making your decisions, 'Is this the Right Action for me?' Listen for internal and external voices, old tapes, and excuses. Bring up the subject of Right Action every chance you get; with friends, co-workers and family members. See who else has wisdom to share about this Universal Law. Right Action comes from right thoughts, right 

feelings, right health and being right with spirit.

       

Here are some nuggets of wisdom about Right Action from others. 

Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature.  Nowadays, when we talk of the 'laws of nature' we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry.  But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong the 'Law of Nature', they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law--with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.

C. S. Lewis

So act that your principle of action might safely be made law for the whole world. 
Immanuel Kant

However a man works to right his world, it will never be righted until he has put himself right.

James Allen

Imagine if all the energy that goes into trying to prove the other side wrong were channeled into actually thinking about what was best for whatever the dispute is about. Having to be right becomes a barrier to learning and understanding. It keeps you away from growing, for there is no growth without changing, correcting, and questioning yourself. … once you experience the power of not having to be right, you will feel like you are walking across open fields, the perspective wide and your feet free to take any turn.

John Naisbitt

 The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Sometimes you can fight evil and beat it, and sometimes you can only keep it in check. I learned never to feed evil with evil, nor hatred with hatred, nor to fight fear with fear. I learned to fight with love for even those things that I despised.

Tom Brown, Jr.

It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.

Sylvia Plath

Hate is an unfaithful weapon. Be neither brave nor afraid, but at peace.

Master Kan

There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the question alive. To return the sense of dignity and honor to manhood, we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.

 Sam Keen

Any economic system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral and really stupid.

Derrick Jensen

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. 

Frank Moore Colby

Like our indigenous ancestors, we can be willing to engage in the struggle to liberate our bodies and souls from external and internal colonization and discover more fully our own deeper story and what it is that we came here to do.

Carolyn Baker

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. 

Howard Thurman

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. … It's not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

For thirty years I used to say, ‘Do this’ and ‘Give that; but when I reached the first stage of wisdom, I said, ‘O God, be mine and do whatever You want.’ 

Abu Yazid Al Bistami, Muslim mystic 

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?  There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.  

Barry Lopez

There is a crisis point in activism, and because of the complexities, our efforts may seem to fail. We need to expect this and be ready to cope with it in a spiritual context…The solution to our discouragement is to become more communal in focus…trusting others enough to submit our cause to a larger purpose. We cannot do it alone, when we are ego-bound, we have the least hope…You are in charge of your level of openness to the Universe. Take in and transmit only the amount of energy you are comfortable with and is appropriate to your situation.

Christina Baldwin

There are really only two things to do:

-Be still and listen

-Take spiritually based action.

Everything else is bogus activity which only gets in the way of our real understanding.

Joy Houghton

 In another ten days, we'll take up the Trust Law #10. Stay tuned & experiment with do only what is right.