This question surprised me at first because I didn’t see it on an existential level but rather on a moral level (and religions are full of edicts of good and bad conscience). Especially with the adjectives “good” and “bad,” for me that implied a judgment and didn’t fit with an existential understanding. It made me think of guilt, a feeling that used to constantly inhabit me regardless of context. Then, looking at the question on an existential level, it occurred to me that “having a good conscience” would simply be being oneself, being true to one’s being with its highs and lows, truth and falsehood, when the false is not illuminated by consciousness (blind spots) and putting an end to the false as soon as it’s unmasked. Having a “bad conscience” would be living in pretense, a false personality, straying consciously and willingly.

For me, “having a good conscience” seems to be a justification for explaining or excusing an action or choice. It seems to me that refers to a set of values one carries inside. Maybe even beliefs… it has nothing to do with action (or non-action) that springs fairly and spontaneously from the heart and partakes of life. “Bad conscience” can also refer to values one has instilled in oneself (or others have instilled). But it can also be an expression of remorse felt after failing oneself.

For me it’s very simple: bad conscience is when I know I haven’t followed the momentum of my heart arising from the void (meaning I’ve given in to self-interest). It has nothing to do with anyone or anything other than me. Good conscience is just the natural state when I live naturally from the crystallization arising from the void.

This expression surprised me. It had disappeared from my vocabulary long ago. I tend to associate “good conscience” with blind self-satisfaction, and “bad conscience” with guilt. So, nothing interesting on either side. For me, conscience is neither good nor bad, it simply is; it bathes me, whether I’m connected to it or not. It sends me signals whether I pay attention or not.
I had started writing yesterday what you’ve just read, without sending it, because I had a feeling of incompleteness. That evening, I “coincidentally” met someone who had led me into something I should have refused (it dated back fifty years! And I’d been avoiding this person whom I hadn’t seen in several years.) And “bad conscience,” guilt set in right away. Today it’s very present, and I see this “bad conscience” as a spur pushing me to ask for the grace to transform the guilt into compassion, for her and for me. “Good conscience” is the joyful lightness that goes with taking action when it needs to happen.

Good conscience means thinking “right” and doing the “right” thing. Bad conscience is everything else. Good conscience is tied to being. Bad conscience is tied to personality. Bad conscience doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll do something illegal or harmful to others. It’s possible we’ll convince ourselves procrastination is justified or laziness is well-deserved rest. And maybe there are no immediate consequences. But listening to bad conscience reinforces the grip personality has over conscience.

For me, bad conscience summons up old memories tied to my mother. I was almost never able to show affection verbally or physically, whereas overall I’m grateful to her for what she gave me. Even on her deathbed when she was sick, still no gestures or words although I knew death was imminent. Later the bad conscience of not having tried anything knocked on my soul’s and body’s door. It preoccupied me for years. It’s only recently I’ve been able to remember those moments telling myself I did what I could do, without forcing myself, because facing my inability and pain seemed insurmountable to me. Today in a soft, joyful emotion I hug her in my arms and thank her for her entire contribution to my life today.
For me, bad conscience affects the physical, mental and emotional.
Good conscience is less clear to me. I think I confuse it with the satisfaction of having completed something important I didn’t feel up to doing; the satisfaction of having helped without reward and spontaneously. I remember spending hours on the phone with a friend who was always distressed romantically, relationally, financially. There was satisfaction from responding to her distress, like a duty of friendship but it was always tinged with dissatisfaction telling myself, “When’s the next call for help coming?”

From what I understand, good or bad conscience have to do with a feeling of guilt, with the good/evil duality.
One can have a “good conscience,” “act in good conscience,” or “give oneself good conscience.” But it’s not proof of sincerity and honesty toward oneself and others, nor a sign of being able to put oneself in others’ shoes. It can happen that “in good conscience” I think I’m doing good but if I haven’t truly considered the other person, putting myself in his shoes, I can act counter to what is desirable for him. It can lead to terrible self-deception. We believe we’re righteous, acting for the [good of the other person or people, and doing them incredible harm. The Catholic religion has many examples…and so does politics! Coluche (a French humorist) understood it well: “It’s not complicated, in politics you just need to have a good conscience, and for that you need a bad memory!”.
Bad conscience: an uneasy mind, having something to blame yourself for. Translation: guilty conscience.
There, I can fall into guilt, something is gnawing at me, the feeling I acted wrongly.
In conclusion, remaining profoundly sincere and honest with oneself and others, denouncing what’s false and what’s true, is more important for me than trying to have a good conscience or feeling a bad conscience.

Good conscience acts based on the very essence of the human being and is not subject to the spirit of the times or to current fashion. Bad conscience, on the other hand, has no roots and is partly driven by prevailing opinions, partly a product of the psychic suffering stemming from man’s false identity.

For me, good and bad conscience are tied to moral notions of good and evil. I would say 90% of it comes from something acquired, so we have good or bad conscience according to our conditioning. But it seems to me there is also a natural, innate notion of good and evil, and our good conscience depends on that. In that case, bad conscience should be seen as useful information alerting me to my behaviour.

Those terms don’t really speak to me, but I will still say something about them.
If I feel bad conscience inside me, it’s going to push me to take action, for example to repair something.
I see it as a signal that I have betrayed something sacred inside me. It resembles having remorse a lot.
On the other hand, having a good conscience doesn’t speak to me. It sounds like an excuse, a lie one doesn’t want to admit to oneself.
In fact, simply having conscience is enough, it seems to me…the heart shows the way.

I will have a bad conscience if I feel deep down I haven’t acted according to my instinct and values, in order to gain some benefit I’m not admitting to myself. If I’m owning up to that interest/benefit in any case, I’ll have a good conscience about it.
I’ll have a good conscience if I have the serene feeling of having remained whole and open.

Here is what I understand from that first paragraph, matching what I already thought:
Acting against one’s natural momentum, one’s pure heart–meaning, giving in to self-interest (and I think we can generalize that), triggers bad conscience.
In a way, one “creates Karma” for oneself.
This bad conscience will cause internal, mental, physical tension, and in my opinion also on a “quantum” level, which over time will crystallize more and more deeply and lead to mental and/or physical illness and probably “quantum” illness.
The nervous system is poisoned and a loop is created with the resulting physical sensations, causing an addiction.
The person creates a deleterious destiny for themselves.

Acting in line with one’s natural momentum allows us to maintain good health on all levels, to remain clean/pure, without poison, and to fulfill our true destiny.

I’m remembering the example I gave about good conscience. It was the example of my friend who had all kinds of worries, occupying my thoughts, calling me for hours. In fact, we don’t do something to give ourselves good conscience, we do it, as O. said, to follow the momentum of the heart.
So by starting off with that mistaken attitude, it could only go wrong and at the end when I hung up the phone, I would say to myself, “When’s the next call coming?” I realize that now, because currently that kind of exchange with my friend doesn’t happen at all anymore. I must have understood something, without putting it into words because it’s already been several months that our interactions are very fluid, much shorter and I pick up the phone easily when she’s on the other end. I don’t “give myself good conscience” anymore and our relationship is much more friendly. It’s truly very different. That’s the only example that comes to mind right now.”

Oh yes, it’s quite possible, it’s even certain. I had never thought about that.

