I’m going to have that Cake song, “Going the Distance” in my head which is not entirely a bad thing though it does tend to stay around for awhile. Going the distance popped into my head as the title for all the thoughts circling in my head.   These thoughts were inspired by two movies I watched recently, the first one was “The Conspirator” which is about Mary Surratt who is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turned against her, she was forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.  The second movie  “Of Gods and Men” is about  a group of Trappist monks, under threat by fundamentalist terrorists,  who are stationed with an impoverished Algerian community and must decide whether to leave or stay.

On the surface, these movies may seem totally unrelated to each other as the first one is set in the United States and deals with the assassination of our President and the second one is set in Algeria and follows the lives of a small group of Trappist monks under threat by fundamental terrorist.  The commonality that I gleaned from both of these movies was the struggle of a person to follow their conscious in spite of the repercussions and even death that may follow.

There have been more than a couple of times in my life when I have gone with what the group (or highly regarded individual) thinks or says instead of following my inner guidance.  In a recent interview with Healer and Reikki Master Shannon Ogg on Blog Talk Radio’s Hope42Day I learned that a rash of panic attacks and anxiety about scuba diving over the last several years may have resulted from vestiges of grief that I have been carrying around since 2001 when we were on vacation in Cozumel and my 14 year old Cairn Terrier, Breakfast, became suddenly ill.  What I did was stay in Cozumel and talk back and forth long distance with a good friend of mine who knew Breakfast and a lot about medicine. This friend worked with the vet to see what could be done for Breakfast and ultimately I had to make the decision to put her to sleep.

In my gut of guts during that time what I wanted to do was to abort my vacation, get on a plane and return home to take care of my dog.  Instead, I was not there to see what was going on and make the hard decision based on that and so my grief was all bagged up like full water balloons within my chest for quite a long time.  On top of that, I added my guilt for not going home to be with my dog and for staying on vacation because, after all, “she was just a dog” and this vacation was had already been re-scheduled due to 9/11 when we had made our first attempt to leave.  What I know today is that no matter what anyone says to me, I’m the one who is going to have to live with me and the decisions I make.   Yes, I have learned to forgive myself and yes, I have let go of beating myself up about this particular incident.

I wanted to share this with you as an example of going the distance for yourself and your own conscious. In “The Conspirator”, the defense attorney decides to go the distance for his client, Mary Suratt, because of his belief in a fair trial by jury and his dawning understanding of why he fought in the war.  In “Of Gods and Men” each of the monks have to wrestle with their own conscious and crisis of faith to make the best choice for themselves that they can live (or die) with.

We make decisions about following our conscious or not all the time, every day and most of us will never have to make a decision based on life or death.  But don’t you think that every decision we make that we follow our conscious on is one tiny building block to who we are and will become? There was one monk in particular who I really related to regarding his crisis of faith because as he struggled through figuring out what decision he needed to make, there were times that he felt like he prayed to God and no none answered.  I so  know that feeling when you’re in utter despair or desperation and really asking for guidance from something/someone/anyone (God, Angels, guides, ancestors, etc.) and it seems like you can hear the echo of your voice going on in waves through the vortex of time.

In my experience, that is usually because I already know the answer that I need to make for myself, but I’m hoping I can return it for full money back with no questions asked.

What conscious decision are you willing to go the distance for today?

Breakfast Kindler