Let me talk about mean acts. This isn’t a technical term but it is a phenomenon well-known to us all: behaving badly, with or without justification or excuse, which hurts others, causes damage or compromises integrity.

Truth is, it’s not so much the hurting others angle that bothers us, apparently, so much as the being ashamed of admitting what we did. The reluctance to tell, the embarrassment, the guilt or the shame is what singles out these acts. These are the moments of low self-esteem and marked discomfort.

Consider for a moment the definition of mean. I scooped these particular definitions together from several online dictionaries:

Mean: Adj. unkind, spiteful, or unfair. synonyms: unkind, nasty, unpleasant, spiteful, malicious, unfair, cruel, shabby, foul, despicable, contemptible, obnoxious, vile, odious, loathsome, base, low.

Yikes, that’s pretty unpleasant stuff! Trouble is we know, despite trying to kid ourselves, that these acts could be all of those things.

But now look at a related word (not a derivative though):

Demean (like de-mean): Verb. to lower (oneself) in dignity, status, or character; to humble; debase, discredit, devalue, degrade, mortify, cause a severe loss in the dignity of and respect for (someone or something).

Buried in the juxtaposed definitions is an important truth: if we commit mean acts, we de-mean ourselves. You need to know this. It’s a crucial truth.

Sure, we may hurt others—not always, it’s true. But we always hurt ourselves. We sell ourselves short, we create ignominy, mortification, loss of dignity… pick any phrase you like from the list above.

There is a lot of moral emphasis on doing the right thing. There are rules and codes galore, to keep us in line, to censure and condemn us if we “sin” or transgress.

But it seems we are quick to condemn ourselves. We know we did wrong and so we create that unpleasant feeling of shame within. It makes us reluctant to talk about it.

For the same reason, we hold back our powers; we withdraw; we internalize in what amounts to a retreat from engagement with others. This pull-back leads to a significant loss of ability.

Guilty secrets and withheld mean acts are a kind of offence against the self, as well as against others. This is the original meaning of the word sin, by the way. It comes from the Hebrew word meaning to miss.

It doesn’t mean to commit something wrong; it simply means to miss, to be absent—not on the job as a spiritual being!

The root word means forgetfulness; it has nothing to do with what you are doing. The whole thing is whether you are living consciously or just working on automaticities.

We see the missing angle in a number of English words: misconduct, misfortune, mislead.

The opposite trait, or virtue, is thereby you are doing something you are fully alert to—what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering, what Buddha calls being rightly mindful, what Krishnamurti calls awareness, what Kabir has called surati. To be there! — that’s all that is needed, nothing more.

So here is the ultimate Supernoetics® teaching of right and wrong, good or bad: be there! You are supposed to be an impossibly powerful, almost infinitely wise, non-material being. Well, act that way! Fulfill your role…

It’s actually impossible to misbehave, do harm and commit mean acts, if you are present as a theta being. You can’t do wrong!

Note, you will never read this from current gurus and self-growth “leaders”: they are a sorry, uninformed, essentially dishonest group of performing monkeys! Supernoetics® is where you learn the real stuff about consciousness, mind and behavior!

[this posting taken from a longer Supernoetics® Ex-Press: Clean Hands vs. Mean Acts]