Wisdom and Conscience

Conscience is the seed of wisdom. If we follow our conscience, it branches out, well beyond considerations of right and wrong, to all manner of wise choices and actions. This is where we start an effective path toward wisdom, by paying careful attention to the promptings of our conscience, reality testing those promptings, and then acting in accord with them.

When we face a choice, one side of which we want to follow, while something inside nudges us toward the other as the right thing to do, we may well be in a moment of conscience, a moment of choosing to follow our better angels, or not. Noticing that inner nudge is the crucial first step with conscience. This means both perceiving that intuitive signal and recognizing its import. This is the moment of allowing conscience to communicate to us, the moment of not blocking or ignoring or sweeping it aside, despite any inclinations to do so.

Testing that prompt means seeing whether it accords with common sense, as well as with the norms and laws of our society. Will it harm anyone, including us? Will it help in some way? If it passes this reality check, we need to accept and act on it.

Otherwise, by going against a recognizable instance of conscience, we add yet another layer of insulation between our ordinary self and our conscience. Each such layer makes it a little less likely that we will even recognize our conscience when it does prod us. If it is inconvenient, if we do not want to hear it, we may shunt it aside and turn away from it, sweep it into our unconscious, and hope it does not disturb us again. This coarsens us, thickening our wall of egoism.

A busy mind does not hear conscience. A reacting heart does not feel conscience. A self-centered ego does not want conscience to interfere with its preferences, opinions, and choices. Well-conducted inner work heals such obstacles and opens us to conscience, whereupon conscience itself begins supporting this purification. We begin to recognize that conscience is sacred, arising from a sacred source, the same source as wisdom, and that conscience is one part of the stream of wisdom, Holy wisdom.

Conscience comes from beyond our mind. Its subtle signals well up into our inner world, suddenly appearing as if from nowhere and orienting us to the right direction. Learning to hear our conscience, trust it, and act in accord with it, enables the source of conscience to trust us, creating a channel of wisdom in our personal life.

Meditation helps by quieting our mind and its biases, sensitizing us to the promptings that do arise. It also pacifies our reactive emotions so that we can feel what is real in our situation, not just what we think of it and how we react to it. Prayer helps purify us and raises the level of our emotional life beyond the purely personal, while still respecting our needs and preferences. Presence brings us exquisitely into the moment, the only place of conscience, illuminating our motivations. All of this trains us to live from the inner stillness, even in the midst of life, the stillness that makes room for wisdom.

Such inner work removes our insulation, making our inner world more transparent and allowing the light of wisdom to shine through. We begin to live by conscience. Even in the chaos of arising thoughts, emotions, desires, opinions, or impulses to the contrary, we act according to conscience and know that we will do so in the future. No doubts about that remain. This is how conscience takes root and becomes us. This is how we come to live by conscience. A clear conscience removes obstacles to freedom, creativity, and joy.

For this week, please pay extra attention to your moments of conscience.

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