{"id":80364,"date":"2016-09-26T12:07:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80364"},"modified":"2016-09-26T12:07:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:07:42","slug":"conscience-and-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/conscience-and-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Conscience and Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tony<\/a>\u201cCall to Conscience\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cCall to Conscience,\u201d advocated by Professor Michael D\u2019Andrea, and now widely accepted by members of Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ) as a requirement for counselor training, is a noble call, sanctified and consecrated by the sacrifices of peacemakers.<\/p>\n

With uncommon courage and conviction, notable peacemakers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott, Glenn Paige, Bell Hooks, Mairead McGuire, Antonio C.S. Rosa, Dalai Lama, Daisaku Ikeda, and scores of others, modeled \u201cconscience\u201d as a way-of-life, accepting the quest for peace must be nurtured and sustained with the totality of one\u2019s being . . . \u00a0each breath an affirmation of commitment.<\/p>\n

When Jesus of Nazareth, in his \u201cSermon on the Mount,\u201d stated: \u201cBlessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth,\u201d <\/em><\/strong>Jesus invited all to assume the role of peacemakers. Those accepting his anointing have refused to be silenced in the face of oppression. From Jesus to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., peacemakers have endured criticism, condemnation, and persecution from those with wealth, power, and position, those benefitting from the outcomes of war.<\/p>\n

To the wealthy, powerful, positioned, and war-hawks content <\/em><\/strong>with distance from human suffering, indifferent <\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>to the pains and sorrows of victims of violence, war, and prejudice, oblivious<\/em><\/strong> to the consequences of self-indulgence, I say you risk eternal damnation as your children behold with contempt, your lack of conscience, your failure to model peace.<\/p>\n

The \u201cCall to Conscience\u201d requires courage amidst abuse. There is, however, no lamentation among peacemakers. This is the paradox! For peacemakers, the rewards of advocacy ensure their legacy will endure because it affirms human dignity. \u00a0For peacemakers, mockeries of justice, inequalities of opportunity, denials of hope, distortions of truth, and corruptions of law, compel advocacy!<\/p>\n

Peacemakers are not idealists; Peacemakers are realists! Peacemakers awaken humanity to \u201cconsciousness!\u201d This fact is testimony to the promise: \u201cPeacemakers will inherit the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consciousness<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cConscience\u201d cannot be separated from \u201cconsciousness,\u201d nor can \u201cconsciousness\u201d from \u201cconscience.\u201d What do I mean?<\/p>\n

The very act of seeking and making peace releases us from normal states of human existence. The release sanctions a \u201cstate of transcendence, a state of \u201cconsciousness,\u201d a new level of being. It is a release from an isolated self pre-occupation to an awareness of connection to each other and to the cosmos in which we live.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsciousness\u201d compels exercising responsibilities, duties, and obligations to speak and to act for peace; implicit within \u201cconsciousness,\u201d is a moral impulse to advance and benefit the human condition.\u00a0 Inherent within this recognition, is the awareness \u201clife is sacred!\u201d<\/p>\n

The splendor and majesty of \u201cconsciousness\u201d is the liberation of our being.\u00a0 \u201cConsciousness\u201d brings a new way-of-knowing (i.e., epistemology), and new way of behaving (i.e., praxiology). It unleashes new ways of understanding human nature (i.e., ontology).<\/p>\n

Can anything more be asked? \u201cConscience\u201d and \u201cconsciousness\u201d are the keys to awakening the human spirit, too long subdued and contained by comforts of convention. Peacemaking is the path! Discover its virtues! Join the icons of peace, finding in them, and with them, a transcendent vision and experience of the grandeur of life. \u00a0Accept the \u201cCall to Conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a>, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of <\/em>Hawaii\u2019s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With uncommon courage and conviction, notable peacemakers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott, Glenn Paige, Bell Hooks, Mairead McGuire, Antonio C. S. Rosa, Dalai Lama, Daisaku Ikeda, and scores of others, modeled \u201cconscience\u201d as a way-of-life, accepting the quest for peace must be nurtured and sustained with the totality of one\u2019s being . . . each breath an affirmation of commitment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}