In fact you have to seize the moment of the heart’s momentum and flee the thought of choosing to give yourself a clear conscience, it really has to be cut off, evacuated, simply seize the moment of the heart’s momentum.

I had understood these notions by connecting them to what I had been taught about religion. I had misinterpreted it in fact. After reading what W wrote, and also O’s explanation, it is much clearer.

For me it is still difficult to know what the momentum of the heart is, if it is a momentum of the heart or not. I think of a very sick person that I feel unable to help. She always wants me to help her but I am unable to, so I don’t answer her calls, I play dead, which does not give me a clear conscience. Is this guilt? I don’t know.

I have a question: in your experiences, does anyone have an example of a bad conscience that is not guilt?

But is the bad conscience like the guardrails on the highway that remind you “be careful you are going out of the lane”?

So the metaphor is: you are on the road, you have a clear conscience and you never see either the bad conscience or the guilt. But if at some point you touch the bad conscience, that’s when you have the choice to come back to the clear conscience; it just sent out an alert; or you can keep going into the guardrail and there you will really feel the bad conscience and guilt.

But we said that guilt and bad conscience go together.

I don’t see how you can have a bad conscience without guilt. It’s also N.’s question, she doesn’t see the bad conscience without guilt.

Yes I understand completely. But if we have accumulated a bad conscience, can we get rid of it all at once? Can we over time, through good actions, clean or erase it? Or just cut it?

I’m not sure, I always feel this clumsiness or guilt. Not always but often.

Are you really talking about guilt or is it rather this big emptiness inside?

Yes, it may be this big emptiness.

Yes. Maybe there is some confusion between feeling guilty and feeling like you did something wrong?

In my experience, when there is guilt, others enter the game. But when there is remorse, you are alone in the game with yourself.

I even feel like remorse comes from the heart while guilt does not come from the heart at all.

It also seems to me that guilt is passive, while with remorse, we will repair the fault we made. Guilt goes around in circles inside us, hollows us out and exhausts us. Remorse induces a reparative energy for our error, while guilt traps this energy under a slab where it cannot unfold, preventing us from restoring harmony in and around us. It continues to exclude us from the flow of life while we remain self-centered and fruitlessly torment ourselves from within.

Yes, it seems to me that what I have just discovered in relation to the heart and where it comes from makes things clear.

It occurred to me at the very end of the zoom session that remorse induces an energy that repairs our error, whereas guilt encloses this energy under a blanket that prevents it from unfolding, “hollowing out” us and blocking us from re-establishing harmony within and around us. Guilt continues to exclude us from the flow of life, while we remain self-centered and needlessly gnaw at our inner selves…

I even have the impression that this is the insidious mechanism into which the majority of people who end up leaving the group fall: we lie to ourselves for comfort, or to escape the discomfort caused by a “score” or a situation experienced in the group, so we deny everything we’ve understood within the group, and thanks to it. Or we take full credit for it, out of sheer pride: “I’ve done it on my own, I don’t need them”, or we lie to ourselves by giving false reasons for leaving: “I’ve found another guide who suits me better”.
“And, of course, we persuade ourselves that it’s a good thing. And, of course, we convince ourselves of having made the right choice, giving ourselves a pseudo-“good conscience”.
In short, we lie to ourselves from beginning to end, and above all we refuse to listen to the little “dissident” voice whispering that we’ve made a big mistake, and so we avoid remorse, and the effort of humility to perhaps try to come back despite all the obstacles linked to this return.

I sincerely pray that it never comes to that, because nothing is won in advance!

It occurred to me this morning, almost at the same time as W. sent the above message, that more than a “good” or “bad” conscience, one could speak of a healthy or unhealthy conscience. It sounds like a detail, but for me it makes all the difference, because it eliminates the whole good-evil opposition with which our Judeo-Christian society is deeply imbued. What does a healthy conscience mean to me? It’s a healthy conscience, and to act with a healthy conscience is to act according to my impulses, whether they be from the heart, the intellectual center or the physical center. And, above all, it means taking full responsibility for my choices. To affirm that I always have the choice (unless a blind spot makes me act otherwise, but that’s where friends are invaluable in uncovering this kind of non-consensual misdirection): the choice to take the direction dictated by my healthy conscience. And it’s possible that I’m completely wrong, but I assume my choice by not feeling guilty, by feeling remorse and repairing if necessary, or by adjusting the action.
To act from an unhealthy conscience is to act by making choices dictated by my own self-interest: it may be, for example, not assuming my skills and minimizing them to avoid being solicited.
Guilt has been a big issue in my life and it was dictated by a truly sick conscience, I realize every time I experience an event that would have once pressed the guilt button.

It’s a fantastic subject! I look at it this way… Imagine a clear pond. That’s the good conscience. Then there’s some disturbance, the mud is stirred up and the water becomes murky. That’s bad conscience. If this happens, there is no clarity. The more I moves, the more disorder there is. The longer it takes for things to become clear again. What makes the mud rise? Anger, guilt, doubt, insecurity, fear, envy and procrastination. But security comes from faith (in nothing), which is basic trust. What do I notice when I’m in good conscience? I feel a sense of power. Not that healthy awareness is in itself a powerful state. I think it’s more the bad conscience I used to succumb to in order to cut myself off from my personal power. I can see it now. I was the wolves of insecurity and doubt dressed in the sheep’s clothing of sincerity. Oh… one more thing… The more attention I pay to good conscience, the easier it is to recognize bad conscience. A bit like buying a brand-new car, loving it and cleaning it regularly, and thirty meters away, you can see that a bird has just soiled it… There’s more. Bad conscience can hide. It can hide in your physical movements. That’s why the Feldenkrais Method is so useful.

Indeed, this is an important subject with unsuspected ramifications. I’ll give an example that doesn’t concern me but that I find very telling in this respect:
One man, whose testimony I heard last weekend, explained that during the first Covid lockdown, he had gone into a store to do his shopping and, as he passed the till, a tall black man wearing no mask asked him for alms. The man who testified refused and quickly walked away, even though his natural impulse was to give money to the homeless whenever he could. When he returned home, he analyzed the situation, not feeling well at all, and realized that he had refused the alms simply because he had been afraid that the tall black man would transmit the virus to him, and not because he didn’t want to give money. He was shocked to see what this fear was capable of doing to him. He then prayed fervently all week that the big black man would be back in the store he’d been in that day, and when he went back the following week, indeed the big black man was there still without a mask and so he was able to give him some money and have a little chat with him. He felt relieved that he’d been able to make amends. Since then, the big black man has disappeared, never to be seen again…
When I speak of unsuspected ramifications, in this particular case, the man who testified felt no guilt, or at least he didn’t testify to it, he said he felt selfish because he had acted against his deepest desire and natural impulse out of fear. And this had nothing to do with “giving” or “not giving”.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject.
To act with a healthy/serene conscience is to act with the awareness that we are doing something good or right, in harmony with life, in the service of the living and the sacred.
To act with an unhealthy conscience is to act with the awareness that we are doing something wrong or unhealthy, that denies life and makes it dirty.
In my opinion, the difficulty lies in being aware of it at the very moment when it happens, because it seems to me that it’s very often unconscious or hardly conscious at all.
Are there really situations where we knowingly act out of a bad/unhealthy conscience? Where we act knowing we’re going to do harm?
As far as I was concerned, I tended to be aware of having done something wrong afterwards, but not at the time (when I got angry, for example, the guilty conscience and remorse came right afterwards).
Here’s an example that happened to me yesterday. It’s been a while since I’ve been confronted with this; yesterday I was very tired at work, and I felt a guilty conscience coming on in response to a customer, in the form of arrogance.
I felt like there was an alarm button flashing red inside me, alerting me, at the very moment this arrogance appeared. I was able, with some effort, to push it aside, and relax.
But this little extra effort I had to make felt very important, I felt I had to sacrifice something to make the process happen. Then came the relaxation.
For me, I notice it happens when there’s a struggle between my inner ecology (mainly if I’m tired or stressed,) and the situation.
There’s probably some confusion between ecology and self-interest.

