The Sirius Pup Guide to Intimate Relationships in a Pack - 2

Right and Wrong 

Whether you identify as a human pup or not, you will live your life with ethics and morality. Every healthy sane person does. We may not all have the same set - our cultural background is the usual determinant of what we think is right and wrong to begin with. For us Sirius Pups our ethics are set forth here - a set of principles that help us treat each other in the pack with fairness and to aim to be beneficial to society at large. Our ethics are standards we have formed from these virtues, being both rights we have and obligations we bear. 

Sometimes our feelings can push us to stray from what we ethically believe. This is where our own individual morality guides us to do what is right in accordance with our chosen ethics, as we think about what we are about to do. And morality does even more for us, it helps us to resolve conflicts in the pack, and to help renew and maintain social order within the Sirius pup pack. Together ethics and morality are distinct but complementary parts of our selves, human or pup. 

Through First and Second Collar Interaction training a Sirius pup learns that what we think that is good, what is supposed to be right, is always in a process of being reinterpreted because human pup play, and developing a pup self, challenges us to do just that. You won't always be perfect at getting it right, and you have to be reasonable to yourself. 

You are reason-able

To be a Sirius pup you have to be a rational person and be in control of yourself. That is explained in some detail in Second Collar Mind training. When you are in play as a human pup you can behave well, acting on the ethics of a Sirius pup, because as a rational person you have an understanding of why those ethics exist and you have committed yourself to them with reason. And that reason is the core of you, the central I - not defined as a pup or human identity. This I, the central you, owns all of your passions which define your personalities . Yet it is that 'you' which is greater and more than all these attributes because 'you' can reason and choose between them, deciding for yourself who you want to be. You can think, feel, and act no matter your choice of persona, and unless you relinquish your reason, your central you, all your actions are within your control, all of your feelings are just lesser aspects and reactions of experience to the total awesomeness of you. 

That is a lot to take on, so let's restate it in other words to help it sink in. The aspects of your life are all expressions of your singular reason, the central you. We call it your reason because it is your thinking, your consciousness, your capacity to reason and make decisions. When we say aspects of your life, we mean your pup self, your human self, and any other selves you have - they are all components of you, your reason is the central you containing them all. They all have the capacity to think, they all have consciousness. No matter which self you are being, no matter where you are, you can reason and think. A lot of the training as a Sirius pup addresses the reason, the central you, and to participate in relationships as a pup and as a human person it's important you are reason-able - that you understand the central you is always in charge and you are responsible for you. If you can't reason or think, then you need urgent medical care or are dead, both more important than pup play. 

Moral failure

When explaining human pup play to others, and the relationships between pups and Owners and other pups, you are engaging with the reason of another person. As explained previously, they will be judging you. As a pack our group relationships face the moral judgement of whom we are talking to. Our pack has chosen to embrace a different way of looking at failure to be perfectly moral and righteous than some. Many judeo-christian societies indoctrinate people to believe that morals are about choosing good versus evil, that ethics are a black and white contrast. You choose good, you go to some heavenly afterlife. You choose to do the wrong thing, you are an evil sinner who is going to suffer eternally in hell. Rather melodramatic, and fairly unhelpful to people whether in pup play or not. 

The ancient Greeks had no dramatic absolute sense of sin as christianity has created. The Greeks called moral failures άμαρτάνω, or 'bad shots'. It means to miss the mark, and it translates as hamartano in our english alphabet. So what many consider a 'sin', we use the Ancient Greek word for it, as it better describes a reasonable way of embracing moral failure. To make a moral mistake can happen to anyone, we can all fall short of the mark of good and best behaviour, and when we do fall short of what we expect of ourselves it serves as a reminder to take better aim next time we act. 

Rather than have an absolute expectation of our behaviour (such as be sexually faithful to your spouse at all costs or you have sinned) we embrace an aspiring expectation of behaviour (such as put your effort into being faithful and devoted sexually to your partner if you are monogamous).  Failures to meet our ideals as Sirius pups aren't evil sinful moral crimes, they are 'bad shots' / άμαρτάνω, usually a failure of our ability, to do with circumstance, or a loss of resolve and dedication. Instead of feeling guilt and self loathing that requires a big male god guy to absolve us of our awful sins, a Sirius pups moral failure in pup play is remembered for what it is - an embarrassing failure, remembered as an incentive to do better, to improve and be our best. 

Jealousy is falling short of the mark

Alternatively to an absolute wrong and right dividing line, we see a spectrum of various levels of good. Given that we are looking at moral failure as a bad shot, we can look at what is the right thing to do as an archery target. Visualise it having a number of concentric rings around a bullseye. One moral failure we can use as an example helps explain how we deal with what is an expected problem with multiple relationships - jealousy, when we have negative thoughts about others being intimate with those we feel intimately attached to. It's a central issue that can undermine a pack.  

If jealousy overwhelms your reason, and causes you to lash out at a pack member or anyone you love, then we can look at it that you have missed the target of being good completely, and you should try harder next time. 

If you still feel jealousy strongly, but you contain it in yourself and don't lash out, then we can imagine you have hit the outermost ring of the target. With further practice you will improve, so as you control your jealousy by restraining yourself you get better at handling the experience of it. 

If you actively attend to your feelings of jealousy, and you work upon their causes and symptoms, and you try and change into better feelings, then you are getting closer and closer to the bullseye of not feeling jealousy at all. 

What we do when handling jealousy has to be performed with good will, and not malice, so that all our actions can be placed on a continuum, a scale like the archery target. Some of our feelings and reactions in the pack will be bad shots, and some are good shots. No human pup is irredeemably bad, we are just in need of further practice. 

The way we behave towards one another, the spirit of it, is extremely important to having a healthy intimate pack......