y views on ethics start with myself. My learning about ethics really began when I started my spiritual journey as a Ba'hai about twenty-five years ago. Up to that time, my only experience of organized religion was going to church, where someone interpreted scripture for me and told me what I should be doing. What fascinated me about the Ba'hai faith was that there was no clergy. This meant that everybody was responsible for learning the spiritual teachings of the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Koran, and interpreting them for themselves. So you're called to a high standard of ethics in being a Ba'hai. Actually, this is true of being a Christian or Muslim or anything else. It calls you to a different way of acting. You can't rely on going in to church and absolving yourself of sins and then just going about business as usual. 

Ba'hai opened my eyes to the notion that I have a responsibility to myself first and foremost, to struggle with what is ethical for myself: What do I feel good about doing? What do I not feel good about doing? If I can't pass this onto a higher authority, it becomes much more important in my own thinking. 

Shortly after becoming a Ba'hai, I went into therapy to better myself, to look at the kinds of relationships I was developing, and to get a sense of direction in life. I found this very helpful, and decided that I wanted to use my time and effort helping people in some way. 

I had always worked as a secretary; it was a good way to support myself, but I didn't feel that it was ultimately fulfilling. So I went back to school and started college in my early twenties; I floated around, taking different classes at a junior college for years. I was having a great time exploring ideas and looking at the world through the lenses of different disciplines. Eventually I decided to transfer to a four-year institution. 

I took some fascinating psychobiology classes at UC Irvine (which is primarily a pre-med school), some criminal justice and law enforcement, and ultimately ended up getting into a social ecology major. This major allowed me to maintain the broadest possible field of exploration and included required units in psychology, criminal justice and environmental sciences. It offered a multifaceted approach to social-problem solving, which fascinated and excited me at the time-the idea that people who control the quality of the water have some impact on social problems in a city, and that that is somehow connected with what a school psychologist does. 

Eventually I was forced to narrow my scope, and I got my masters in social work. Just before this, I married my long-time friend of nine years. We proceeded to work in separate states; he worked in Colorado while I worked on my masters in northern California. Then we settled here on the Mendocino coast. 

 
In our society people have wanted freedom, without responsibility and accountability. I think that's how corporations came into such power. Accountability and ethics are interconnected. I'm very much disturbed by the notion that corporations are imbued with a life of their own and that, legally speaking, no one person is accountable. Individuals can tend to hide behind a corporate set of principles. I first noticed this when the director of a non-profit agency I worked for kept introducing new policies and procedures for the staff, and when these were contested he would refer to a vague body called "the board of directors." None of the staff had ever met the board, and there was certainly no dialogue with them. He could conveniently refer to this body in order to deflect direct confrontation or recognition of differences between staff and management. When I began to speak up about this problem, I immediately became the pariah in the agency. Ultimately I was politely ousted. This educational experience helped me determine that I would not abdicate my core values for an organization. I see more and more people arriving at this conclusion. 

 
Until the spirit is awakened, I think people's core values may change a little bit over time-but not a lot. In other words, if you grow up valuing charity and compassion, then you strive to demonstrate those qualities wherever you go. You will be more drawn to a type of work that enables you to express these values. If you value creativity, then you probably don't appreciate or enjoy things that stifle creativity. If you value honesty, you probably don't do very well working for somebody who likes to cloud things over and manipulate others. On the other hand, if you're highly competitive, and if winning is a primary value, you yourself could manipulate others in the name of winning. Spending the majority of one's work in the expression of core values leads to a degree of satisfaction and happiness that wouldn't otherwise be available to us. 

Values clarification could be one of the most valuable courses taught in high school, or even in junior high school-getting kids to be more conscious and clear about their values. It doesn't require preaching, just giving them the opportunity to sit down and consider these things. This is generally off-limits, as it may be considered moving into the arena of religion. It can be difficult to talk about ethics without going into areas such as one's spiritual beliefs or one's spiritual path. Spiritual truths don't change. They don't change at all. It's really just the messenger that changes. 

