Staring Down (Acoustic Version)

Earlier this month, Abe proposed that the September Blog Topic be "Masturbation."

My philosophy is the same for this topic as it is for all issues:

Be wary of anyone who would tell you what God expects of you. The only person who can truly know what God expects of you is you.

Be a person of integrity and sincerity, and you'll be able to trust yourself to be guided by your own conscience.

Those who tell you that you cannot fully trust yourself are those who don't fully trust you, themselves. I would hope that you would, therefore, wonder if this is the kind of support you should be seeking.

If I held their attitude as a dance instructor, none of my students would ever be able to dance freely, would be bound by the routines I derive for them. Truly, the only reason why I would ever want to do this would be for selfish (i.e. retaining students, making money, remaining in a higher standing than my students) or vain (i.e. I am privy to special knowledge that the students will be unable to discern without my explicit guidance, their personal style will never be as great as my style, they need my protection and guidance) reasons.

My goal as a teacher is to train students who can dance independent of my instruction, develop their own styles... to be guided by their own artistic conscience.

It is my philosophy that integrity trumps obedience. Indeed, seek out integrity and you will find the divine.