Siri mostly

"All creatures love life. All creatures fear death. Therefore do not kill, or cause to kill."

Kill --> violence --> emotional violence, a.k.a. hatred --> trying to erase ill will from my heart and replace it with compassion and loving kindness for all beings.

"As farmers direct water to their fields, as arrow makers make their arrows straight, so the wise shape their minds."

There's a lot...

The Tao te ching.

The love of learning and the laughing and exploring that it has caused me to do.

Deep down I am quite primitive, I accept that we are just animals/life forms and our role is to project our dna into the future. I woudl like to think teher is a future for it to be projecetd into. I try and assist my kids as much as possible and I like to enhance all life around me. Beyond that, do no harm.

The GPS feature on my phone.

Moral, decency and, above all, common sense.

I am guided by the sum total of my knowledge, experience, reason, and instincts. Needless to say my compass has become more accurate over the years...

Probably mostly my animal instincts, but I wrote an entire religion for myself, just to help keep things focused.

Drives me nuts ..all ready to respond, ‘the Sun’ … to find it’s a far more complex question

OK… I’ve never written guidelines down, it always feels easy to determine how to respond in a situation. I can attribute various influential people in my life for helping develop my morals, but everything’s become a gut response or action and very rarely indecision.

I'm lucky, as my guides were set down a couple of hundred years ago. As a Quaker atheist, I follow the SPICE guidelines that all Quakers know: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality.

Let me also write this well-known Quaker phrase and explain it after: "Walk cheerfully over the whole earth, acknowledging that of God in everyone." I was a Quaker before I became an atheist, but after, found no problem with giving this explanation to anyone who didn't know what Quakerism is. In my mind, I would like to be able to acknowledge that QUALITY of god in everyone, those qualities that the "perfect god" would be if there ever was one. Seeing people this way allows me to ignore their religion and beliefs, and recognize those things (yep, sometimes I admit to seeing only one thing) that are good in them.

There's an interesting true story of a British woman who was sent to France in WWII as a spy because she grew up in France and was fluent in the culture. Eventually, she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured and questioned. She never gave up any Resistance fighters' names, despite the horrible treatment, and at one point, the commander, frustrated with her quiet determination and composure, jammed a gun to her head and screamed that this was her last moment. She looked deeply into his eyes and said, I see that of God, even in you. Shaken, he suddenly dropped his weapon and left abruptly. She was released a few days later. Wish I had that strength!

Waze.

Kudos for systematically figuring out your values and having a list to evaluate each action by. I haven't actually formally written them down like this. There's some argument I guess that if they are sufficiently internalized and incorporated into your thought processes, it won't be strictly necessary, but everyone has different ways of doing that.

To your list I'd add integrity and loyalty.

None of these values can or should be adhered to unless you have a clear personal definition though.

For example, loyalty cannot be stolidly defending the indefensible or supporting the unsupportable, out of some blind obligation based on accidents of relation. For example parents don't deserve unconsidered, irrevocable loyalty simply because someone is their child. They desrerve, I think, a default loyalty but can un-earn it through harmful or irresponsible discharge of their duties as parents -- through being harmful or neglectful. Also, loyalty in such edge cases can consist of having compassion and empathy even while having and enforcing healthy interpersonal boundaries. I know someone who was terribly both neglected and abused emotionally and mentally by their parents, yet has not disowned them or demonized them for it, even while distancing themselves from day to day interactions that inevitably turn toxic and disrespectful. That, too, is loyalty. Anyone but a parent would probably simply be shut out of their life and forgotten.

I think that gratitude also has to be carefully defined as it is so barnacled with religious ideation. Gratitude is by definition expressed to some other being, and in most majority-Abrahamic countries we are conditioned to some imagined deity demanding most of that gratitude for itself when it should be going to the REAL actors to our benefit -- family, friends, teachers, physicians, various elements of society. Also, you can't have gratitude for situations and circumstances because they have no agency and are indifferent to praise or condemnation. What people tend to call gratitude there is actually appreciation and humility. Appreciation for the benefits of your socioeconomic situation, and enough humility to acknowledge the role of dumb luck in your life, such that whatever success you have isn't 100% down to your own brilliance.

Humility is something I was born with. I am at AWE looking at a night sky and see these twinkling lights, we call stars. I feel insignificiant. Spring, the awakening of Life. Kindness and Friendly are companions, I am not even aware of. Gratitute is a personal trade. I show instant delight in any gift I receive, may it be an invitation to lunch or dinner, may it be a flower, a compliment, yet my greatest appreciation I feel every morning when I get up in the early morning hours and see the sky, the light of the sun and know that I am still alive. A Gift, so very precious. . All lives matter to me, the smallest creature is a child of Mother Nature. I do not kill. Loving towards those whom I trust and open in my expressions of thoughts and feelings. I know no hypocricy .. that is in belief of qualities I do not have or do not approve of. When I wass younger I was oftn afraid of hurting the feelings of someone if I did not agree with them, even though every fiber of me was against their belief. No more. I am true to myself .. will express my feelings to others in a tactful way even if it is in opposition. I am judgemental in some cases. Not always positive as we are surrounded with so much negativeness Forgiveness I learned and found it liberating me of ballast I carried, but there are thigs that happened to me I can't forgive nor forget. My Guiding Lights? Always hope that things will get better .. that there is no doomsday, that hate will turn into acceptance and love.

We all have values, that influence the way we act, but we don't always follow these guides, many times we act against our own values. We are confronted with multiple possibilities all the time, and many times we are conflicted as to which choice to make. Do I follow values that are normatively given or do I let my desire rule my choice, do I act against myself.

I guess if there is a 'guide', it is learning from one's mistakes, which is still no guarantee that desire will not overturn what was learned in the past... life is too complicated to fit into a fortune cookie.

I don't have a chosen path and don't have a guide I just play it as it comes I don't feel the need of any explanation or a list of things. I think I am probably just playful and have emotions that come and go and ideas I'd like to try out - I am not a planner by any means just meet what comes to me . Yesterday my neighbours garden was a mess and I tidied it up for her as it needed doing. Someoen needed me to be kind to them and it was no big deal so I was - I think my life is simple enough for me to just live it.

I like yours - they are good ones to keep a person balanced and likable in the world.

Many years ago I came up with 12 values I hoped to teach my kids to refelct in their choices and actions, sort of as our "family values" I guess. I don't really think about them anymore, hopefully they just come naturally to me and to my kids. I suppose if I got introspective again, I might come up with different ones, or expand them. I was trying to keep them to 12 for a special reason.

Here are my 12 “Points of Light”

Honor
Respect
Commitment
Honesty
Consciousness
Equality
Courage
Responsibility
Compassion
Integrity
Conscience
Vision

My motto (taken from Abaram Hicks teachings) is to "Follow your bliss!"
If you're not happy, it's not worth it.
Ever.

All I know is that if I had to carry all those words with me all the time, I'd never get any work done. (-:

I learned how to live from watching my parents, peers, teachers and strangers, and from reading.

I like what you have said. We have some parallel philosophies.

Greg Laden summed it up as "Don't be a chimp".
Trying to do as little harm as possible.
Remembering that I've got it better than more than 99% of the world (only 10% of Australians fall outside the 1%)
Being aware of the power I do have and trying not to be careless with it.

Moral, decency and, above all, common sense.

I guess kindness is guiding me.

My pocket and logic. The is nothing complicated about this. James

I really don't have to think about it... ????