Principles of Universal Stewardship

The Principles of Universal Stewardship:

1. PRUDENCE: The skill, ability, or wisdom to avoid conflict and choose what is right and what is good or beneficial to humanity. Prudence gives you the skill to practice the golden rule: “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.” Prudence makes peace happen.
   
   • Be cordial. When you approach, communicate, discuss, talk to or listen to an individual you do not like or disagree use good judgment and discipline yourself to use reason vs emotion. Do not be judgmental.
     • Your judgment may dictate that the individual you are conversing or dealing with is totally disagreeable, offensive, vile and revolting yet you need to rise above all that negative emotion and use reason to be gracious, hospitable, warm and friendly.
   • Diplomacy requires prudence. Be attentive and listen more to what others are saying or just simply talking about. Always speak the truth, but avoid excessive deliberations, otherwise folly will be your company. You can’t be diplomatic without being prudent. Being prudent however, does not imply that one has to be submissive to the bully or evil. >>>Read More.
2. RESPECT: Foster and adhere to the RESPECT for one another. Respect is not to be expected. Respect is to be given. Do not expect to earn the respect from the other person before you respect him/her. Simply give respect. It will come to you abundantly. Respect, helps prevent malicious deprivation.
   
   • Children may not know what the word respect means. But they know what it feels like to be respected or be disrespected. They may have not have heard the word yet or made any reference to that word in what they feel, but deep inside they already know what it feels like to be respected. It is instinctive to want to be respected.
   • Children can feel when they are disrespected. They can feel when they are respected. They know when people are nice to them. Words, tone of voice, and actions are felt by children. These feelings are carried forward to adulthood. Parents or guardians must teach children what the word respect means. Teach them the greatest twin virtues of Respect and Kindness. Help a child grow with love, teach him/her discipline and build his/her character with respect and kindness, groom his/her personality with apology and forgiveness. Teach the children to be nice. Surely, prudence will guide his/her decisions later in life.
   • Respect makes a person care for another, it allows one to be open and be willing to have a good conversation, to allow the understanding of one another, which can ultimately lead to LOVE.
   • Respect all the creations in this universe. We are its steward. Utilize all the material things around you but be sustainable, recycle or re-use and never abuse or waste. Always replenish. If you carry respect with you at all times, then that greatest advise, “to love one another” can be achieved.
   • GIVE RESPECT. DO NOT EXPECT RESPECT. “Respect is to be earned, only if lost once given.”
   • Anything done without respect is done either for the money (trade), for a reward, as an obligation, out of pity, out of tolerance, was told to, was forced to, was coerced to, for survival, or for vanity. Do your best to attach the ingredient of respect when you do anything.
   • Never ever make the mistake of identifying tolerance for respect, patience or kindness. Continued tolerance is cowardice. Do not allow those bullies to cheat, insult, or deprive. On the other hand, Tolerate if you must, until you are able to fight back. Fight, not because you hate or you are hated, fight because you are defending and protecting what and who you love and respect. >>>Read More.
3. KINDNESS:
   • Share your prosperity, share your abundance, share your knowledge, share your acquisitions and most of all share the love that is in your heart. Be kind. Kindness allows us to reach out. Kindness is a great way to communicate. Try to be helpful. Try to do a something good for yourself and others. Be compassionate. Try not to tease or insult others. Share your abundance and be generous whenever possible.
   • Prosperity comes with work, you need focus and determination to follow and realize your goals, hopes and dreams. Hope is inherent in all of us. You can beat a person down but if he has a shred of hope in him, he will stand up and fight. Hope can lead a person to prosperity.
   • Prosperity is threefold: Material prosperity, Intellectual prosperity, and spiritual prosperity. The acquisition of material and intellectual prosperity does not guarantee us happiness. Reaching for spiritual prosperity touches happiness, it touches love. For humanity to prosper, we must share, we must be involved.
   • Humans are born selfish! Parents and Adults must teach children to share. As you chip away at your “rock of selfishness”, sharing becomes easier. Conversations and relationships become less & less difficult.
   • Develop what you can but with the attitude of sustainable development for posterity. Harvest the bounty of the world but always let nature return to its living splendor. You are the steward of your body and soul and of this universe. Develop your body, your mind and soul. But never deprive others or this universe in the process of your development.
   • Having the ability to SHARE embedded in our soul: Makes us: generous, kind, helpful, merciful, compassionate, amiable and tender. Be compassionate and try to alleviate the needy, the suffering, the sorrow and misfortune of others. Sharing makes the universe a better place. Learn to share the cheapest and most abundant human positive commodity, the SMILE.
     • A smile is irresistible, compelling, persuasive, contagious, and catching. A simple smile can change the life of an individual to help build a kinder and braver universe to fight evil.
   • Be generous, kind and helpful but never let this be under pressure or coercion from others. Let this come from your heart. Generosity or being helpful must not be a result of an incentive to being rewarded for the “good deed”. It must not come from bribery to be reciprocated. Give with and from the goodness of your heart without expecting reciprocation. Giving as a result of guilt without atonement is simply a way “buying” personal satisfaction.
   • If we have LOVE and RESPECT in our hearts and we are willing to SHARE that love and respect, the good will always triumph over evil.
