The Honour Code- short version
Always speak your truth.
You are loved. You are valued. You are worthy.
The concepts and narratives that we hold shape our emotional reality. Create your own concepts. Write your own narrative. Live to your own code. Set yourself free.
In the tight corners and dark places of your own heart, always back yourself.
Make the time and space to create every day.
Your art is for you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it.
The true purpose of education is to learn how to think yourself free.
Listen to your own advice. Take your own medicine. Feel your own love.
Love is a three-way channel. Keep these channels open, flowing and in balance.
Love with a full and open heart. This means opening yourself up to vulnerability and risk. It also means accepting the pain and loss of letting go.
Love is the twin energies of creation and destruction. The very pulse of the Universe. Embracing and accepting both the dark and the light of the human experience, allows you to flow, change and evolve, as everything in the Universe must and does.
Home is being with the people that you love.
Love is something that you create anew every day.
Be with someone who you like and accept for who they truly are, not for who you think they are or who you want them to be.
A true and lasting love accepts you as you grow and change over your life, becoming multiple different selves.
Treat others as you would like to be treated. You are no better or worse than anyone.
Your identity is only a collection of narratives that you have told yourself, or that you have taken on board that others have told about you. It is not a cast iron prison. It is a river. You can never step into the same river twice. In the same way, you can never be exactly the same person twice.
Listen the way you would like to be listened to. Forgive the way that you would like to be forgiven.
Do something that makes you feel ridiculous at least once a week.
Your body is an ecosystem. Try and keep it in balance.
Find ways to exercise that give you joy.
Learn to listen to your body and fall into its rhythm.
Practice gratitude every day.
Never stop learning.
Uncertainty isn’t the barrier, it’s the path. Learn to step into the things that frighten you. This is how we grow, and how we learn who we truly are.
Not caring what other people think about you is a secret superpower.
What you are is energy and consciousness. The most precious resources you have in every day are focus and energy. How you allocate them each day will dictate the course of your life.
Give yourself the same love, attention and intention that you give to your friends.
Worry is not love, it’s fear. You can choose to love from a place of faith, acceptance and trust instead.
Practice radiating faith, acceptance and trust out into the world to accompany your compassion. While compassionate and just action is important, so is accepting the mystery and the things that are outside of your influence.
Anger is your emotional immune system. It signals that something that you value is on the line. Transform your anger into positive action to protect or stand up for what you value, or let it go.
There is no one objective truth, only many subjective truths. Surrender your need to be right.
Listening with your full presence is magnetic. We are drawn to the people who truly listen to us, it makes us open up and unfurl into the person we truly are. Practice listening with your full being, particularly with those you love.
Control and perfection are both illusions that we chase endlessly as if they are real. Give up the chase and see the beauty of what is.
Progress is better than perfection.
To be humble is to have a sense of self worth while acknowledging your flaws and being able to laugh at them.
Pride and ego need and love an audience. Self worth is just for yourself.
Everything that is allowed to grow freely is beautiful and exactly as it needs to be. There is no need for shame.
Healthy habits and structure are the keys to freedom.
Brilliance is not created under pressure. It is created through hard work and the persistence to turn up every single day.
Once basic needs are met the two true purposes of money are security and freedom. Learn to find the balance between them, rather than enslaving yourself to chasing money for the sake of itself.
When you have enough money to meet your basic needs and earn yourself a fair amount of security and freedom, pleasure must be weighed against justice.
Learn to recognise, articulate and meet your own desires and needs. This is the source of your personal power.
Be prepared to walk away if your feelings and emotional boundaries are not met with respect.
Free yourself from yours and other’s expectations of selflessness. It’s a myth that only breeds bitterness.
To have healthy emotional boundaries means to give up on being responsible for everyone else's emotional state, and to give up relying on others for yours.
If your guilt arises from a violation of your values, convert it into a positive action that is in line with your conscience. If it doesn’t, let it go.
Real love is not borne out of responsibility or duty or because you identify taking care of people as your role, or martyrdom or suffering. It is a gift that is free to be given.
Learn to receive and accept love from a place of freedom. You are worthy.