People who contact me for consulting are following their own values and ethics about running a healthy agency or having a committed work force. Certain corporations will invest time and energy to train their staff in communication and conflict resolution. They may have an employee assistance program, provide childcare on-site, or give family leave to employees with a newborn infant. When I went around the county training supervisors and department heads about the employee assistance program, we talked about why we have this program. We developed it because we came to realize that, after training and employing a person over a number of years, if that person's performance plummets for some reason, it is expensive to replace them. The cost, energy and time in firing and then having to advertise, recruit, replace and train a new person as a civil servant is incredibly high. This is stressful for the whole organization. 
On the other hand, giving somebody an option-the leeway to admit that they have a problem and then offering them resources to boot- ultimately saves money, energy and time. In other words you don't shame them. You say instead, "Look, this is what I've noticed about your work lately; you may have a problem. You don't have to talk to me about it, but there are resources for you. It will be paid for if you decide to get help." If that employee uses the help, when they come back to work, you've got an incredibly loyal employee, who wants to do their best for the agency. 

I have seen numerous people utilize the employee assistance program due to problems at home-the death of a spouse, loved one or child, a drinking problem, or some other problem. Sometimes they've had to take time off work. The employee assistance program has generated a sense of loyalty and gratitude in those who used it and went back to work afterwards. This is mostly without exception. There were a few cases where people were in a power struggle with a supervisor, where no amount of employee assistance could do the trick. They could go in for mediation and conflict resolution but it just wouldn't make any difference. This is the rare exception. 

When we define and strengthen the tie between employees' core values and their reasons for working, then work is no longer just about money. We are seeing this shift in our world now, at least in the U.S. It may not be possible in countries where people are struggling just to survive. But in our culture, in our society, I think that more people are starting to look around and wonder about the quality of their work- whether it really enhances their lives or whether it's just a way to make a buck. Of course, you could take any job and do the work in the spirit of service or worship. It's a rare person who can do an assembly-line job, for instance, and really want to be the best possible crimper they can be, to take a little metal device, crimp a grommet and decide to elevate their work to the level of worship. But it's possible for a very enlightened human being. 

 
Through my own therapy I began to shift from the role of victim to a proactive stance in terms of improving the quality of my own life. I could not grow and change and continue to be someone that others acted upon. I had to take a stance and become proactive on my own behalf and on behalf of other people. 

There is a lot of good information now about child development, not just in our society but in other cultures and parts of the world. There are some basic things about human beings, like those spiritual laws we were talking about, that don't seem to change. Depending upon their environment and the relative health of the people who caretake them-parents, family members, community-a child grows up and displays certain behaviors. A sense of self emerges. It became clear to me, shortly after I started graduate work and began working with kids, that those who were raised in abusive families were very adaptive. They tended to look outside themselves for references about what they should or shouldn't be doing, whereas kids who were relatively healthy tended to have their own internal sense of what they should or shouldn't be doing. 
In working with couples, this notion of human development and the process of "growing oneself up" is very key. We never stop growing. In couples counseling I tell people, "Look, you went out into the world, and of all the possible people you could have paired up with, you chose this individual. You chose each other for a reason. It has more to do with what your subconscious was able to tap into than how this person looks or dresses or how much money they make. That may be a part of it, but on some level your psyche knew that this person-out of all the other possible people who were around you at a given time-was going to help you create precisely those situations in life that would further your personal growth. So if you're having problems, you're right where you should be." That's what relationships do-they help us grow, if we pay attention. 

If we begin to hold ourselves accountable-if we're not immature and demand that the other person change, but instead, if we look at what we need to learn in order to react differently in a given situation-then the relationship will help us grow and change. Relationships offer a wonderful opportunity for growth. When people do individual or couple counseling, eventually a shift occurs in other life arenas as well. They begin to parent their children differently. They begin to relate differently with people at work. A shift occurs in their work environment; sometimes they end up leaving where they work to find a new job; sometimes they change careers. 
 
 
This whole notion of growing and maturing suggests to me a willingness to hold oneself accountable and set standards for oneself. A painful situation arises when you realize that you haven't met your own standard. That is something that only a very mature person can stomach. It's not the shaming that happens when somebody else tells you you're bad, you're wrong, you shouldn't do that. That's not what I'm referring to; I'm referring to the state of awareness that occurs when you realize that you've just done something very selfish. Even if nobody else knows about it, you know about it and you know that it violates your own personal standard of behavior for yourself. That is mature thinking. 

