Conscience

Awhile back Paul (probably a long while back) was mentioning the central role of conscience in the Work. I never really singled it out in my own writings. I think I was, though, when talking about discernment and being able to discern 'on-the-mark/off-the-mark'.

Going through Ouspensky's Fourth Way I came across a short definition of conscience O. gave which is worth sending along:

"Conscience can be defined as an emotional feeling of truth on a given subject."

I remember now, I did write on conscience. I connected it with my own experience of becoming awake to all the kinds of lying we engage in. That is conscience becoming unburied. It started with me before I connected with the Work. Like, you say something, then you pause and your eyes drift away, and you say, "That's really not true." Or, you see and note a contradiction in yourself, what you've said, your actions, beliefs, etc. Or, you state that you dislike something, then you state that you've engaged in the same behavior. That is conscience becoming unburied.

Ouspensky I think gave some unhelpful - or clumsy - descriptions of conscience in the same section of the Fourth Way. Not necessarily wrong, but clumsy. Saying conscience is feeling every emotion all at once that you can feel towards something. I can see what he was getting at, but it was a clumsy way of putting it (and I recall later in the section when it became obvious he confused his hearers he kind of admitted it was a clumsy way of putting it), and that might have steered me away from focusing more on conscience in my own notes on the Work.

But it's clear conscience is the control center. Consciousness - in intellectual center - is important too, but it's a slower center and it wavers weak and strong so dramatically, so that our level of consciousness can't really be a steady watchman. When conscience, though, is on watch we can really know, for instance, when we have gotten into (or are getting into) a state of strong identification; or that we are internally-considering; or that we are indulging negative imagination, etc.

Conscience like that appears after we have done a lot of self-remembering work.

It's clear in this sense that a working conscience is a part of Real Will.