Kopperregel nr 3

Ikke gjør noe som gir deg dårlig samvittighet.

Pir Zias kommentar:

The conscience is a silent voice, heard only by the inner ear. There are times when, unbeknownst to all, we are incapacitated by our own self-recrimination. Outwardly one enjoys a spotless reputation, and yet inwardly, one is eaten away by a sense of gnawing regret, shame, and guilt. Even though no one points a finger, the conscience knows what we have said or done, and refuses to let it go.

Conversely, all of the world may turn against you, accuse you, blame you, and censure you, but if the conscience is clear, one is at peace. Ultimately, other peoples’ opinions of you are not so important. What is important is your own peace within yourself. When that peace is disturbed, one’s confidence is lost. There is always the anxiety that another will learn one’s dark secret. One is hiding a terrible secret, and that undermines one’s confidence absolutely. For that reason, we look down, don’t raise our head in the world, and just try to go unnoticed. One is paralyzed, rendered timid and sheepish by the presence of a bad conscience within.

But when our conscience is clear, when we know we have done what is in accord with our ideal, no one can intimidate us. We have nothing to hide. We stand before the world transparent: what is on the inside is what is on the outside. One stands forth with the certain moral authority that comes from integrity. We all want to be in that place of inner peace from which we can manifest our life purpose fearlessly. We wish to be free of the anxiety and fear that come with having fallen beneath our ideal, and the fear that someone will come to know our secret, divulge it, and leave us exposed to the mockery of the world. Now, it so happens that there is not a single human being who has always acted in accordance with his or her own ideal. We all have mistakes on our conscience.

The way of the Sufis is to accept and disclose one’s limitation rather than hiding it, by not making a secret of our missteps and transgressions. Being authentic in one’s own station one has nothing to fear. One is no longer in hiding. No one can manipulate you because there is no secret to be found out. The process is to clarify the conscience by occupying one’s reality with honesty, freely admitting one’s errors: coming clean.

But then, looking deeper, we see that there are different kinds of guilt. The conscience has two aspects. One is made up of acquired knowledge, and the other comes from direct knowledge. Acquired knowledge reaches us through the influence of our parents, our education, our acculturation, etc. The sum of this knowledge is a hodgepodge of value judgments, conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational.

Though these judgments ostensibly exist in the service of a well-ordered society, in practice these attitudes often fail to do justice to the nuance and complexity of real life, and become hardened absolutes that conceal more than they reveal of the nature of reality. If one is awake and alert, sooner or later the implications of one’s life experience compel one to transcend the narrow confines of one’s inherited categories. But when a deeper and fuller understanding of a situation prompts us to deviate from the artificial norm, the aspect of our conscience which bears the imprint of received ideas will experience the deviation as an inner conflict because, though we follow true intuition, it contravenes what we have been taught. And so we are inwardly conflicted, and that inward conflict subsists as a sense of guilt and shame.

Thus, until one illuminates and clears the conscience by means of muhasaba, or self-examination, there is in all of us a residue of guilt and shame. It persists as a nagging feeling within. To investigate, according to Inayat Khan, one has to interview one’s nafs al lawwama. That is the part of one’s self that is self-critical. One asks one’s self, “What is the nature of my infraction? ” And you might find that the argument that the self-critical self makes is based on an external, received opinion that has imprinted itself, become internalized within one’s conscience. It is not a direct perception of the situation. It’s just an abstract notion, one that has invaded one’s consciousness from outside.

Then one has to ask, “If this is the expectation, why is it an expectation? What is the purpose of this principle? What is the benefit of following the principle? What is the harm of not following it? ” Inayat Khan advises us to interrogate our conscience in this way, so that if one is negatively judging oneself, as we often do, one is able to clearly understand the reasoning behind it.

Sometimes an introspective process of this kind completely dissolves the negative judgment. One realizes that one’s guilt was based on a received notion that really wasn’t directly relevant to the situation; it was just an artificial overlay.

The prophet Abraham rose up against the tradition of the fathers. He had been indoctrinated into a tradition of idolatry, and at a certain point, he had to renounce it and find his own way. At a certain point in our heart’s maturation, we have to reexamine all of the assumptions we have been given and apply the light of our own experiential understanding. In this process, a lot of negative self-judgments are revealed to be irrelevant, external impositions, and accordingly evaporate.

However, there are also judgments that come out of the true sense of one’s inner guidance, one’s intuitive sense of propriety, of rightness, of either serving the wholeness of being in a given situation or else of inordinately prioritizing the imperatives of one margin of one’s self, or one margin of the whole of being at the expense of the whole. And the sense of wholeness, the sense of integrity is lost. A little part of one’s self, a little impulse has triumphed at the expense of the deeper currents of meaning and fulfillment.

