Ethics and Life 1

Running Head: PERSONAL ETHICS AND LIFE

Personal Ethics and Life Zen Benefiel LDR 520 University of Phoenix

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Personal Ethics and Life Personal ethics statement: I will to do good for all, desiring to serve humanity in the highest and best use of my mind/body/spirit complex, in the facilitation of a new world order of harmony among people and planet through the development of a state-of-the-art model community and website that promotes this endeavor. Expressing ones personal take on ethics and life may not always be understood in the context of the world at large. Belief systems are established early on though environments of home, church, school, and social gatherings, which help to form these beliefs. Most of these beliefs and patterns of behavior are established through the unconscious observations and experiences of childhood in the aforementioned environments. These I refer to as outer experiences. For me, I knew that I was adopted by the time I was five. My adoptive parents were ideal by some standards, demonstrating honesty, integrity, and willingness to address conflict with style and grace, even in the most difficult of situations. Dad was a tool and die machinist, building plastic injection molds for General Motors optical division, and a 32nd Degree Mason. Mom was an educator, with masters in Music and English, and taught middle school English and Literature. They were a formidable team for an adolescent with growing pains. My adoptive parents taught me that honesty was the best policy, even when the details may not be too favorable. I also began having metaphysical experiences just after my 6th birthday. I refer to these as inner experiences. For most, the internal experience is often ignored because of the lack external acceptance or validation. There was a disparity with my parents due to no frame of reference for them regarding my metaphysical meanderings, which often caused me to question my own reality, by the way. Consequently, the balance toward trusting others was

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often weighted by desire rather than discernment. The discernment came later as I began to understand that not all people were like my parents. Others motives were not always utilitarian. Indeed, they were often misplaced personal libertarian expressions of selfishness without regard to personal boundaries. What I learned was that the inner life I was leading provided more concrete understanding of the nature of the outer reality and the actions of others. Whether it changed those actions or not varied from situation to situation depending on my ability to question congruency, the awareness of connectivity, verbally. That, too, changed, as I got older and more experienced with introducing interrogatives. In my teens, the greatest influence came through the Order of DeMolay. I was Master Councilor at fifteen and at 17, competed at the state Conclave through a speech on filial love and in one-meter springboard diving. Receiving the International DeMolay Medal for Saving a Human Life was another significant emotional event at the Conclave. I learned the value of teamwork in school through clubs and group projects and sports - football (varsity team 4 years) and individual participation in support of the team through baseball, golf (medallist my senior year), and track. I learned to be genuine with my affection and my attention, being cautious and sensitive in manners of the heart, and a bit bold in exploring life and opportunities to experience its successes and failures. My second quarter in college started off with a real bang. Id been dating a girl since my sophomore year in high school, breaking up with her upon entering college because I was not sure I would be able to maintain monogamy. Well, after the first quarter I went back to ask her to marry me only to find out she was already married. My heart sunk and I returned to school determined to give my life to something with meaning. In respect of this, I knelt in prayer and asked to know truth, and was willing to die for it if necessary. It was the

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most intense prayer Id ever made. A week later, while in meditation listening to Journeys first album, I heard a voice after the lyrics of the song. It said, Bruce, are you willing to die for what you believe in? I paused for a moment, checking my beliefs, and replied, Yes. Immediately I felt a tugging on my inner being. I let go and turned to see my body as I was moving away from it. O.B.Es were not unfamiliar, as Id been having them for some time. When I turned back to look where I was going, I was engulfed by white light. It was only missing tactile sensations, and as an impetuous teen, I asked if there was more. I felt another sensation of movement and found myself in the center of a sphere of pinpoints of light. After recognizing them as points of consciousness, whether in body or not I was not sure as I sure as heck was not, the voice resumed. These are those that you are to work with in order to facilitate the new world order. trust and allow. I returned to my body with a rush of energy followed by a gasp for air, leaving my eyes closed temporarily. Returning to my body was in itself a significant emotional event, let alone the previous few moments. I felt my question was answered and I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, told my parents, and found myself talking with a psychologist a week later. A blessing in disguise, my tenure with the psychologist helped me to begin to balance my inner and outer experiences, and to find order in my life. His advice was to keep my mouth shut because few would understand, especially my adoptive parents. After a brief conversation on my third visit, we adjourned to the second story of his office, located in an historic home. This resulted in my first tarot card reading, which edified all we had discussed and more. So, I learned that there was much more beyond my understanding of truth and it seemed to be leaning toward being everywhere I looked.

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How was this facilitation all going to come to fruition? As professional opportunities presented themselves, I began to conceptualize an environment that would demonstrate leading edge technologies in all fields and how they would work together in harmony with people and planet. It had to include every best practice and element of a global community on a micro community scale. Eventually, the plan began to develop with enough detail that I could at least write an overview of the project, now known as Genesis. In my later years (1991) during a brief conference with Carl Bimson, a founder of Valley National Bank, after discussing the project plan for Genesis, the importance of trusting psychospiritual technologies was edified. After acknowledging the validity of the project, he spent the next hour talking about the psychic gifts that his wife had used to help him in his business career. Carl and his two brothers were responsible for bringing nearly 70% of the business to the Phoenix area through the Valley National Bank, which they had founded. Carl was 91 at the time and still had an office in the VNB building downtown. He died a few years later. I began my MBA in 1994 to begin the process of finding the pieces and knowing what to do with them when I did. Now, in my second masters program, I seek to continue the plan and assemble an organizational plan, including all necessary policy development, organizational duties and responsibilities, and management philosophy that will empower the assemblage of a team of dedicated professionals to take Genesis to the next level of development. Meanwhile, we continue to develop Be The Dream (www.bethedream.org, .com, and .net), our bridge of nonprofit and for profit endeavors, as an exemplary leader on the Internet through demonstrating the concepts of the community in a microeconomic environment. We have done much development work and are beginning to seek out potential

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backers and investors for the project. My personal ethics statement applies to the intrinsic dynamic of these projects, empowering results in my quest for success. Actualizing these endeavors is proving to be quite the challenge, necessitating reflection on my personal code of ethics regularly.