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Today's
quotation:
Conscience, as I understand it, is the impulse to
do the right thing because it is right, regardless of personal ends,
and has nothing
to do with the ability to distinguish between right
and wrong.
Margaret Collier Graham
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Today's
Meditation:
May
my conscience be my guide, but only if I trust it and
follow it truly. My conscience knows what's right
and what's wrong, but my rational mind tends to play
around with all that my conscience tells me is right and
true. I may know that it's right to do a certain
thing, but doing it doesn't
help me financially; not doing it holds financial rewards
that may benefit my entire family. So by not doing
it, I help my whole family, even if I'm not doing what I
know is right.
When
we try to judge the differences between right and wrong,
we fall into the trap of passing judgment, and that rarely
helps us out. Margaret puts it simply:
conscience is the impulse to do the right thing because it
is right. If we leave the idea there, many of our
decisions become much simpler, less bogged down in the
right/wrong argument. We don't have to define our
terms, and the grey areas are fewer and less foggy.
Our conscience gives us the clear answer we need.
What
is the right thing? Sometimes we do the right thing
and we see disastrous results; perhaps the disaster was
the most important thing that's happened to the people
involved. Sometimes we do the right thing and see no
results at all, but we never know how our actions will
affect other people years down the road. The
question becomes much simpler when we don't have to define
"right" and "wrong," when we trust
ourselves to do what we know inside is right.
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