Sadness is natural and passes like a season. Don’t block it out, suppress it, deny it or avoid it. Let it wash over you and pull you into yourself. Let it cleanse you of all illusion or pretense. It will leave eventually, creating space for whatever comes next.
Strong boundaries are the key to a compassionate life. Learn to set your own table first. You can’t feed others if you are starving.
5% of any creative endeavour is a great idea. 95% is the hard work, tenacity and discipline to follow through and make it a reality.
Anxiety comes from the amount that you care about people and the outcome of what you do. Channel it to help you create your most ethical and best work, but don’t let it shut you down or control you.
Couldashouldawoulda is a nonsensical waste of time. There is only what you have done and what you will do now.
Try to always live in accordance with your own honour and values. It is the only way to truly be free.
Who you are is not defined by your social status, or your privilege, or what you look like, or what you wear. It is defined by your actions, and by what it is that you put out into the world and what it is that comes back to you.
We are all interconnected and interdependent in this world. True independence is a fantasy and a conceit. Dependency is a disease.
The thing to remember about married life is never suppress your emotions or go to bed angry. Communicate your feelings clearly and openly and try not to leave things unresolved and unsaid. Try where possible to find a just compromise.
As long as there is a new day to be lived, redemption is always possible.
There is sacrifice in every choice, we all have our struggle and no one gets to have it all. Make the sacrifices that have been made for your choices worth it.
Sex has an intellectual, spiritual, emotional as well as a physical dimension, as all of us do. Sex in its greatest form is the whole of you crashing into the whole of someone else.
99% of what we know of this life we take on faith. We cannot prove it directly ourselves. Faith is the most important force that we have. Question deeply and be very intentional and thoughtful about where you place your faith. It forms your present reality and shapes your future.
You will never see this world clearly and experience it directly if you are wrapped up in all the things you think that it should be.
Resentment gets its power from a false perception of your own voicelessness and powerlessness. You are neither. Voice your truth bravely, do what is in your power to do and accept what is not.
An apology is a sacred rite needed for transformation, forgiveness and atonement. It is a transference of energy. A new path. An apology is never to be given or dismissed lightly.
Forgiveness and redeeming trust are different processes. You can forgive someone, let go of your hurt and anger, and still not feel ready to trust them. To rebuild trust requires for people to be able to acknowledge the problem, take responsibility for it and be taking actions to address it. If this can’t happen it’s time to move on.
An idea is a call to adventure. If you answer the call and go test it out in the world be humble and prepared to change it 100 times before it becomes its final shape. In that way it doesn’t really matter what the initial idea is, the point is whether you are prepared to follow where it will lead you.
Find that place where what you love to do, want to do, are good at and where what others want and need you to do intersect. There you will find your purpose.
Kindness and charity are not the same. Kindness is creating circular paths of reciprocity rather than one way giving. Kindness sees and honours the sovereignty of another person and stands in solidarity with them to achieve their goals and meet their own needs. You cannot change the world or solve its problems, but you can meet everyone in a way that respects their dignity. That is small but powerful.
There is no need to be caught up in a capitalist cultural narrative of lack- of never having enough time, money, security, opportunity. Of never being good enough. Of never being enough. It oppresses us with anxiety, drives us to chase things that we don’t even want and keeps us from following and choosing what we do want. The Universe is infinite. Love is infinite.
Respect isn’t embodied. It’s enacted. Choose to let people into your heart who show you their respect through their actions.
Never chase or try to force love or respect from anyone. Hold these things within yourself and what is right and meant for you will flow back to you.
To stand in your own love and truth is to reach a place where love becomes infinite and is not depleting. It is not defined by lack or scarcity, by never having enough, by never being enough.
You can never change anyone. Respect everyone as the sovereign of their own path.
The less shame you feel to be who you are the more joy that you feel.
Part of the creative process is that often other people won’t be able to see or understand it until it arrives.
Emotional pain always has something to teach you, but you must give it your full hospitality.
Attachment and love are different things. Attachment keeps you bound to chasing, re-enacting and triggering the same pain and trauma, getting hooked into the same old loops in a misplaced effort to finally heal. Love sets you free.