I have a fairly recent example where I forced myself to throw away something that clearly my conscience didn’t want me to throw away. But someone else absolutely wanted to throw it away. It may seem trivial because it was only material, but I still remember that scene with the thing to be thrown away on the table, and me, hesitating to do it, really disturbed. I did it to stop a behavior that I felt was harassing me and that was beginning to undermine me, out of self-interest, to stop feeling the necessary suffering, but also because I felt threatened by the person who absolutely wanted me to throw the thing away without hearing my arguments.
Then, when the person knew I’d thrown it away, she gave me a response that showed me just how wrong I’d been. From that moment on, I promised myself that it would never happen again, and that if it did, I would hold the person responsible.
It’s a horrible feeling and sensation to go against your conscience, I felt really unclean and betrayed myself.

I’m a bit puzzled not to be able to find a specific example of this situation, even though I’ve experienced it many times. However, I have the impression that it hasn’t happened to me over the last few months. But I trust life to expose me to it again. What I can see quite clearly, however, is that these situations of guilty conscience quickly relegated to oblivion occurred systematically during my procrastinations. I remember this kind of struggle between the will to postpone a necessary action to preserve my comfort of the moment, and that little voice telling me that I’ve got to go and do what I’ve got to do, right now. I’m reminded of the weakness I’ve often shown in deciding to procrastinate. The result is a kind of false relief that I immediately try to validate by convincing myself (?) that I’ll have plenty of time to get on with it later. And then there’s this urge to quickly move on to something else… precisely so as not to feel remorse: quickly go and have a bite to eat, or make myself a cup of coffee or anything else that gives me pleasure, so that this little satisfaction camouflages the discomfort of a guilty conscience! But following the situations that generated my guilty conscience, I remember well that feeling of being weak, of having betrayed myself, with the bitterness that goes with it.

I’ve had regular reminders of my past actions that have provoked unhealthy consciousness in me. Most of the time it’s fine, but sometimes, like this morning, it unfolds, it’s very painful and I feel like dying.
I’m still functional, and given my professional workload, it’s painful. I experience it as purgatory, out of my control, there’s nothing to do but open myself up to whatever God wants to do with me at this level. It’s my choice, and I’m serene with that choice (healthy conscience).
One aspect of this unhealthy awareness: in the past, I have regularly filtered information in the direction that the other person had bad intentions towards me.
But deep down I knew it wasn’t true. And I regularly acted out under these conditions, in an unhealthy game of trying to get the person to recognize something they hadn’t actually done. I feel ashamed. It’s me who had a bad intention towards the person. For me, recognizing this is an act of serene awareness.

My understanding is that serene awareness is naturally present in respect for oneself and others, and that unhealthy awareness exists when we go against what we feel is true and innate in ourselves. The relationship is as important as the relationship with oneself.
In my case, it’s when I don’t trust my feelings enough and don’t assert what I feel to be true within me calmly. It’s when I question my feelings and analyze them, for example, or when I rely too much on others.
An example where I’ve acted on an unhealthy conscience?
I’d rather see it the other way round: having an unhealthy awareness without really recognizing it, until it becomes clearer through experience and leads to a shift towards serene awareness. The whole process is a journey from biased behavior to appeased behavior.
I remember a guy in my class who everyone made fun of; I went along with it because it put me in front of the others. But I had an unhealthy awareness of it, and I felt as belittled myself as I did him.
So if the question was whether I did it when I knew I shouldn’t, the answer is yes, and I’ve learned from the mistake so as not to repeat it again; at least the mistake of putting myself first at the expense of the other person.

In my opinion, a healthy conscience is part of good character. Is it linked to basic values? I’m not sure. But I do think that a healthy conscience at least makes it more likely that the core value will be expressed. Healthy conscience is what people call “being a good person”. Living in accordance with human values.
I’ve given it a lot of thought. The only thing that comes to mind is that years ago, I was arguing with my wife. It was a bit of back and forth. I don’t remember the details. But, at some point, I completely gave up any pretense of trying to be right. I realized she’d said something true. I said, “It’s true, you’re right.” The temptation was great to keep trying to “be right”. But I pushed that aside and returned to a serene consciousness. I was also happy to let it go and be done with it.

I see I haven’t written about my understanding of serene and unhealthy consciousness. What I understand is that unhealthy consciousness creates karma, an impediment, a weight, which prevents the expression of destiny. Only by living in serene consciousness can one become a work of God.

The serene conscience is the one that leaves me in peace, the unhealthy conscience nibbles away at this peace or seriously undermines it, depending on the slip.
I’ve already given an example of unhealthy awareness, where I was doing a job that required concentration, and had to stop when a client arrived. And there it was: a failure to welcome the necessary suffering! So I addressed the client coldly.
As I write this example, I realize that not welcoming the necessary suffering is what then makes me slip into not welcoming the other!

I’ve found over the last few days that I’ve always been able (sometimes with a squeegee) to welcome the necessary suffering, and therefore no unhealthy conscience.
For me, there’s this notion of making an effort, this “little” extra gesture… is it the acceptance of necessary suffering? Is it the gesture of rejecting unhealthy consciousness? It’s hard to say.

Healthy consciousness is one in which I feel whole, aligned with myself at the deepest level, and at peace.
Unhealthy conscience is when I don’t listen to healthy conscience, when it’s masked by self-interest and often, lack of courage.
I haven’t found any recent examples of unhealthy consciousness, but I do remember one time when, on my way to the cash dispenser, I waited for the person in front of me to finish before approaching. I saw that he had left 100 euros in the dispenser. I grabbed them and ran after him to give them back. It was obvious, no questions asked, and I know that if I hadn’t done it, I would have felt betrayed. A real sense of disgust.
I also recovered memories of not listening to my little inner voice (the healthy conscience) to do as the others did, not to be the black sheep of the group, which left a bitter taste in my mouth.
In my research on this subject, I found the cases where “I don’t know”. In fact, these are often complex choices between A and B, where the mind can’t come up with a good solution. And then, through reflection and sharing, there was a “eureka” moment.
It occurred to me, as a child, that when I followed my intuition, adults sometimes showed me that I was wrong. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I do know that I made the existential decision that rational decisions were superior to intuition, which is all too often wrong. Recalling this brought tears to my eyes, and I saw the trauma of the child in me and all the life decisions that followed, and the mechanics I set up with the belief: “Intuition is fine as long as it can be justified or rationalized before acting. Irrational decisions based on intuition alone are unacceptable.”
This explains why I have trouble hearing my healthy conscience intuitions in some cases and even following W’s irrational intuitions.
At that moment, I made the existential decision to erase my decision to be a child and give back my life.
Priority to intuition and the heart, and I feel as if a precipice is opening up before me…

Healthy awareness, for me, is accompanied by a joy, subterranean, subtle, but very much there. The feeling that I could die tomorrow, but that it can also go on, no problem. A kind of peace and luminosity.
As for unhealthy consciousness, I haven’t found a recent example of a specific act that might have provoked it. But if I allow myself to be encumbered by preoccupations, and don’t give myself the necessary time to savour and give thanks, then “the light dims”, and I can name the resulting malaise as a form of unhealthy consciousness.

