Conscience

Hi Rev Billy,

I enjoyed this paragraph that you wrote entitled "Conscience".  I especially enjoyed the point you made of striving to become one with your conscience and actually inhabiting and BEING "the right thing" to where it becomes effortless.  This takes practice but is not exeptionally difficult to obtain.

Sometimes this might take an effort on our parts to "CON SCIENCE", so to speak.  To spit at scientific thinkers and know-it-alls who forget that know one knows why we are here and that science is not an exact science.  They have no respect for the mystery of life. 

It reminds me of a line from a song which brings up a similar concept.  The song is called, "Letter To The Graduate", by The Silver Jews.

It goes: 

              "Don't believe in people who say it's all been done.
               They have time to talk becaus their race is run".



I say, "CON SCIENCE!"

Con science into understanding that it is not always right, by being that magical exeption to the rule in whatever you do. 


 

lack of conscience in the world makes me doubt whether people have free will. Maybe earth is populated with automans doing what is dictated by a higher metaphysic, and not the sentient and thoughtful humans we are claimed to be.

 I have learned to "invite" my conscience for the mere selfish reason of enjoying a good night's sleep.

my relationship to the very word feels lucid and liquidity. much like i experience "intuition". a very peculiar and sweet relationship with oneself. a keen listening.

while it can be perceived that the conscience is like an external, more "god-like" voice that inspires or instructs one towards right action from without, i experience "the conscience" as a soft voice from within, part-of, and not separate from ourselves.

i wonder though... where does this conscience exist? is it in the body? is it learned? developed? can it be eradicated? reshaped like silly putty? is it on one's shoulder? and what if someone is feeling they lack a conscience...? where do they begin? i've heard the conscience is the soul, and if someone were lacking soul, where DO they begin...?

hmmnnn... wasn't it a little disney character that said: "always let your conscience be your guide"? (not sure where that's going... but my conscience tells me not to trust a little talking cricket...)

you've inspired much contemplation Reverend...!

Our conscious, while it may feel like our own, like a voice of reason or love speaking from our heart, it often seems to me a collective set of values built by society and passed down for generations.

I'm reminded of a moment when I discovered that there was a phrase I say all the time in daily life: "it's hard"...work is hard, relationships are hard, exercise is hard...etc. This is like my viewpoint on life from which my conscious arises. I take on challenges and hardships and I want to help people in hard situations. I thought I had had an epiphany about my identity and how it influences my conscious: I put myself in hard situations so that if I fail it was "because it was hard" and if I succeed "it is a triumph!" The night of this discovery I was visiting my parents and when I came back to their house my mother was sitting in the living room. I sat down next to her and her first words were, "Work was so hard today." I realized I had invented nothing, the conversations in my head and in my life were not my own but my mother's my grandmothers and on and on and on.

THanks Rev Billy for continuing to do the right thing in speech, song, action and intention. 

How does a man or woman stay a good husband? father? mother? wife? son? daughter?  neighbor?  friend? lover?  citizen?  leader?

CONVERT lust to love, envy to appreciation, neediness to generosity and retribution, retaliation -even deserved anger - to acceptance (of person's heart and soul, not action from their hands or mouth)

Easy to remember just AFTER being angry, greedy, needy or vengeful.  That's why it's good to treat these words as mantras so they may be floating around when we most need them and hoepfuly they will show up to save us from our not so highest selves

THanks Rev Billy for continuing to do the right thing in speech, song, action and intention.
CONVERT lust to love, envy to appreciation, neediness to generosity and retribution, retaliation -even deserved anger - to acceptance (of person's heart and soul, not action from their hands or mouth)