Intentional conscience (ICA)

Description

This occurs as a person stands alone before his decision, facing no limits and feeling totally unconstrained. There is a sense of being lost in a wilderness and charting a path through it all alone. After their daughter had been in a coma for many months, the parents of Karen Quilan went to court to get permission to disconnect the life-support systems, not knowing if she would die or live once this was done. Simon Bolivar embodied this position too, when he decided that becoming a dictator was the only choice he had if Greater Colombia were to survive, having fought all his life against the ruling dictatorship.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. The agony is keeping one's own conscience when whatever one decides will be condemned from one side or another. While knowing that every decision one makes is significant, one realizes that what one decides may not help at all and yet that the alternative to not deciding is to turn into stone. There is a feeling that everything one has ever done was preparation for this moment and this really is what life is about. In the process of deciding, an individual finds he trusts his intuitions and lets the consequences take their course. It begins to come clear that history really is changed by ordinary people making decisions which affect their lives and the lives of others.