CONSCIENCE AND GOD

You cannot understand anything well once you have approved or disapproved of it. There is too much you there. Contemplation is loosening our attachment to ourselves so that Reality can get at us, especially the Absolute Reality that we call God. -- Fr. Richard Rohr

I read that and had a memory bubble pop about conscience, about my understanding of conscience actually. I remembered in high school, my best friend's mother telling us (after we'd let the air out of the tires of a car belonging to a guy one of us had a crush on...clearly, true love) that our conscience would bother us over that. 

The reason Fr. Rohr's comment is of interest is that memory bubble was totally tied to my hearing that my conscience would bother me and deciding right then that mine wouldn't. That if I was clever enough, quick, tough, smart enough, my conscience (if there was such a thing) couldn't bother me...and I was 16, I knew I was all of the above and more.

It was much later that I pondered conscience...really understood that conscience is a reality, like thoughts and just as uncontrollable. I  had not allowed conscience to be a reality.  

The reason I came to ponder it at all, of course, was because of my guilty conscience. Imagine my chagrin when I woke up one fine morning wracked with rues, regrets and remorses. Which is quite telling...I have never done anything, committed any act, that deserved the agony of remorse I put myself through...few of us do, in truth.

I believe that my conscience is God's love making itself known within me...as in, "That is not a loving thing to do. Why not do something for that person you are resisting (or at least not to)?" 

I believe that my guilty conscience is my ego that dresses God's guidance in puce and brown, and encourages me to take care of myself, to lash out and to lash out with malice...then murmurs a constant litany of "shame, shame, shame...s/he made me do that, blame, blame, blame." 

This is the point at which I heed  Rohr's words about letting go:  "Contemplation is loosening our attachment to ourselves so that Reality can get at us, especially the Absolute Reality that we call God."

Thank You.