My strength is in helping people to find their own sense of who they are, what their core values are, and then to look at how these mesh with those of the larger organization. The larger organization may be family, corporation, or one's immediate community. Communities can be anything from people of like mind who are engaged in like kinds of work to people from diverse backgrounds who are engaged in different kinds of work. But helping people find their personal value system in a larger context of work or community is an exciting part of what I do. 

I can't say exactly when it's time to abandon an organization or a community in favor of a new setting and when it's in everyone's best interest to stay and confront the issues and try to elevate standards. I'm troubled when people have revelations in which they suddenly become clear about their core values and immediately want to push away from anything that doesn't resemble these. To me there has to be some healthy tension. Imagine a rubber band perpendicular to the horizon-the top being the higher standard and the bottom being where we're currently operating. To keep setting higher standards, you have to keep those core values present and up front. But some people don't like the tension, and they want to immediately abandon everyone, everything and every place that doesn't support them. 

I tend to want to say, "Well wait a minute, you need to practice. You say that you value honesty-well, then, be honest." They say, "Well, I can't, because nobody else at my work is honest." And I reply, "Well, fine, so you work with a bunch of people who are not as straightforward as you are, or they're not as honest as you are. That's fine. You need to practice; your job right now is to practice marching to your own music. And yes, at some point it may become clear that it's time to move on." 

Sometimes people feel that to continue to stay in an environment that goes against the grain of their core values is detrimental. They have such extreme levels of anxiety and angst that they need to abandon that environment in favor of something that's a better fit. Often people decide that they aren't going to compromise their core values; they go into an organization and raise the standards for everyone in that organization. These people have to be able to live in accordance with their own standards while not judging others. Generally speaking, it's their actions and not what they say that creates the shake-up. And that has happened more often than I would have expected. 

 
I do believe that coupling has its stages of development, just as childhood development goes through different stages. I say to people, "You know those things that endeared your partner to you when you first met, when your heart went pitter-patter, and you couldn't wait to see them the next day, and all that stuff? Those are the very same traits that later on in a relationship will drive you nuts." People will nod knowingly, and a there's s sense of relief. And then, when I suggest to them that if they want to go deeper, these are the very things they can use to enhance their own personal growth and development, sometimes they are relieved. "Oh, you mean I can just work on myself-I don't have to change my partner?" Because they know they really can't force another person to grow and change. They're relieved I'm not asking them to do that. 

Other people are disillusioned to realize they can't require another person to change. They say, "But wait a minute, I want that perfect, unconditional love that I married this person for." But being in relationship is really about looking at your own stuff as it is reflected back to you. Dealing with the disillusionment that arises is part of growing up. In so many words, I have to say, "You could stay here, demanding that your partner change so that you can be comfortable-or you could grow up and become more powerful yourself. Also, you'd have more responsibility as a grown-up." When people take on the challenge to use the relationship to grow, I've seen passion renewed; I've seen relationships deepen in very meaningful ways. And of course I continue to practice what I preach, because I think we tend to teach what we need to learn. I feel very lucky to have found a partner that I am continually growing with. 

It's becoming more popular to view people holistically. Yet for many there's still quite a split between spiritual practices and purely psychological processes. I used to be uncomfortable blending the two, asking people what their beliefs are, and what their practices are. Now I'm very comfortable with this. It's common for me to ask people at some point whether they have a spiritual practice: "What do you do? Do you meditate? Do you pray?" I accept this as a part of what I'm going to be looking at. It feels like a healthy shift to acknowledge the whole person. 
 

Lorelei is an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) in private practice in Ukiah, Boonville and Point Arena. She recently left Mendocino County employment after eight years as clinical supervisor for AODP (Alcohol & Other Drug Programs), and as the county EAP coordinator (Employee Assistance Program). She has worked at County Mental Health, and in residential treatment with severely emotionally disturbed children. Drawing on her varied background, she currently does private consulting work setting up employee assistance programs for businesses and corporations, and conducts business leadership trainings and retreats that foster team building, communication, trust and conflict resolution.