For me, having a clear conscience is like seeing a job through to the end, and it brings calm and tranquility. Acting with a clear conscience leaves no trace on me.
It’s not the same with a guilty conscience.
I was shocked early this morning when I remembered the death of my autistic cat.
It was two years ago, and I had left my sick cat in the care of a neighbor for ten days. When I came back after a long drive, around 11 o’clock in the evening, he was lying on the floor. He had obviously been waiting by the door, and died shortly before I arrived.
And then, instead of settling down, taking the time to find a cloth to wrap him in, to take care of his body, as it were, I called the neighbor, we put the body of the cat in a garbage bag, dug a hole nearby and voilà! It was over in a quarter of an hour.
In fact, this memory has been weighing on me ever since. It’s not necessarily guilt, but the haste with which I acted to get rid of the problem leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I think I acted with an unhealthy conscience.
It gave me a shock that I felt in my heart this morning.

I haven’t answered the question of the definition of healthy versus unhealthy consciousness either. So there you have it:
A healthy/serene consciousness is one that unfolds in a space of peace and fullness, something round and soft. From this space, the core value embodied in me can develop, in a totally natural way.
An unhealthy conscience is one that knows that what is unfolding is not in line with the values that animate me, and that I amnot following a path of the heart.

Calming your conscience and having a clear conscience are not the same thing. Sometimes it’s the little things in everyday life that make my conscience sit up and take notice. Yesterday, I had a long conversation with someone who has, so to speak, very strong opinions about humanity. I’ve sometimes expressed these opinions about certain people in public life. Immediately, my conscience came to the fore and revealed that I had overstepped the mark.
As far as pure consciousness is concerned, I agree with O., who formulated it in the same way: only by living in pure consciousness can one become a work of God.

Some time ago, I fell and hurt my wrist. After a week, as the pain persisted, I wanted to know for sure, and life allowed me to quickly find an appointment for an X-ray the following Friday. The X-ray confirmed two cracks, so a cast had to be put on quickly. That too was done quickly. So here I am with my forearm wrapped in a resin “plaster”. I was still able to continue working. Shortly afterwards, in the middle of the night, I received an injunction to “remove the plaster”. But I followed my injunction, took off the cast and went back to sleep. The next day, I hardly felt a thing.

I’ve listened to testimonies from people who have had a near-death experience. These people see their whole life flash before their eyes, their good deeds and their bad deeds. And in the “bad deeds” (acted in the bad conscience) they can both taste their bad conscience and feel what it did to their victim.

I’ve just been caught “red-handed” at the very moment when I’m making the existential decision to become conscious, with every choice I make, of staying in good conscience!
Here are the facts: I realized almost at the end of our last zoom meeting that I had forgotten to start the recording… I felt really bad at the time.
“Do I have to say it?” “Is this really necessary?” and still feeling bad, I look at the screen, see that we’re all there and think “phew! That won’t be necessary because we’re all here”. And I decide not to say anything. Except that I’ve forgotten A., at the bottom of his bed…
I realize now that I had the attitude of a child who makes a lie by omission. Not seen, not taken, as it were.
But that’s not all: A. wrote to me yesterday and asked if I’d made the recording, as she’d like to listen to it… I immediately replied that I’d forgotten. Yes, it’s true, I forgot, but I knew that beforehand, didn’t I? So I get caught red-handed again for the same thing! Why didn’t I simply reply “yes, I realized it late, I chose not to start the recording so late, but I forgot A.”. After sending my reply to A., in order to make amends, I propose to make a summary of the topics discussed during the meeting. So I send it late in the evening. Then I wake up at 4 a.m. with these questions: “Why did I do this, why did I repeat my ‘mistake’? Here’s what I found:
1) To avoid the pain of admitting that I forgot to make the recording.
2) Fear of group judgment.
3) Fear of my own judgment of myself. A big, fat judgment of myself.
Who’s hiding what? Pride, a lack of humility. Well-concealed pride.
I don’t know how to explain it completely yet, but that’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

I have a recurring example: when I’m in the car and someone doesn’t put their blinker on, or parks in front of my house, or commits this kind of negligence. It’s a daily job. I try to be vigilant, but often the reaction comes in the form of a reflection that’s not pleasant for the person in question. Sometimes, when I manage to see myself in time, I can turn the negative feeling into a kind of compassion or rather understanding. And above all, the realization that I could have done the same things calms me immediately.

For me, it’s a bit the same, when it comes to the unprofessionalism or unreliability of someone in front of me. In this case, it was the janitor who didn’t come to open the door for me, twice during the day, and I could feel the angry reaction.

I asked myself this question, because it’s like a child’s anger, there’s no trace behind it. I don’t dwell on it.

I was giving these little examples, because they come up a lot during the day and they’re opportunities to practice.

Me too, I have the impression that even if these are small things, over time they become like a bad habit that carries a certain weight.

Yes, since the last time I made an existential decision, I haven’t noticed any action, but sometimes it’s really just a matter of time, and I’ve noticed that it would be very easy to fall back into the old habit; it’s as if the path of the old habit was quite broad, and taking the other path of healthy awareness requires very, very strong vigilance. It’s as if I had some kind of belief that the things I had to do were more important than the relationship with the other person, like some kind of hierarchy, and this subject has made me aware of this. Now, it’s incarnated in a different way.

Last time, I mentioned an example where I was disturbed by something, and it annoyed me. I’ve pointed it out several times this week, it’s very quick, like a trigger, but I’ve already acted on the unhealthy consciousness. We live in a two-storey house, we’re confined, and when Joël calls me, and I’m far away, I think he knows I can’t hear him, and then I start off very quickly.

Yes, and it’s good to feel it. It’s a gentle feeling of openness. What’s more, I realize that sometimes I’m kidding myself about what Joel knows or doesn’t know. I had no idea. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve resolved my guilt.

I haven’t observed anything other than what’s happening at the level of thought. The way I receive the information that comes to me, it can be a way of rejecting, of defending myself, so I sense unhealthy consciousness. And there, I could feel that I could do repair work even if there hadn’t been an act. It really is an act.

For that nurse I told you about, I knew I had to pray, but I don’t know how to repair a form of labelling, in thought, about people.

Yes, that’s what I thought, but then I tensed up, because there are too many people in my thoughts.

To come back to recurring situations, the one that comes up most often for me is cutting people off to fit in my ideas, or to contradict them. Once the discussion’s over, I feel remorse, try to apologize, and it works because people don’t hold it against me. For me, it’s always linked to this pretentiousness I often talk about. It’s the only situation I can think of.