4. GRATITUDE: Appreciate what you have and never take others for granted. When you give or when you are being compassionate or generous, do not ever expect reciprocation. God knows your good deeds. Be grateful but never expect others to be grateful towards you. Do not expect gratitude from others. It is an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that your generosity is not being reciprocated with gratitude, while you are always grateful for the generosities that you receive.
   • Smile inwardly. This is when you let positive thinking overcome the negative. Disappointment comes to those who EXPECT reciprocation and gratitude, because vanity always expects a compliment or reward. Vanity thrives on praises, applause, and reciprocation.
   • Never fail to say thank you. Learn how to make people feel good. Be grateful now, rather than feel the sorrow or regret that you never took the opportunity to say “THANK YOU”. Apologize for your inconsistencies or failures but do not ever fail to thank the other person for tolerating you or for being patient with you.
   • At meal time quietly pray and give thanks 3 times. First to God, second to the person providing the food, third to the people who grew or produced the food. Always be grateful for your life.
   • If you want to thank God for your health and prosperity; thank him by helping yourself become better, thank him by helping others and sharing your love, knowledge, abundance and prosperity.
5. RESPONSIBLE PROSPERITY: We all want to be happy. We work for happiness. As you prosper through life you must exercise prudence and responsible ways to attain your wealth and prosperity. There is no need to deprive others in order for you to succeed. Negotiation is a two way street. Being responsible means that it is your obligation to make sure that both parties are satisfied. Always keep in mind principle #1.
   • Rewards seldom come immediately but you must stay focused, focus will determine your reality. You will always hear sayings about what money can’t get for you. Undeniably that is true. That is why you need to practice responsible prosperity with charity and compassion in your demeanor.
   • In order to prosper we first need to survive. Survival is our basic instinct. To survive we the creatures of God need the basics of: Sustenance, Shelter, Energy, Unity, Propagation, Security, Exploration, Healthcare, Education, Pleasure, Leadership and Communication. Acquire your basic needs to prosper, but always with responsibility and accountability.
6. APOLOGY: What a great way to calm down an angry person. Apologize for your mistakes. Make your apology and mean it, without any “buts” in your sentence. Do not make excuses. Learn to apologize sincerely. Apologize even to the child that you just took for granted. Apology is a great exercise in humility. It is difficult to apologize when you are vain. An apology shreds vanity.
7. FORGIVENESS: Listen. Quietly listening can work wonders. Listen to the person who wants to be forgiven. Learn to accept an apology without bitterness. Forgiveness opens the path to better and meaningful communication. Learn to forgive yourself. Give yourself a chance to improve and be a better person. Forgiveness is not memory deletion. Memory of the wrong-doing is an important foundation to improvement. Forgiveness does not mean that the offender is not accountable. Forgiveness means that accountability has been satisfied.
8. ACCOUNTABILITY: We will be accountable for all our thoughts, words, and deeds. Don’t be a bully. Teach the children to give respect. Teach them not to cheat, not to insult and not to deprive. When at fault, learn to apologize. An apology can melt a heart of stone. While in this world, there are rules and laws that demand to be followed. Disobedience can lead to severe consequences. Teach them the golden rule:  “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.”
   • Accountability is not simply for our corporeal life. We will also be accountable in the after life. Accountability does not simply apply to the negatives that we have done, it is also for the positive things in our life. Your good thoughts, words and deeds will be rewarded.
   • Anytime you follow, lead or forge the path for the positive, good things will always happen to you. Every time you reach for something (positive or negative), you create a permanent path or bridge back you. Through the generations and in many cultures there are sayings of “you reap what you sow”, “Karma”, “what goes around, comes around”. The path we take here in this universe will be the path to our spiritual state.
   • Every moment through your journey in life, you create paths of “to and from”. The Positive or Negative may travel those same paths that you have created in your life in either way. To hold someone accountable requires prudence whether it is for the accountability of what is good or bad.
   • The law of the universe listens to “apology” and our ability to forgive. Our inability to apologize or forgive will only create the same results for our actions. These are all about accountability.

ENLIGHTENMENT comes when you uphold all 8 principles of Universal Stewardship.

Do not Cheat. Do not Insult. Love but never maliciously deprive, share and be balanced and you will be ENLIGHTENED.

• • The greatest force that keeps us in darkness is cheating or deception. We lie. Then we begin to believe in our own lies. The first step to enlightenment is to stop lying to ourselves. By accepting our past, we accept the truth. Learn from the past(truth), this will allow us to know ourselves and bring us closer to enlightenment.

Jesus Christ, the true founder of the principles of Universal Stewardship is quoted as saying: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Many founders of religions misinterpreted this and thought that Christ meant to say that he is God.  Jesus Christ was indeed saying that if humanity follows the teaching of Universal Stewardship, then they will find the path to God. He never intended to have his followers to create religions, because religions create bias, prejudice and separatism. Religions teach unity only within their organization and simply tolerate the others. Take what is good from every religion and leave all the bias and prejudices behind.

Go to the next topic: Guidelines of Universal Stewardship

Something to think about:
“Respect is to be earned only if lost once given.” ― Franklin H. Maletsky

Last Updated on July 6, 2023