When one comes to this level of realization, another level of the conscience has begun to operate. It’s no longer the conscience that harps shrilly against every thought and act that it does not understand, but it is the guidance of the soul, which provides encouragement when one’s actions are on the mark and provides warning when one is out of balance. When one learns to listen to that inner voice of guidance one realizes, at a certain point, that no external validation is needed.

There is a stage in human development where one’s behavior is commensurate with one’s company. In the presence of the person one most respects, one is on one’s best behavior. At other times, one just lets oneself go. But then, as one develops on the path, one comes to the point where the one that one respects is one’s deepest self. And that self is always present. The essence of one’s self, the divine light of the soul, is always there. And one feels that one is accountable to that presence. In feeling that accountability, in resisting the compulsion of destructive habits, more and more one is able to clear away the dross of mistakes of the past.

Of course, mistakes will continue to happen. Refusing to recognize them, which is our habit, is of course, the greatest mistake of all. The worst mistake is not the misdirected impulse. That’s the least of our problems. The misguided impulse is just the beginning. The worst of it comes in trying to deny and conceal the mistake, as Sir Walter Scott said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. ” The whole of life can become a heap of lies. Though we seem to be lying to other people, essentially we’re lying to ourselves.

And so the greatest virtue is not to be infallible, but having committed mistakes, to see them, accept them, take responsibility, make amends, receive forgiveness, and move on with clear conscience. By doing this internal housekeeping one develops an amazing courage and fearlessness.

So again, there are two aspects of conscience. There is the acquired knowledge of the conscience, which needs to be questioned and put in context. And then there is the direct knowledge of the conscience, which is a deeper intuitive soul-sense. At first, it might be difficult to recognize the difference between the two. The reason it is difficult is that we don’t try. But as soon as one does try—as soon as, on feeling a pang of conscience, one turns inward and looks at it—one will be able to sort out the differences. In working this way, one develops a knack for differentiating. Pretty soon, the voice of the pure conscience will be immediately recognized, and will become a good friend.

Let’s put this into practice for a moment by closing our eyes. Breathe into and out of the heart. Remember Inayat Khan’s saying: “A pure conscience gives one the strength of lions, and by a guilty conscience even lions are turned into rabbits. ” Can you feel the rabbit-like quality, the sense of meekness, trepidation, and fear; the shivering sensation one experiences when one stands beneath the ideal? Delve into this and see that it is the mental imprint of misaligned actions. For the moment, bring into awareness one such “missing of the mark. ” Let yourself directly experience the sense of regret and shame that attends it.

Now ask yourself, “Why was it wrong? Is there a canon of opinion that stands against what I have done, and if so, what is the true basis of that moral code? Is it merely an unexamined prejudice of my family or my society? Is the shame that I feel just the consequence of nonconformity to a collective idea that bears little genuine relation to the circumstances of my life experience? Or did my action truly cause harm? And if there was harm, to whom was there harm? Was there harm to me? What kind of harm? Was there harm to other people? What kind of harm? Could that harm have been avoided? And if it was a harmful action, what was the predisposition that inclined me to act in such a way? Was there a positive intention behind my action that was ill served by the course I took? Did I attempt to do right but end in doing wrong? ”

If one discovers the positive original impulse that was misdirected, one learns an important lesson regarding how to implement and how not to implement a good intention. But I carry with me now two things. I carry the lesson learned, and I also carry the shame of the mistake. The lesson learned benefits as I go forward. The shame does not benefit me, nor does it benefit anyone. Perhaps I imagine that the only way I can perpetuate the lesson learned is by perpetuating the shame—but is this really true? By perpetuating the shame, I am in some sense repeating the error. Can I overcome the error by allowing myself to experience the divine forgiveness that has already been granted, and forswear reiterating the error in my secret shame? Can I accept my mistake, accept my limitation, letting it be lifted up into the divine mercy and compassion, while I retain the abiding essence of this transformative experience, which is a living moral that illuminates my path into the future?

If we can bring this crystalline clarity to each of the sources of nagging guilt in our psyche, then we will provide a proper burial to the many skeletons in our closet, and we will proceed in life fearlessly and shamelessly. We will follow Christ’s instructions and uncover the light of the soul from under the bushel of guilt.

Again, the words of the Copper Rule for the day:

My conscientious self, do nothing which will make your conscience feel guilty.