Your Internal Guidance System

By Namaste Staff Writer

How do you make the ethical and moral decision you have to make in your life? What guides you? What do you rely on to ensure you are on the “straight and narrow”?

For many, the answer resides in their faith. Their synagogue, mosque, temple, or church serves as their moral guide. Usually, the guidance they receive from such sources is based in scripture—the Hebrew books of the Law of Moses, the Koran, the New Testament, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching.

We are in the season of Passover and the seven days of Unleavened Bread that lie at the heart of Judaism. It’s in this season that Jews retell the story of Moses, the Exodus, and the Promised Land. At the heart of this tradition is the Law of Moses, consisting of over 600 laws that center on the Ten Commandments.

In a manuscript sent to Namaste Publishing for evaluation, the author wrote that Jesus “came to change the Law, not fulfill it.” I wrote her back and asked her permission to comment on her statement.

Jesus certainly made huge changes when it came to living according to the Law of Moses. “You have heard it said,” he commented again and again, “but I say to you….” Then he gave an understanding of ethics that transcended the Law.

In a letter to the people of Galatia in Asia Minor, Paul, a Jew from Tarsus who became a follower of Jesus some years after Jesus’ crucifixion, talked about the heir to a large estate. When the heir is young, he is treated no better than a servant. He is required to fulfill every demand made of him. His entire life is structured by the adults to whose care he has been entrusted.

Many years ago, I was privileged to interview and subsequently become a friend of Mrs. Dermot Morrah, whose husband was a member of the staff of the British Royal Household. Her husband, Dermot Morrah, authored the first official biography of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, entitled “To Be a King.”

As I talked with Mrs. Morrah in her London home, she showed me exercise books from Prince Charles’ early school days—possessions she cherished. I looked through his English compositions, his mathematics. Mrs. Morrah talked with me about how, when he was little, the Prince of Wales learned how to follow the lifestyle that had been prescribed for him. Truly, he was no different from a servant in those days, with every aspect of his life dictated for him.

Think back to your own childhood. When you were young, you had little freedom to determine your own life each day. You were told when to get up, how to spend your day, when to eat and what to eat, when to take a bath or shower, to brush your teeth before bed, and when to go to sleep. It was in some ways a highly regimented life.

Then you grew up, and you began making your own decisions—some of them drastically different from those dictated by the rules of your childhood household. Instead of having a fixed bedtime, sometimes you went to bed with the sun—and other times you stayed up into the early hours of the next day, studied all night for an test, or worked a night shift.

As a child the rule was, “Eight o’clock bedtime.” As an adult, there was no rule any longer. Yet, you did not toss out the intent of the rule. Rather, you fulfilled it. You got enough sleep to stay healthy, without obeying the rule. What the rule point toward, you accomplished, though technically you broke the rule.

Prince Charles, though the heir to the throne, lived like a servant when he was young. He bathed and showered when told, brushed his teeth when told, combed his hair when told, dressed as he was told to dress. Now, as an adult, he is no longer bound by rules tailored to childhood. Yet, he doesn’t toss them out as worthless. Rather, he fulfills everything they were aiming to accomplish.

The rule told you how to do things. But as an adult, you no longer need a rule. You are guided from within. So you fulfill everything the law sought to inculcate, without actually keeping the law.

Each of us has an “inner knower,” a consciousness that can guide us in any decision we have to make. No law, Scripture, or rule can do this. Rather, the intent of the law is written on our hearts and minds from within. As we mature, finding our own center of gravity in infinite Presence, we fulfill the laws and rules of younger days, without actually keeping them.

If you want to get in touch with your own “inner knower,” delve into Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process.