SC Musings for Nitya Gurukula

Ethical Behaviors for Holistic Well being

June 20, 2025

Dear Readers, Welcome to SC Musings, Blog 39

I am shifting focus in this Blog from consciousness to a different theme:

Ethical Behaviors for Holistic Well Being.

Consciousness and ethics have different meanings, but they are connected subtly and deeply, which we will explore here to enhance our Holistic Well Being.

Webster (2025) offers the following description and definitions of ethics:

“ethics plural in form but singular or plural in construction :

a: the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group professional ethics

c: a consciousness of moral importance- forge a conservation ethic

d: a guiding philosophy”

Ethical behaviours was chosen as a theme for NG Webinar in June ’25, based on emerging issues in our People Work sessions- like counselling, training and supervision. Often, we as People Workers are invited to play judge when asked questions like “ Tell me, am I right?” or “ Isn't he/she wrong” and the like.

In Blog 38 I traced the expansion of consciousness through my developmental stages and, and let’s now begin linking it with ethics. This process is intended to delineate different stages in the development of ethics and explain it’s role in Holistic Well- being.

A journey into ethics needs to begin with delving into morality, values and principles, from which it grew.

Stanford dictionary defines morality as:

“certain codes of conduct endorsed by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or

..a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be endorsed by all rational people”

Values are ‘the beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that control their behaviour’ states Cambridge Dictionary (2025).

In Wikipedia we find that:

“A principle represents values that orient and rule the conduct of persons in a particular society. To "act on principle" is to act in accordance with one's moral ideals.[7] Principles are absorbed in childhood through a process of socialization. There is a presumption of liberty of individuals that is restrained. Exemplary principles include First, do no harm, the Golden Rule and the Doctrine of the Mean.”

The above definitions and descriptions of ethics, morals, values and principle bring us to the connecting link between them captured in Figure 39.

The pillar represents Morals-Values-Principles-Ethics, with the foundation representing morals, spanning out into values, principles and ethics; their connection with consciousness will be described later in this Blog.

However, before we proceed let me address here the lingering doubt within, which crops up now and then, fuelled by feedback from my Readers. I receive a complaint, often couched under the garb of feedback that these Blogs are difficult to understand. ‘We need to read them a few times to get the meaning’ I am informed. Hearing this, the temptation to water down the content of Blogs and make them easily readable rises.

I pull myself from this temptation, remembering the intent of the Blogs: to deepen concepts, immersing readers in their depth to elevate and expand their consciousness. From experience, I am sure that this process contributes to their Holistic Wellbeing, under which mental health is subsumed.

Let me now attempt to use morals, ethics, values and principles to describe my struggle with easy readability. With 4 plus decades of experience as a people worker, one learning deeply ingrained, and embedded in me is that integrity and commitment are essential to make a difference in people’s lives. Integrity is the deep connection between self-others-context. This connection experientially involves and includes

- Sensitivity

- Awareness

- Being present and

- Being just.

An alignment of these connections in attending to self – others – context works like magic in people work and brings changes at the core level.

The morality on which these principles, we can call them essentials, rest are

- Not doing Harm,

- Justice and fairness.

These moral principles are universal, though the way they are interpreted differs based on cultural traditions.

Imbibing morality of not harming and fairness at a very young age from my maternal grandfather, I grew up with the value of acknowledging and respecting human beings unconditionally.

This value often leads to ethical dialogues within me, especially in people work. Like do I make the content of the Blogs light and easy for readers, or do I invite them to deeper spaces within for expanding their awareness. And the simple answer is that it is ethical for me to pass on the values embedded within me.

Ethical because of my contract as a people worker is to elevate and enhance readers’ consciousness to enable connections with their Guru Within. It is easy to get side lined into becoming a people pleaser- which will retain them at their existing levels. The connection between ethics and contextual contracting becomes evident in my predicament with readability.

Moving on to a recent experience during my monthly training tour, I had the opportunity and privilege of spending time with an NG associate, who we will call Sara. She joined us close to a decade ago, when she was stepping out of adolescence, as a trainee, as a staff and had innumerable life questions about emotions, relationships etc. etc. And encounter she did, challenging situations inside and outside of her, which justified her doubts and questions.

Continuous search for truth moved Sara in the path of enhancing her competence and life skills. Fast forwarding a decade, she has settled in the family she married into and became a thorough professional as an educator, art and movement teacher and more. Meeting her, watching her expressions as an individual, as a professional and systemically was a peak experience. Sara embodied ethics in all her roles, which contributed to the harmony she helped create in her contexts.

Finally, we arrive at the connections between ethical behaviours and consciousness. Speaking from my experience and learnings over the years, I emphatically state that there are quite a few connections between them. Deepening our ethics through reflections and practices, I find, deepen and widen our consciousness. This deepening process, contributes to our Holistic Well-being.

Dear Reader,

In this Blog 39 I have attempted to delve and explain 2 seemingly inexplicable and abstract concepts like ethics and consciousness. In Blog 40 we will turn our attention to ethical behaviours through the 8 limbs of yoga.

References

“Ethic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethic. Accessed 19 Jun. 2025.

Morality: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/

Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle#cite_note-7

Values: https://www.nityagurukula.org/sc-musings/values-principles-ego/