The Price of Vision

RPK.... Man of Vision

Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”

Those who were standing near Paul said, “You dare to insult God’s high priest?”

How dare I insult the system? Where do I come off insulting the powers that be, the traditional leading influences of the day? Where do I get the audacity to speak up and demand change?

I do it, as Paul, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and others did, because of my conscience. Conscience is literally calling me out to proclaim a higher reality. Conscience has attacked my moral amnesia and caused me to remember that we were all created in the image and likeness of God and that anything else is an impersonation, an illusion, and an outright deception.

Truth demands expression, and its call is irresistible. In scripture, the word conscience is the Greek word suneidesis, which means “co-perception” -- that is “accompanying moral consciousness and awareness.”

Conscience is, in effect, to have uncommon knowledge or awareness. It is the consciousness and awareness of the soul. It is not only what you know but what you undeniably are.

THE PRICE OF VISION

People like the Apostle Paul, Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Gandhi had this common awareness. They saw what others either didn’t see or refused to acknowledge. The mystical or metaphorical meaning of the word conscience is to see as God perceives, to see things as they can become. Or perhaps as they are in another reality, rather than as they appear.

Mind you, I do not flatter myself with comparisons to these giants. I humbly submit that I can only hope to capture some small shadow of the light of their greatness and courage. I bring them up only to illustrate that to perceive things outside the box and to try to bring about both spiritual and practical evolution and revolution inevitably comes with a great price.

Visionary minds are always met with violent opposition born of fear. Higher knowledge is costly. It cost Galileo, Dr. King, Gandhi, Paul the Apostle, Jesus, and scores of lesser knowns their lives or livelihoods. People who hear the call to conscience follow what they know inwardly -- what they know in consciousness or at higher levels of awareness. I call this irresistible knowing. It is a form of divinely transcendent memory.

Dr. King remembered his vision of a world “where my four little children…will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” from another consciousness. He recalled the innate knowledge we all share as our birthright: that we are all safe with God and that we all participate in the fullness of the Divine and the continuing creation and evolution of this world.

Somehow, in our very human failure, we forgot this truth.

Perhaps we buried it beneath the strata of dogma, politics, legalism and lust for power. But Dr. King reminded the world that indeed all people were and are created equal.

This is the message of Jesus and all Hs true disciples, both Christian and non-Christian (Abraham, Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, etc. included). The call of my conscience is to hear and herald this same powerful truth to my generation.

Such resolution can cost you. You can lose things, people, friends, family, reputation, position, and even your life, simply because of what you profess to know and how you see things, especially if it is different from what others see or will admit.

My vision initially cost me dearly in terms of finances and possessions, status and relationships, and my self-imposed illusions about how loving and tolerant many of my Christian brethren and friends were.

It turns out that many of them were loving and tolerant so long as they believed I thought as they did. Once I did not, I became to them a heretic, rebel, or radical, and to some a perceived adversary.