A few days ago, I went out for a smoke in the backyard at 4:30 in the morning. Suddenly, a tall woman came straight at me. For a brief moment, I was ready to run away, but I didn’t, I kept looking at her, we said hello. She asked my name, presented me with a letter and left. It was very strange to receive a letter like that at 4.30 in the morning. It was interesting because I was able to observe my initial reaction.

Yes, there was that split second where it could have happened, but it disappeared right away.

A healthy conscience means staying clean and acting on your core values. An unhealthy conscience is when identity gets in the way. This happens quite frequently, because identity is firmly anchored in habits and reality.

We saw a video about NDEs (near death experiences) and what I remember is that people who can’t let go of guilt have a miserable death. But I don’t know if the term “guilt” is used in the same sense as we are. My question would be: when there’s no possibility of doing things right, what happens?

When I was a young boy one of my best friends was my neighbor. I would go to his house knock on his door and ask, “Can Frank come out and play?” One day a younger girl also showed up to play with us. I didn’t want her there. A few days before I heard of a strategy to get someone in trouble. It seemed like a good idea to implement that strategy to get rid of her. I told her to say a curse word. After she said it I walked her to her house and told her parents that she said a curse. Success I thought. But then, I heard her getting beaten by her grandfather. I was in shock and lacked the courage to confess what I had done. I walked away confused, guilty, and feeling that I had committed a grievous betrayal.
I tried to find this girl, but I couldn’t, and I can’t fix it. It occurred to me to do something for other people, like a helper.

I put the energy out to life to forgive me for this. To give me the opportunity to make it right. To live with courage but most importantly to have the humility to accept things as they are. Never to lie or manipulate another for my own personal interest.

For me, it’s important to have this intention sufficiently anchored. You have to leave open the possibility of meeting this girl.

But praying in the moment can be done right away, without waiting for our last hour.

It’s important to recognize when you’re tempted to go into unhealthy consciousness, it’s like preparing for your last breath.

I have another observation: At work, I have a group of paedophiles, and it’s a disturbing crime for me. My immediate reaction was to judge them, I never treated them badly, but I felt internally conflicted, I wasn’t sure I’d done my best. I just asked myself what the right thing to do was, and the answer came, very helpful:
“It brought me back to something very concrete and simple. As long as I do everything I can to keep clean, it’s the only thing I have to do.

Our destiny is not something beyond our control. It depends largely on our consciousness, whether serene or unhealthy.
The slightest act that triggers an unhealthy conscience influences our present and future destiny.
And the opposite too, acting, thinking and speaking with serene awareness maintains good health on all levels.
Serene awareness is directly linked to intuition or the arrival of injunctions from deep within. When the right intuitions or injunctions and serene awareness act as a dyad in my life, I know I’m on the right path.
Serene awareness relaxes and leads to good intuitive decisions. Unhealthy awareness is tense and can trigger self-destructive decisions.

For me, I’m still exploring and refining what unhealthy consciousness is and what healthy consciousness is. Because often I used to confuse guilt with unhealthy conscience. So I’m trying to clarify and distinguish between the two.
I found that sometimes I had guilt that was conditioned guilt and not related to the unhealthy conscience. So I try to get rid of that as much as possible. And sometimes, not very often, I find unhealthy awareness that I can recognize and that has nothing to do with guilt. For example, automatic behaviors where I find myself not respecting others or not fitting into someone else’s shoes. I can’t say there’s any tension there, but there’s a kind of dissatisfaction. And here I recognize that I’m avoiding an emptiness inside myself, a kind of necessary suffering. And the last part is more complex when there’s both guilt and an unhealthy conscience, but I don’t have any recent examples? It’s more in my memories.

I can go on about this because it triggers something in me. So this week, I really tried to stay in body consciousness, let’s say to be more aware of it than usual, and there I was really able to detect, at a given moment, an action that could have triggered unhealthy consciousness in me, it just popped up. And there I really felt that guilt was an avoidance. Because I could see, like in a film, all the stages, so the guilt that was displayed was an avoidance. And that was very interesting, because I had to put into practice everything I knew to stay clean. It was really like a battle on a battlefield.

Yes.

Yes, yes, and that’s the battlefield. Of course, guilt is part of the game, but it’s not just that, there are all the other enemies. It’s the metaphor of the hydra with a thousand heads: you cut off one head and another attacks you, or the battlefield of Bhagavad-Gitâ.

I’d like to follow up on what you say with a question that I’m also asking everyone. Of course unhealthy consciousness is linked to identity and self-interest, but I wonder if there isn’t the possibility that identity mechanisms and self-interest show up, even without unhealthy consciousness?

And I’d say that the period we’ve just been through, with family reunions of varying size, is extremely propitious.

Yes, I have an example: I had my family over for Christmas, even though it wasn’t planned and I was a bit overwhelmed. At first, I didn’t even want to call my sister to find out what she was doing for Christmas. I had to fight to call her, and then I had a kind of judgment: “they’re going to pollute me”. Then there were other stages, justifications… I had to cut back each time, I fought, I did a big clean-up, too, I understand the notion of battlefield very well.

In the end, I experienced the simple joy of being reunited with my beloved family, cooking for them, and surprisingly, it was extremely smooth, extremely calm, very pleasant.

I think I’m one of those people. There’s no shortage of memories of finding myself in situations where I haven’t clearly identified whether it’s guilt or unhealthy conscience, but I always have the impression of being caught in the act, or of catching myself in the act. I have an example of something that happened with my autistic grandson. I was alone with him, and he spilt something heavy and hot, even though there were only two of us in the room.

As stupidity! In fact, I can’t quite distinguish between guilt and an unhealthy conscience.

Guilt?

There’s a trap, A., in believing that because you’re in body awareness and healthy awareness, you won’t make any more mistakes. Making mistakes and failing is part of life.

Is guilt linked to my self-judgment?

Here I come back to what E said. You can be aware of the mistake, and either sink into guilt, beating yourself up, which is what you should avoid, or bounce back with remorse, trying to make amends as best you can and in a way learn your lesson, and not make the same mistake again and again.

It’s a real battlefield, because you have to get rid of guilt, and it’s not just guilt, there are other things that can happen.

Perhaps I can share another example that was very enlightening for me on several levels. When I was a senior, we had to elect the class delegate, I’d been a delegate for several years, and that year I didn’t want to run again because I didn’t want to be used by everyone else to do the work, but there were still people who voted for me. Now when I think back, I feel that deep down I liked being a delegate, and that I really could have stood again. Today, I can really feel the identity mechanism of the grump who said “no, I won’t do it”. I don’t know if it had any consequences on my destiny, in any case, I haven’t identified them. But the deeper feeling is that I know I should have presented myself, and somewhere along the line, I lied to myself.

…personal lie of sorts.

But I saw it there, a fortnight ago, not in the twenty years before.

Yes sir!

Yes sir! This is to finalize your understanding.

For my part, I remember that when I was organizing the course, when it came to cooking, I regularly had doubts about what I was doing, and regularly, too, I’d get rid of that, and sometimes when I was driving Franck to the airport, I’d think of one route and Franck, who’s good on his mobile, would suggest another, and there too, I had to renew my confidence because there was traffic jam on the road.

Serene awareness is directly linked to intuition or the arrival of injunctions from deep within. When the right intuitions or injunctions and serene awareness act as a dyad in my life, I know I’m on the right path. Serene awareness relaxes and leads to good intuitive decisions. Unhealthy awareness makes me tense, and risks triggering self-destructive decisions.

