The Universe Is Smiling: Conscience is the inner voice

Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:

Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."
- Henry Louis Mencken  
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, February 20, 2011
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2 comments:

  1. Paul LichtenbergFebruary 20, 2011 at 10:46 PM

    I love this copulating duo. How strange considering we’re talking about conscience. And yet, it is the great (inter)penetration of truth that brings true knowledge within oneself. There is a deep dynamic, a great transmission of meaning and love between these two lovers. You can see it in each other’s gaze: the powerful dominating masculine energy of the winged creature straddling the softer receptivity of the feminine. Notice the change in color in that space they both embody at the moment of penetration. This is the intersubjective space of creation, of true knowing. And true knowing is the ultimate knowing of reality the apprehension of which engenders true conscience. True conscience is compassion, the understanding of which requires wisdom. And yet, this true conscience is not merely transcendent of but necessarily includes the world, conventional reality. According to the great Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico, “Conscientia are realms of knowledge in which the human mind do not "rely solely on their own procedures" but instead have to confront the external world. In these realms, "dissection" and analysis reduces the lived world to elementa, which are then collected and constructed into human knowledge. Still, knowledge is "made," but the making is constrained by the external world.” This means that true knowing requires conscience, the awareness of the relationship between self and other and how we are literally interdependent beings requiring compassion to reach our destiny of pure joy.

    As The Dalai Lama argues, “A practitioner who has the ability to analyze phenomena with the wisdom realizing suchness [interconnectedness] while engaging in calm abiding meditation can generate special insight.” This drawing IS that suchness, the interpenetration of knowing and receptivity. Together there is sense of harmony and equanimity, and the spontaneous creativity that emerges from a peaceful mind.

    If we draw deeper into the drawing, or perhaps view it from another perspective, we notice its intense movement. This is impressed by the positioning of the wings, the interlocking of the two figures, and the positioning of the feet and posture of the owl-like seeker. What we are witnessing is the function of time as the development or evolution of knowing. Knowing is a process and requires patience, intention, attention, and other cognitive factors, too, all necessary to discipline mind and prepare it for enlightenment. True knowing understands that the past and future represent the double-causal flow of karma. As the two figures transmit meaning to each other at the immediate moment we call present, as an interpenetrated unit (they inter-are)they are observing the future flowing toward the present into the past, and the past pushing through the present into the future. How exciting the generation of such energy to gain the momentum of knowing!

    And so, if I may penetrate this quote, I would say, Conscience is the inner voice that playfully prepares us for that someone who looks while he leaps.

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  2. UnknownFebruary 21, 2011 at 11:04 PM

    You have "penetrated" to the fine points of the drawing :) Thank you for connecting the quote with the drawing in such detailed manner. What struck me in the drawing was the contrast AND enmeshment between Pegasus and the owl. Pegasus as an allegorical figure of the soul's immortality being irrevocably united with the owl, the feminine principle, the bird of wisdom. There you have it: If the owl isn't wise (enough) to recognize her own immortality, she will always trip over her follies, until she learns that she can't get away - and becomes wise by experience and knowledge.

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