Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience

The fool who knows he is a fool

Is that much wiser.

The fool who thinks he is wise

Is a fool indeed . . .

For a while the fool’s mischief

Tastes sweet, sweet as honey.

But in the end it turns bitter.

And how bitterly he suffers!

(Buddha. Dhammapada, 25, 26)

A good friend of mine who is in the Work recently wrote me, “ . . . I feel like a raging, raging hypocrite . . . ” Of course she does. It cannot be otherwise. This is the sign that in me, conscience* has awakened. And unless and until I shift course, the suffering of conscience will torment me and be unbearable. Many seek any diversion from “feeling” this suffering. Traditionally, these distractions take five forms: money, sex, power, fame, drugs (of all kinds, including food, relationships which are fear-based, shopping, technologies of all kinds, etc.). When I suffer from conscience, the reaction of the human biological instrument—which is a mammal instrument—is simply fight or flight. Which is why we have the directives in the practice of self observation not to change (fight) what is observed (“seeing”) and to “feel” it (not to run away from it).

As I am, every time I violate conscience, I am a hypocrite. Period. And I must stand in that feeling. I must feel it without running away via distractions. I must suffer voluntarily. My friend’s letter was written by one who feels the pulsations of suffering conscience, though she does not yet know that is what she feels or why it is so unbearable. She can run from it, but she cannot hide; there is nowhere to hide. Her conscience has awakened, and she suffers. She “sees” that she is a hypocrite. So do I. I who write to you and instruct you in this practice, suffer my hypocrisy. There is no other suffering quite like it. It is bearable, only just barely. And this pulsation of suffering from the Creator does not judge, it does not condemn, it simply suffers. It will suffer until I make it right, whatever it was I did which caused it to suffer in the first place. At some point in my development, it is impossible to ignore this suffering. I cannot rest easy until I have made it right.

The miracle of conscience is just this: all I have to do is “see” and “feel” It will do the inner Work of transformation. It is doing this in me. I am a witness to its actions upon me as a being. It is accomplishing the changes within, not me. I cannot change. But I can “see” and “feel,” and by so doing, I can undergo voluntary suffering. The rest is lawful.

If conscience is God—and I do not have any evidence to the contrary, nor any reason to doubt this teaching—then when I violate conscience within me, it is the suffering of the Creator which I am allowed to feel. This is a whole other kind of grace, given to those who wish to Work and willingly, voluntarily do so. The door is opened for me to feel the consequences of my own behavior upon the Creator. Consider what this means for you as a human being.

So do not despair. Continue to “see” and “feel.” Continue to observe. Follow the law, let nothing come between you and the law. The law will transform you. You can trust the law; conscience is the law. It can be trusted, always and in everything. I love her hypocrisy because I understand what it means. But from one hypocrite to another, it is easier by far for me to see your hypocrisy than to see my own.

Just today I went over to my office to do some work on my poetry. I told my wife I would be gone for maybe two hours. But when I got there, problems with the computer arose, the task was much more detailed than I had anticipated, and I wound up spending much of the day there, maybe six-seven hours. Workmen had disconnected my phone, so I couldn’t call her from my office to let her know. It never occurred to me to go to another office, or downstairs to the main office to call. When I got home, she was in a state, upset, hurt and angry. But she sat down and talked to me in a pretty level voice, making a stand for wishing that her feelings be considered and that I be a man of my word, reliable and considerate. I was defensive and offended, full of justifications for my actions. Momentarily I defended and excused, my own hypocrisy, but conscience was giving its still, small pulsation of remorse. And I knew she was right. Pretty soon I apologized.

Her response was that I didn’t mean it because I wasn’t feeling it. This was only half-right. She was right that I did not feel like apologizing. I felt like lashing out in defense and retaliation for being exposed. This was a well-known “i” in me, an easily offended, hostile, cold, retaliatory and crude “i” with no respect for the Work or others, only wishing to be right and get even. So there was that in me. At the same time, there was an aim in me to do the right thing, no matter how I felt or what mood was in me. I was committed to the practice of doing the right thing, operating from basic goodness, even when I didn’t feel it. I meant the apology, even though at that moment I didn’t feel like apologizing, I felt like striking back. I meant it even if I didn’t feel it. So my point is simple: do the right thing even when you don’t feel like it. In this way I deal with my own hypocrisy. This was a moment of another kind of self remembering: in the midst of a certain mood (an inner small “i”) I found myself, managed the body, and remembered my aim. My wife’s willingness to talk it through triggered the wish to remember the Work and act on it. Here is a case where one person’s level and honest response helped me to behave in a finer way, from basic goodness. If she hadn’t done so? I don’t know; don’t ask.