The Meta Code

Values are abstract; a Code translates them into concrete behaviour — and the same Code reads at four resolutions, from one word to a thousand rules.

The problem it solves is old and practical. A body can agree entirely on its Values and still disagree completely about what to do on Thursday, because a value names a direction and not an act. So humanity has found it necessary — at least at first — to translate shared values into an explicit code of behaviour: how the values actually show up in a way of being and a way of doing, said concretely enough that a person can tell whether they did it.

The question the code is written from is the one worth keeping: what would the Spirit that creates, sustains and enlightens life and consciousness be and do? How would it show up in this time and place?

The four resolutions. The same code can be said in one word — Love, or ØNE. In five: Truth, Love, Justice, Stewardship, Wisdom. In a hundred concrete behaviours that are likely to flow from it — do our best to help and not harm · to leave everything and everyone a little better than we found them · to speak truth in love · to make and secure wise commitments · to follow through and close the loop · to measure progress, not perfection · to employ means perfectly consistent with the ends · to never interfere with the free will of another in their own domain. Or in a thousand things one should do and a thousand one should not, in a thousand different situations. Each resolution is the same thing, and none is more true than another — the choice among them is a choice about who is reading and what they need.

It is called the Meta Code to mark the gap between this articulation and the absolute, eternal, ineffable reality it approximates. It is called Provisional for the same reason. Every one of the hundred is phrased as we will do our best to, which is not softness but accuracy about what a code can ask.

Two lines close it, and they are the load-bearing ones. The Way must be applied in Spirit, not in fixed propositions — a code held to the letter becomes the thing it was written to prevent. And: if you do not resonate with this code, develop your own. Any body may write its own from the same fundamental tone, and make it a little better every day. That permission is what makes this a meta-code rather than a law — it hands the instrument over rather than the ruling.

Also called: the LIØNSBERG Meta Code · the Provisional Code · the Behavioral Code Stands on: Values · Love · The Way · Current Best Understanding · Essences, Renderings, And Ineffable Referents Opens onto: Field of Agreements · Our Core Ways · The Three Supreme Agreements · Universal Responsibilities · The Watchwords · Levels of Abstraction · Word Tools · Do Not Concretize the Absolute · Ethics · Law · Spontaneous Wise Right Action · The Ineffable In play: door, then the whole of the walking Sources: LIØNSBERG Core Documents/LIØNSBERG Provisional Documents/Provisional Code.md (draft — the hundred behaviours and §A Return to Simplicity, which states the resolution ladder) · LIØNSBERG Code of Conduct.md (root page; draft — the worked example at whole-body scale) · The LIØNSBERG System of Values (draft) Open: The source is marked a work in progress and has not been reviewed or adopted; the provisional documents are named unapproved drafts. · The hundred overlap substantially with the twenty-seven Universal Responsibilities and with the Code of Conduct's eight commitments; no pass has reconciled the three. · The thousand-rule resolution is named and has never been written, which is probably as it should be.