Guiding Principle/Governing Principle.

You would walk unprotected through a pile of refuse, would you?  Do you expect or not care if a nail punctures your foot?

By that same token, at some point we become circumspect of touching pots and pans on the stove, lest they be hot, and cause a burn injury to our hands.

Even the child learns the lesson of the hot cook pan early on its life.

Yet as important as our hands, is the “guiding principle”, or our set of values and beliefs, part of our decision making process that guides our hands.

Why, our hands are just tools, but our minds house so much more.  A tool can be good, bad and can be used well, or used badly.  But our minds?

Epictetus in the Enchiridion suggests we guard our decision-making principles as well as we watch out for either a nail in the foot, or a burn to the hand.

Think of today’s opportunities to make bad decisions.  

Health.  

Love.  

Diet.  

Finances.  

Careers.  

So much and so easy to go wrong in today’s world, without a solid base of decision making: 

the mind, the “governing principle”.

Just today I was enticed into the possibility of a bad decision, to be used badly by another person, and supposedly for our own “mutual” amusement.

So often, we make compromises and give away different sorts of pieces of our countenance, we ingratiate ourselves, or almost beg for attention, where none is actually warranted, be it done for a moment of amusement, or because of a stray feeling.

And then that feeling is gone.

Afterward, are your internal governing principles, your code of conduct for your own life–is it intact?

Or have you been robbed of something yet more valuable than a stray glance or a secret moment?  Have you given too much for too little, and in a moment of enticement, such as the old saying, “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips”.

We bear the consequences of those moments, as per Karma, the eternal balance of life acts for a given person, that each thing we do has a set of reactions, like a purchase having a cost.  We inevitably pay for all those things that we bring home, and only the most dear really seem to be worth it, and yet, in the karmic balance:

The things we love best always seem to cost so little.