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July/August 2003 Featured Stories
Consciousness Versus Conscience: Friends or Foes?

by Caroline Myss

Caroline Myss

It's not often that I hear the word "conscience" used these days. My world is flooded with the use of "consciousness," but rarely do people speak of their conscience or of having crises of conscience. Yet the role of this aspect of your consciousness needs to be understood now more than ever. Our conscience is a guard dog, a keeper of morals and ethics, a ground-level police force that monitors our relationship to our actions. Our consciousness, on the other hand, is that part of our awareness that takes to the heights, imagining perfection and seeking harmony. Our consciousness is expansive, able to embrace the possibility of the power of Light and all that that power can incarnate.

Social Crisis: When Your Conscience Bangs the Drum

Your conscience comes to the surface with greater authority in times of social crisis, for reasons that are quite understandable. Peaceful, tranquil times do not generate the need for dramatic, courageous decisions as much as times of upheaval in social and human rights. Our conscience is mainly concerned with personal maintenance during calm times. It is easy then to promote positions of harmony and collective well being, and to speak of and visualize the world as one united global village. But getting there, as we are about to experience again, completely loses its attraction once we recognize the hardcore reality of what would have to occur for unity and equality to become the laws of the land. I can vividly recall the reaction of some members of the audience to a lecture I gave a few years ago on "Why Nations Don't Heal." It did not surprise me in the least to confirm through research what I had always suspected to be true: that all the nations of this planet have come into being as a result of wars or some form of bloodshed. Moreover, the threat of war and bloodshed, along with starvation and economic catastrophe, is what holds these nations in place. I presented the position that while we consciously declare the imbalances between nations to be spiritual crimes, and while we openly commit ourselves to actions promoting peace and global unity, achieving these goals is an economic impossibility. Our world economy is based and relies on conflict and war to thrive, not peace and forgiveness. The conscious approach would require, among other demands, that we completely re-educate the rational programming that we have trained our conscience to follow.

And Now You, And Now Today

The activities of our social and global arena will put your conscience in the lead position, if that has not already taken place. We are all of us part of a psychic, spiritual community. We have spent decades adapting, studying, embracing, and learning higher spiritual principles that, at least in theory, have the potential to create a united human community. Surely none of us is naive enough to believe that this world can become a fully harmonious human residence, at least not in our lifetime. But at least we can be a part of those committed to becoming templates for peace for those yet to be born. We have crossed over the line of theory and are now engaged in a world, and a global circumstance, in which action is demanded of each of us.

Let me say in closure that getting into the thick of your conscience is quite different from flying up to the comfort zone of your Higher Self. Consciousness speaks of potential and that which is yet to be manifested. Your conscience deals with what you have manifested and how you manage that. Different jobs, different energies. And with your conscience, you can't really get by with blaming someone else for your choices. Oh, you can try. We always try. But at the end of the day, your conscience has a relentless talent for reminding you that only you are in charge of your choices, not to mention putting into bold mental print the choices you've made or the behavior you have that comes under the heading of, "I know better, but I am consciously choosing to behave in a negative way." So there.

In creating peace (not to be trite or pedestrian about it), the power we generate by becoming spiritually congruent is immeasurable. We have to strive to create that congruency within ourselves because in doing what it takes to become congruent, we're living about as well as we can.

Pray for Peace. And God bless all of you.

 

Caroline Myss will be presenting "The Call to Live a Symbolic Life" in Portland, OR on August 8-9. For more information, call 1-800-395-8445 x 173 or visit ConferenceWorks.com.