How Do You Know Whether an Action is "Right"?

How do sense your moral compass? Where is your conscience when you need it? How do you get objectivity when making a decision?

As usual, I can only speak from my personal experience and I am so fallible. However, I have some thoughts and experiences that relate to these questions.

The first step is to find the place in yourself that gives you peace. It works much better to find this before a major crisis so that it is familiar and you know how to get there. I compare it to getting your muscles ready for an athletic event. You start out slowly and build up your strength.

This place is accessed by whatever route works for you. If I came home from school and my mother was standing at the ironing board in her work clothes, I knew she had something she needed to sort out before she could go on with the rest of her day. "Ironing is my meditation." she used to say. My Aunt Claire went to church and lit a candle when she needed 'a moment'. I like to meditate, but sometimes I "ask for guidance". I think to a large degree it is all the same. I have friends who go sit by a river or a favorite tree. Nature is a wonderful ally.

Now, you go to this place of peace and then you put your question into inner words and then you wait. Usually the wait isn't very long. The spiritual worlds have a very different time sense than ordinary time. If an answer comes, good. If it doesn't come, it will. Let it go and go about your life. I have had the experience that if you ask, with good intentions, you will get an answer. Your job is to get out of the way.

Then you check the answer. Your solution might come as inner words, as a picture, as a scene, as a nudge. You first check your answer by feeling your body. Does it make you have a knot in your stomach? Do you feel anxious? That kind of thing. If so, that could be your best friend, your conscience telling you that this inspiration isn't coming from your highest self. You can also run a check against any high religious teachings. No real guidance would ever run opposite to "Thou shall not kill" for instance.

Asking for guidance and getting it will fine tune your intuition and make you trust the best in yourself more and more. Everything you need is already within you.

Namaste