Student Guidelines
The Association for Spiritual Integrity was created to encourage the role of ethical principles in spiritual leadership and communities. It is a voluntary organization with offerings, plans, procedures, and aspirations to help cultivate greater ethical transparency and accountability in the contemporary spiritual culture.
We have prioritized our initial focus on spiritual leaders, teachers and guides; we want to facilitate open and mature communication between them and their students, with the goal of encouraging transparency and honesty. We have an online form where students can report an ethical concern regarding a member teacher. We have an Evaluation and Restoration Team (ERT) who process reported ethical concerns. When an ethical concern is filed with the ASI our ERT meets with the student, and if the student agrees the ERT requests a meeting with the teacher to discuss the ethical concerns. Ideally, we would like to offer professional mediation between teacher and student pro bono. At present, however, our services are limited and contributions from teacher and student are necessary to hire mediators skilled in this specific field.
We aim to be able to offer mediation as part of our services in the future.
In the meantime, there are steps you can take if you have an ethical concern. First, if you feel unsafe in any way, please seek safety and support immediately. If necessary, contact the appropriate authorities.
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If there is an issue between you and a spiritual leader/teacher/guide, please have courage and take the first step by contacting them directly and airing your grievance. Most problems can be worked out through clear and open communication.
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The ASI wants to encourage students to take these and whatever other actions they can to promote spiritual integrity. Students can take a proactive role in demanding better behavior and ethical practices from spiritual leaders.
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The ASI encourages every spiritual leader to use feedback forms with their students. Feedback forms offer you, the student, an opportunity to communicate your grievances. Teachers are encouraged to be responsible for the impact they have and to welcome feedback and maintain open lines of communication with students.
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The ASI has provided feedback forms that teachers can use. You can bring these forms to the attention of your spiritual teacher. If they are already ASI members, they should have a feedback system in place. If they are not an ASI member you can ask them to create a transparent grievance process and show them the ASI feedback forms as an example.
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You can report an ethical concern about an ASI member here.
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Ask your spiritual leader/teacher/guide if they are currently abiding by a code of ethics and good practice. If they say they are, you can ask to see the code. If they are not, you can recommend that they visit our website and review our code of ethics with an invitation to join the ASI
We are working to create an environment that stimulates growth, learning, and change among our members. We aim to address the culture from within, fostering authenticity and accountability among spiritual leaders, teachers and guides for generations to come.