Goodness is often seen/understood based on outcomes.
“Did an action lead to a favorable outcome? If yes, that’s a good action.”
Now, reframe Goodness based on the experience of the doer of the action.
“Did your action feel life-affirming, enriching, respectful, heart-captivating and loving while you were in the action? If so, that’s good”
I feel that actions that felt life-affirming, enriching, respectful, heart-captivating and loving while being done, will inevitably have positive, nourishing, pleasant, loving outcomes.
I feel that it is possible to move from considering goodness from a deterministic perspective – as something based on the judgement of outcomes – to a relational perspective – as something that’s performed with a respectful, loving intention from the heart.
To move from the learned habit of isolating/separating ourselves from the process, inhabiting a ‘neutral observer role’ and applying deterministic, non-relational, non-dynamic, static, absolute truth-seeking and meaning-giving to everything about the human experience of life.
Not about a flavorless, sterile non-attachment. But a non-attachment to outcomes because all the joy is already felt in the doing/being of the action.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
– Rumi
