Burying Our Conscience
When our conscience does not serve the interests we hold onto and give precedence to, do we allow it to redirect our course of action or do we put it away and make sure it stays out of our business? When we choose the latter, we are effectively burying our conscience. Each time we make the choice to mute that inner voice of reason out of a decision we are dropping another shovel full of dirt over our conscience in order to hold it down in the pit we have set it in. As long as it is held securely there, we think, it will no longer bother us and keep us from going after what we want.
How many blows can our conscience take before it falls away entirely? To every action, there is a reaction. If you make a choice you are responsible for that choice and all of the consequences of it. Each time you make the choice to ignore your conscience there are more consequences to that choice than only what is observed in the physical aftermath of that action. Deep within you, your conscience has just taken another serious blow to its health. If you strongly desire to keep that voice out of your life then you only have to keep ignoring it. A conscience can’t survive forever in an inhospitable environment. If we do not feed it and keep it healthy it will perish, and we will be left to our own devices – do you trust your sense of responsibility enough to commit to this task?
Losing our Conscience
The loss of the conscience’s opinion in your life is no small consequence. When we lose this part of our rational ability we are left only with the self-serving side of our self. There is no longer any questions of right or wrong, there is only survival – that is “does this serve me and what I want or does it not and so a waste of my resources?”. When these start to become the only questions we ask ourselves we are in trouble…but there is still hope.
Finding Hope
A conscience may be silenced enough so as to be completely depleted of all the life that was within us, but it always holds on even when we left may have left it to die. It never fully leaves us. It waits patiently for our return to it, and it gives itself generously to us when we do. If you haven’t heard from yours in a while, it is time to start feeding it again. If you no longer hear those questions of right and wrong, then start asking them. Do what you think it would have wanted for you. Then, the momentum of consequences will again work in your favor. As we continue to build back up that voice of moral responsibility and reason we give it life within us again. It begins to take hold of us again and we begin to see this not only as life-giving but liberating as well. A conscience is not there for its own sake, it is there for ours. When we begin to see that we will start to dig it out of the pit we buried it in to keep it out of our business. Set your conscience free. Listen to that inner guide. Feed it by your choosing to act on it and allow it to grow. Watch then the beauty unfold in and around you.