For me, it’s very clear that when the mind makes a judgment, there’s tension in the body. First the judgment and then the tension. Not just the judgment of a person, but the judgment of a situation, for example judgments about those end-of-year moments, thinking in advance “oh it’s going to be painful!” And then there’s the battle, and this year I saw the inner battle, especially as it took on enormous proportions at New Year’s, i.e. we received people we didn’t know, plus the family, plus the dog, it was almost a caricature, and the inner battle produces fruit right away, and it was a very beautiful moment.

Yes, there’s something that came to me, but it has to do with what comes next. Nissim’s example made me realize how much we can deny the sacred. And we do it on little details, but we do it all the time, and it was like a revelation to hear this testimony that I linked to this second paragraph; it was obvious. It’s important to see this, because there are ramifications that can go very, very far, both on the side of good conscience and on the side of bad conscience.

I can share something about intuition, accept that I don’t know, and trust. In October or November, I decided not to go to the lake with L. and ab; I didn’t really know why, but I needed to rest and decided to stay at home; I felt this battle: should I go, or not, but there was this inner feeling not to go. And finally, I was able to make the trench I had to make to get internet, I spent those two days digging, and I didn’t finish. So, the only criterion is to feel body awareness and relaxation inside, but this whole battle, you have to put it in the garbage can.

Just before the meeting, I watched the news, and I realized that I had a tendency to identify with what I’d seen, and that I was like Don Quixote fighting windmills. And all these stories have no reality, because if I hadn’t seen them, I wouldn’t know anything about them, so they have nothing to do with real life. I thought of Gurdjieff during the war and this idea of not identifying oneself, but taking people as they are, no matter how bizarre their actions.

Identification plunges us into a guilty conscience.

Yes, you can observe that things are happening, but you can only observe without identifying.

I have a question: does that mean I don’t have to do anything at all, and that, for example, if I see a petition and I want to sign it, while remaining disidentified, I don’t have to?

Because the request seems right, and why not? It’s taking a position I agree with.

I’m a human being, living on this planet, and I’m part of it, whether I like it or not. I don’t think it’s possible to stay completely out of it.

I think that “staying out” doesn’t mean doing nothing, it’s a part inside us that isn’t identified. For me, that’s what “staying out” means.

It makes me smile, because I signed a petition a few days ago, but I can’t remember exactly what it was about. It was on the theme of organic consumers, and I know that I was deeply committed to it, and that without even going into the details, I trust this association. It’s already forgotten, but when I did it, I followed the injunction to do so.

I’m going in the same direction, because overall, I don’t know what’s right or wrong, so I don’t sign petitions. I can see things going by, and have a reaction, but I feel it’s a reaction in me.

Even if it’s a reaction, when you don’t sign you’re taking a position; it’s impossible not to take a position when you’re a human being.

On the subject of the “battles” we were talking about last week, I have a small example. When I parked my car yesterday, I heard a scratching sound, and realized it was the rosebush branches scratching my bodywork. I should have parked differently, but it was bothering me, it was raining, and I didn’t do anything. It was uncomfortable for me, it was struggling, but I didn’t put words to it, and I didn’t identify the situation. I have another example: last year, during a free exchange of plans, I went away thinking “I’ll only take a plant if I really like it, and if my soil and exposure suit it”. Then I saw a plant that I thought was beautiful, but which didn’t suit my soil. It was the last one, and I took it anyway, even though I knew I wouldn’t do anything with it. It left me with a very unpleasant impression, because I thought I might have deprived someone of it. There are also recurring examples where it’s a matter of deciding whether to go for something fun, something pleasant, or something functional that I have to do. I’ve identified this, and realized that I mustn’t give in to it, because if I let myself go, I can sink into something I’ll never be able to get out of.

Right now I’m clean.

Yes sir.

I don’t really have anything new. Vigilance always. I have to be very careful not to act on an unhealthy conscience, either in words or thoughts. And all these little details are very interesting.

With the bereavement for my grandfather that I’m going through at the moment, I had a lot less energy. I didn’t want to conduct family business as I usually do, and I felt more relaxed, I was able to delve deeper.

This weight on me, and the feeling of being able to relax. Sometimes it’s natural to take charge, but sometimes it’s a strain.

But sometimes this tension can be linked to an unhealthy conscience.

Yes, for me, that little tension you mentioned is an important signal. On a professional level, it really helps me to spot unhealthy awareness, and as a result, I’m able to return to relaxation.

But I can see that it’s not a foregone conclusion, and that we need to be very careful and vigilant.

Reading the 4th paragraph on serene consciousness:

That really speaks to me.

I know that during the week there were very small things, which I identified at the time, but afterwards, they fade very quickly from memory.

I’ll start by saying that I have an example from work where I was asked to take on another project even though my schedule was already full. On the one hand I was interested, and on the other I felt it was the right thing to do. So I accepted, even though I wondered how it would fit into my schedule. And then a training course I was supposed to give was cancelled, so that balanced things out. But when I made the decision, I was thinking “I don’t know how I’m going to do this” and “I’m going to have to work evenings and weekends”. It’s a typical example where, at the moment of making the decision, there’s just the feeling, I wasn’t sure of anything, and then in the end it worked out well.

The decision comes when I say yes to what is asked of me.

Because another decision would have been to say no, contracting my identity and saying to myself “no, my schedule’s full, I’m not going to take it upon myself to do something extra again”. That would have been a defensive reaction.

Yes.

The mind would have said no.

What I can add to your comment is that when it comes to making a decision, there’s the intuition, the feeling that I’ve stuck with, but there’s always the mental side in the background too, which says “Oh yes, it’s out of personal interest that you want to do this because the subject seems nice to you”.
But I tried to stay clean and check that it was intuition and not ego that made me take the decision.

I have an example where I took the path of healthy consciousness. But it really comes down to a thousandth of a second. So on Friday morning, I had to go to work and I was right on time.
I come out of my house and see a lady from the cleaning team vacuuming the carpet on the wall. It’s great what she’s doing, I’d love to chat with her”. And at the same time, “No, but you’ve got to go to work now”. So I just followed the impulse in my heart to say hello. Despite the noise, we had a little exchange of two or three minutes. I was really surprised because this is a lady I often bump into and with whom I’ve never had an exchange. It was completely informal, completely banal, but it nourished me. In an unhealthy conscience, of course I would have said hello, dropped by and that was that:

I’d say, “Quick, quick, I’ve got to get to work, I haven’t got time”. And in fact, I realized that communicating, connecting with people, with people, is one of my core values. And it’s in this sense that it completely nourished me, I followed this healthy awareness of simply communicating with someone; I arrived five minutes late for work, and I left five minutes later with no problem. No one died. And I spent the whole day in a kind of extremely nourished flow. I don’t know what would have gone into an unhealthy state of consciousness, but then of course I’d have been on the stressful side of work. So really, it’s a question of inner weather.

As far as I’m concerned, I spent the weekend in a closed area with some colleagues who had colds. Since I was very young, there had been a fear of illness in me and in my family. I thought I’d got rid of this fear because I’d worked on it and I’m healthy. But then I let myself get caught up in the fear of catching something. And on Monday I started to get a sore throat. I should have rejected the thought right away, but it was insidious and I started to let it influence me. So I had to stop the thoughts, tune in to health a few times. As a precaution, I did cancel some appointments with fragile people. I’m feeling better today and I know I’ll feel better tomorrow. At the same time, I’m glad to have discovered that this fear can still appear, so I’ll be able to keep an eye on it more easily.

