True Conscience

1 3 t r u e c o n s c i e n c e Q what is the role of awareness on the spiritual path? In light of everything you’ve been saying about the importance of making the right choices if we want to be free, how can we learn to be more attentive? A Well, if you truly want to be free, you will be aware, you will be paying attention. You see, there are different kinds of awareness. One kind of awareness is where you, whoever you are, are consciously making effort to be aware of everything that you are doing. But there is another kind of awareness that is more mysterious. And you will begin to discover this mysterious awareness as you surrender more and more to your own desire to be free. At times there will be an unexpected movement from deep within you; aresponse will arise that moves faster than thought. You will do something or say something that expresses the passionate intensity of enlightened consciousness— aconsciousness that, amoment before, you had no aware¬ ness of. You will have the strange sense of not knowing who responded, even though it was none other than your o w n S e l f . t r u e c o n s c i e n c e 7 5 Experiences like this reveal to us beyond any doubt that our True Self is always paying attention in away that we are usually not conscious of. And when we discover this Self— this mysterious depth that is already awake w e fin d t h a t which is miracitlous. We discover who we truly are. It’s the Self that we cannot see with the mind, but when we experi¬ ence it directly we will understand what it means to be enlightened. And when we liberate this Self that mysteri¬ ously sees and knows what we cannot see or know with our conscious mind, we will begin to respond to life in ways that, left to our own devices, we never could. Are you saying that we can be aware without even knowing it? Yes. If we are true to the desire to be free, we will find that we always are paying attention, even at times when, in our conscious experience, it appears to us that we are not. This happens to me often in my own life. Sometimes my own inner experience may appear to be, for acertain period of time, quite mundane. And then aresponse will occur to some event that is happening around me, aresponse that is so fast and so precise that it amazes me every time. Idon’t know where it comes from. 1only become aware of it as it’s happening. In retrospect, Isee that 1was responding to something that Iwasn’t even aware of. But obviously, apart of me was paying attention all the time, apart that “I,” Andrew, the individual self, wasn’t conscious of. So we have to ask, “Who is it really that is paying attention? Who is it that is aware?” 76 living enlightenment So when you speak about paying attention, you’re referring to something quite mysterious. Usually when we speak about paying attention, we are only referring to that which engages the conscious mind. The problem is that it leaves the most important part of our self out of the picture, which is that part of our self that we can never know with the conscious mind. This is an extraordinary secret that not very many people know about. But that’s what enlightenment is—it is the liberating discovery of the pro¬ found mystery of our own Self, amystery that we will never be able to understand with the mind. Can you say more about this mystery? Well, this is very difficult to appreciate without direct expe¬ rience but the most important part of this mystery is the revelation of what Icall “true conscience.” Which is? The unexpected manifestation of intense compassion. True conscience emerges from that very same mysterious part of our own self; it expresses akind of care that the personality could never understand. It’s the true heart, which is not the heart that we normally identify with the personality. It’s the heart that breaks when we directly experience the One Self that we are when we have no notion of being separate. This true conscience, or this spiritual conscience, is experienced t r u e c o n s c i e n c e 7 7 as caring. And this caring is painful apainful emotional experience—but it’s this caring that finally liberates us, slowly but surely, from the attachment to the ego and its endless fears and desires. It is the emergence of this con¬ science that gives us the energy, strength, ,and inspiration to give ourselves to the most important task that there is. So if we want to be free, it’s very important to ask our¬ selves: How much do Icare? Because when our heart breaks in the way that I’ve been describing, we will, maybe for the very first time in our lives, experience aliberating distance from self-concern. Suddenly we will find that we are con¬ sumed by that mystery and we will spontaneously begin to express apassion for that which is sacred. It’s only then that everything will begin to make sense. Is the conscience that you’ve been speaking about another word for love? Yes. The degree to which we are able to liberate ourselves from self-concern will be the degree to which we are able to recognize that our true nature as human beings is love. It happens automatically. This is one of the miracles of human life. When you have reached that point in your own evolution when you are ready to leave self-concern behind, your heart will expand and you will know alove that is impossible to imagine unless you have experienced it for yourself. The nature of this love is not personal; it does not have its roots in the personality. When our attention has become liberated from self-concern, this conscience is set free. Love is literally 78 living enlightenment liberated from the depths of our own being and just emerges of its own accord—even forcefully at times. It is so inspiring when one directly experiences the miracle that lies beyond self-concern. The discovery of true conscience instills in us such aprofound faith in the very essence of life itself. And anybody can know this miracle if they really want to. They just have to be willing to pay the price. t r u e c o n s c i e n c e 7 9 r r r f