Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Artistry of Conscience - adapted from The Wisdom Way of Knowing, by Cynthia Bourgeault

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

 Conscience in the wisdom way of knowing is not a ethical term, although an ethic certainly flows from conscience. Conscience is the active spirit of consciousness. It is "the heart's own ability to see the divine hologram in any situation, no matter how obscured, and to move spontaneously and without regard for its personal well-being in alignment with that divine wholeness." CB
 
With a purified eye of the heart, one can move into emotional tension with compassion, shifting the energy through the quality of one's own aliveness. Like St Frances of Assisi, you embrace the leper standing before you with his begging bowl, because the eye of your heart tells you that only that embrace will restore the image of God in the brokenness. Or like Jesus, you are willing to go to the cross rather than meet violence with violence.

 "Conscience (acting out of higher consciousness) is the pearl of great price; it is the both supreme realization and the instrument of visionary seeing. It is the capacity always and everywhere to see the whole of God yearning to become manifest in all our human beings and doings, like the full of the moon faintly present behind the crescent. With the awakening of this eye, you no longer see Wisdom, you become Wisdom. You become a channel of God's peace, and the greatest of all artists as you dance with the "the love that moves the stars and the sun." CB
 
May the courage of compassion live pure and strong in your heart, and through the Wisdom of conscience, bring you truth and peace. Peggy