No, if there’s a lion ready to pounce on you.

In this sense, body awareness is essential. When you’re in body awareness, you feel the emotional fear, even if it’s very small. And only then can you put it aside. I’d also say that we can push it aside by saying thank you, because it’s still a signal to allow us to tip over.

Well, I’ll try to go on, I say try because it’s not very clear to me. I can’t think of any practical examples where things are going well at the moment. On the other hand, after the New Year period when I was in contact with a lot of people,
I felt a sort of guilty conscience, and what came to me was that I hadn’t taken the time, for a few days, to really put myself alone in a form of prayer with my body. I can’t really put it into words, but it’s like practicing chi gong, or not practicing anything at all, but being in a state of inner silence. And that’s when I realized that I had to do it. And I think that when I don’t do it, or when I do it quickly or when I do it a bit “on principle”, it’s the same bad conscience that happens. For example, this morning, I got up at night to see the sunrise and it was nice. And I think it’s clear now that it’s something I have to do for myself.

As far as a good or bad conscience is concerned, for me it comes down to the smallest things, like sending messages about food supplements. I ask myself the question: “Are you polluting the group’s e-mail or are you passing on the information? It seems quite natural to me to pass on the information and everyone takes what they want. And it’s the same thing with the text messages we exchange with work colleagues, because quite a few people test positive for Covid, and in particular there’s one who was triple vaccinated, who’d already had shingles after the second dose, and who now has Covid. She’s very frightened, she washes her hands all the time, and I wanted to inject a touch of humor into our text message exchanges, but I felt it would be pointless and dropped it; it was really the right thing to do, and I feel clean with it.

I have to admit that at the moment, every time I send or reply to an e-mail, I have to be really careful. In general, I write the first time and then I link and modify if necessary to make sure that I’m sending information that the other person can receive.

Yes, I think it’s important because it connects us to the humility of saying to ourselves “what I know is one thing, but does the person feel something else?”. “What I feel to be true is only mine”. You have to ask the question for the other person too.

I don’t have any particular example, except that I’m always having major work done on my house to change the French windows. And last Friday, I followed my intuition and asked the craftsmen to come at the weekend because I’d be cold and noisy, and I’d be teleworking from home during the week. In asking for this, I felt a deep sense of self-respect. I was completely in tune with myself by taking care of myself. And I realized again yesterday, thinking about our subject, the importance of resisting fear, resisting projections, overreaching and also negative thoughts. A key for me is really living in the moment and listening.

In fact, for me, resisting temptation means not becoming corrupted, not giving way.

Yes, for me, negative thoughts, like projections and the like, lead directly to bad consciousness. That’s why it’s so important to stay in body awareness and in the present moment. That’s how I see it. And in the stories I’ve been telling the landlady since December, I’ve seen how powerful it is to stay in tune with the other person, to stay in the present and in the facts; there are things to be done, period.

For me, it’s always linked to that, accepting what is, that’s the basis of everything. And I felt completely present yesterday in the noise and the cold. I went to get some wood to heat the house, I even made a coffee for the craftsmen, but then I saw the impact it had on the owner and her daughter, they left and I was relieved. Afterwards, there was no more chatter, just the workmen doing their job and the atmosphere was serene.

Suddenly, while E. was talking, I had a flash of a moment when I followed the unhealthy consciousness. This week, a guy came to install the fiber at our house. We had really prepared everything, he had a four-hour window and I had work appointments afterwards. And, as we had prepared everything, for me, it was going to take two and a half to three hours, and in fact, he told us at the end “no, but I took my time, I could have gone faster”. But there was a particular moment when we were watching him work, because V. and I were interested, and I had also planned this time. But V. would ask him questions, and the fat man would talk about his life and stop working. And I could feel time running out, and at that moment, I hesitated to say “no, but wait, we’ve got to work now because time is running out” and to tell V. to stop telling her life story and chatting because it was slowing down the work. I didn’t do it, I didn’t intervene, I didn’t know how to express it and I kept it in reserve. At a quarter to four, we had to check that everything was connected properly, and V. wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a result, I was under a lot of stress and we weren’t able to check that everything was OK. In fact, this was the consequence of the fact that when I should have intervened to say “wait, this is good, we’ve got to go ahead anyway”, I didn’t do it.

It really goes with taking full responsibility for your life and accepting the consequences. You really have to take action. That’s how I see it in my day-to-day life, there really are actions to be taken, sometimes they’re subtle little things, but there are decisions to be made, actions to be taken, and they don’t just happen by themselves.

Yes sir.

Sharing about people who have the courage to express what they need to, reminds me of little things during the day where it’s easy for me to say: “oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t count” and so I don’t express them at that time.
The last couple of weeks I’ve had a deep sense of grief, or sorrow, but that suggests there’s been a loss, when nothing has happened, so I don’t know.

Yes, very deep.

Yes, also, somewhere, I remember all those things in my life that weren’t good. The focus is on serene consciousness, but as I go back over my life, it’s as if there were a multitude of things that stink.

My uncle died a few years ago, and as he was dying, he confessed to my parents all the bad things he’d done in his life. And I understand that because I feel like that, I feel like I have all this dirt to clean up.

It wakes me up in the middle of the night, sometimes when I’m falling asleep. But I haven’t written anything down, maybe I should.

Do you feel a change or is it going round in circles?

For a certain number of things, it comes and then it’s over, and then for others, it comes back.

And is there any helplessness associated with this?

I don’t know.

I wouldn’t describe it as a burden, I’d describe it more as scars on my soul.

Could this be linked to the fact that when you have reminiscences of a guilty conscience, you’re aware that you’ve denied your sacredness, and that every time you do, it hurts you?

Yes.

And can you forgive yourself?

I don’t know. But yes, I think I can. Thank you for that, E, because when you said it, it gave me the ability to forgive myself. Thank you for that.

Yes, about sharing earlier, about not having the courage to ask to go faster. I thought about it during the music, and realized that my problem was not knowing how to express it. Now I know how I could have, by saying my constraint, and asking if it’s possible to go faster. But I realized that I had this tendency to be very quick to anger and judgment:
“You don’t have to talk so much, you have to move on…”. In a logic of non-violent communication, and this is in line with body awareness, it’s just a matter of expressing a feeling: “I’m stressed because…” it’s something I need to relearn. There’s the bad conscience, but there are also mechanisms behind it that need to be looked at more deeply.

I could add that self-affirmation without ego means taking full responsibility for one’s life, so saying what I think, what I feel, without aggression, without passivity, but taking responsibility for what I say, what I do. It’s invaluable, and it avoids falling into the trap of an unhealthy conscience. This is one of the things I’ve taught in management training courses, and I’ve seen the impact it has.

Yes, taking full responsibility, but that doesn’t give me the answer to how I should do it in that context; and I need to find my own form in relation to my own mechanisms. It’s different for everyone.

But I detect the symptom. This week I was preparing a work on the enneagram, and in my type, the symptom is anger, and that must set off a little red alert in me.

Yes sir.

I too wonder how to put things into words. For me, it’s just a matter of expressing what I feel.

Yes, because when you put yourself at the level of the heart, not above, not below, you just express your vulnerability at the moment, and inevitably it touches the vulnerability of others, it speaks to everyone, it’s universal.

Impatience, I know it well. In front of the computer, when things don’t go as I want, it drives me crazy. On certain things, I amvery impatient. On the other hand with diets, I was overpatient. Overpatience is calm waters.

When you overindulge your laziness, it’s called procrastination…

Can we talk about inertia for overpatience?

It can be something like learned helplessness, it’s like for dogs who get an electric shock every time they do something; after a while, they don’t dare move anymore.

What I understood is that it’s an intellectual control not to react.

It’s an identity mechanism, either not daring to, or passivity, like a buffer. Where we should act, we refrain from acting.

It’s inertia, lethargy.

For me, it’s strongly linked to lack of attention and stress too, because I want to do too well, immediately. In those cases, I’m not in bodily awareness. I can spot it, but it takes me a few seconds to get out of it.

Yes, clearly! Behind it, it’s wanting to satisfy, quickly.

Can we generalize?

Can there be impatience that doesn’t come from identity?

It’s clear to me, I don’t recognize any impatience that doesn’t come from identity.

If it doesn’t come from identity, we’d have to use another word, like desire or momentum.

Yes, that’s where we can get confused.

And for me, its corollary is discouragement.

I think what’s important is to have identified the feeling that accompanies it, and immediately stop the impatience through vigilance.

It can be an energetic phenomenon, there can be an acceleration of vibrations.

Yes, and I’m very familiar with these speed stories that identity uses to avoid slowly integrating what I’m discovering about myself. For you, D., it seems to go with being alive, but it prevents you from properly touching your heart. And if I recognize this, it’s because I’ve experienced it. It really is a trap, because identity uses speed to avoid real life experiences. Be wary of speed, and savor these moments of awareness, even if they are sometimes painful.

And the emptiness associated with it…

That’s why in the functional, weeding is such a great school!

And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t times in life when we need to accelerate. Sometimes we have to go fast, but it’s a response to the context, it’s not impatience.

Where I can feel impatience in our work is when I transmit; but it affects more being in the other person’s shoes, in non-separation. When I’m impatient, I’m in a form of separation.

Isn’t that the engine at the start, no?

What comes to me is that it really doesn’t belong to me. And if it doesn’t belong to me, there is no point in being impatient.

Impatience is like the indicator of an expectation that we hadn’t really perceived.

In infinite patience, I also feel something dynamic.

Yes, dynamic and gentle.

I don’t know if it’s all the time, but I feel it’s very different from impatience or passive patience. It’s nothing like that, it doesn’t have the same smell.

All the time, I can’t say for sure. I’m familiar with it, but I still have moments of discouragement. It’s when I’m really in this awareness that it doesn’t belong to me, that I entrust myself to… “I entrust myself to…” for me, that’s infinite patience.

It’s a huge part of your teaching for me.

I’ve known impatience with my children. If I was so impatient with them, it was because I couldn’t feel the love. I felt like I had fallen into the family trap.

How can I decide to be incorruptible?

What if it’s just for sex?

Trash thoughts: all labels that are supposed to “define” a person, whether negative or positive. I replace them with an open and benevolent gaze. All thoughts like: “it’s too good to be true,” self-blame, self-deprecation… Negative and fatalistic generalizations about the world, which I replace with discernment about specific elements.

What needs to be dismissed immediately: all negative thoughts whether self-demeaning or judgmental, about myself or others. And also seemingly positive thoughts that are just pipe dreams, for example hoping the situation is different from what it is. Thoughts that refer to the past and future also belong in the trash (except if they are for example necessary for functional organization). In short all thoughts that don’t come from the heart! I’ve tested different ways to free myself from these thoughts, not necessarily effective; and now I dismiss them with a wave of the hand as if they were an insistent fly: they come back much less, and sometimes not at all. To be urgently dismissed, everything that feeds and empowers the ego: every negative thought, fear, doubt, judgment, assumptions, anger, revenge, reference to the past, emotional blackmail, psychological games, power games, pretense, “I know it all,” “I should have…”, guilt…. everything that distracts from the heart and cuts me off from my true self, from unconditional love.

The question has been on my mind for a few days. Letting an answer emerge from the heart, it became very clear that what is needed is to “filter” with the heart. In other words, each time a somewhat automatic thought arrives (and is not part of a useful intellectual process like planning a task), check if it comes from the heart, and if not, let it pass like a cloud or throw it in the trash. In fact, it dissolves by itself as soon as it is recognized or sometimes, it simply takes on a different shape. And I recognize that I am far from applying this every time, but the question helps anchor this approach and make an existential decision to systematically filter through the heart.

From my experience any limiting thought, that is, one that brings doubt with an emotion, must be dismissed as soon as possible (not to be confused with “factual” doubt, stemming from proper use of the mind controlled by the heart). Otherwise this emotion, described as negative, spreads through the body and reinforces the limiting thought. I could also say that a limiting thought is a thought stemming from an identity mechanism intended to produce useless suffering in order to avoid useful suffering.

When I notice a toxic thought, I reject it immediately. Sometimes I literally have to say “stop!” It doesn’t always work, but more and more often. Toxic thoughts are those that make me “stick” to the past, for example, and prevent me from opening up to the surprise of the present moment. This is particularly the case with negative memories, but also those that create a certain expectation.

The first thing that came to mind when I read this question is doubt. Yet a few years ago, doubt was a companion and even an essential tool to challenge some of my behaviors and, thanks to it, uncover some of my identity mechanisms, reveal a secretly selfish secondary interest, bring to light an inevitably arrogant pretense, dig up certain deep roots nourishing the chimera I think I am… Today, it is clear to me that doubt coldly restricts the field of possibilities. It kills in the egg certain futures bearing surprises, astonishment, mystery, the unknown, innovation, creativity… It also kills the possibility of questioning rigid mental patterns. By excluding the unexpected it locks my perception of the world, impoverishes my participation in the flow of life. It closes me off where I need to be open and receptive. Doubt keeps me in the comfort of the known and deprives me of exposing myself to mystery, loss of bearings, what is greater than me, the unthinkable. In doing so it prevents me from taking any inner risk, from exposing myself, from making mistakes, from radically questioning myself again, from deeply touching necessary suffering… and from exhuming certain deep roots nourishing the chimera I think I am. The second thing, in my case, that it is essential to immediately expose and dismiss: anything that contributes to procrastination. It is a real poison. Its primary anesthetizing effect leads to an almost pleasant submission to the deviant authority of identity. It is a consented loss of freedom, a denial of oneself, of the life that animates me and calls me to participate in its unfolding. And to which I oppose an inexcusable inertia. It is cowardly betting on a hypothetical, ever-fleeting future, a pretty pretext for not taking responsibility. The other poisoned gift I dismiss as soon as it appears: the inner cinema I project onto myself. The stories I tell myself where I replay an event or continue it in a totally fictitious way. And where I take on an inevitably enhancing role, imbued with a strong emotion like anger, revenge, false compassion,… it’s a self-hypnosis which then leaves inappropriate emotional imprints that can accompany me once I’m back to reality! As soon as I realize this inner wandering, I cut the projection short and return to my body, with internal sensations and perception of my immediate environment.