I’ve looked everywhere, I’ve checked regarding my children, and I humbly feel that I can let go of my entire life now, if necessary. Even though I have no idea how I would handle it if the situation arose.

When my mother died, I was with someone who was sensitive to these kinds of manifestations, and we clearly heard a crack in the hospital room, a crack I had never heard before and never heard since. And this person told me: “That’s it, she’s leaving now…”
Then we had to organize the cremation, and I had two options for choosing the funeral home. I looked at the time, and it exactly matched the number of one of the two companies…. And everything was like that, we just had to follow the signs.

There was this completely crazy guy who was convinced that my mother wasn’t going to die because he had to save the world with her. So I had to ban him from the hospital. Several times I left the room exactly when he arrived in the hallway, and I was able to intercept him. It was like that, I wasn’t doing it on purpose, everything happened with magical coincidences. At one point, this guy arrives and starts talking nonsense, and suddenly I let out a burp… you can’t imagine! And this friend I mentioned earlier looks at me and says: “Ah, you know how to transmute negative energy!” So yes, when someone dies, things happen.

I heard the testimony of a nurse who did research, a very interesting small scientific protocol around death. She tells that in her ward there was a dying patient, paralyzed, who really couldn’t do anything anymore. She started providing care, and at one point the dying person got up from his bed and very clearly told her: “Let me die in peace!” and then fell back on his bed.

Yes, because he actually got out of his bed when it was impossible, and these words: “Let me die in peace” really struck her.

When Buddhists accompany a dying person with the Bardo, they consider that they can hear well beyond death. They talk to them when they leave the body, then for 21 days, to continue guiding them.

But did you consciously put yourself in your father’s shoes, or did it impose itself on you?

In one of his books, Wolinsky talks about one of his students who had just died. He explains that he was at his bedside right after his death, that he accompanied him to help him get rid of his identity, to leave more peacefully, and it took some time before he left.

I experienced that with my father. When he was about to die, we three children were gathered around him. Yet he wouldn’t let go, he had trouble leaving. I have a cousin who had lived with us for a while, many years before, and who was kind of the fourth child of the family. He went to see him a week later, and the following night my father died. We felt that he needed to come too for the family to be complete and for my father to be able to leave!

Jean-Jacques Charbonnier, an anesthesiologist, has written several books about death, near-death experiences, and people who come back from them. As an anesthesiologist, he was deeply moved by many NDE accounts from his patients. Currently, he’s conducting experiments where he puts volunteers into a hypnotic trance, which allows them to have experiences identical to NDEs. He has developed a protocol that seems to be a kind of hypnosis. I saw photos of people sitting in a comfortable chair, visibly guided by the doctor, and these people all tell more or less the same thing: the tunnel, loved ones waiting for them…

The English nurse I was talking about earlier developed a whole protocol; she notably placed crosses in different places, above machines for example, signs visible only from above. If some patients come back after clinical death, she questions them about what they saw during their journey in the resuscitation room.

I saw a report about a guy who was doing research on out-of-body experiences. He too had developed a protocol with certain messages placed high above cabinets. And when people return to their bodies, he asks them if they saw the message, which seems totally impossible if there isn’t a real out-of-body experience, if it’s just a fantasy.

I experienced an out-of-body experience: I must have been 7-8 years old and I fainted. My parents went to get the neighbor who was a nurse, and she gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And I saw her from the ceiling, and I was thinking: “But she’s kissing me! She’s kissing me!” And then I woke up.
This is the first time I’m talking about it!

It happened to me during my tonsil operation, I woke up in the middle of the operation, with intense pain. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, it was horrible.

Sometimes we also have the premonition that we’re going to die. A 25-year-old man, married, started organizing everything in his life, making his will, putting everything in order even though everything was fine. This was a few months before his death. And the guy died in an accident at work. He was participating in an observation flight, and the plane crashed. It was completely out of his control, it couldn’t have been autosuggestion. What’s interesting about this example is that one might have thought he was depressed when he prepared all this, and that this depression could have led him to death, but the way it happened shows that wasn’t the case.

There are also many people who don’t want to admit it to themselves, even if they pick up signs, they’re too afraid of death to validate this information.

There are those who don’t talk about it because their surroundings aren’t ready to hear it, and others because they themselves aren’t ready to hear it.

My father died in a car accident, a collision with a truck that cut him off. A few months before, my father had redone his house, organized everything, had reconnected with many people, arranged to see people to clarify relationships, and three months later he died.

Yes, what struck me, in cases of people dying, is the dissolution of identity. It really made me think of our work here.

I heard the testimony of a woman who, since she had come back to life after her NDE, had radically changed, even in terms of her character.

What happens during the NDE is a kind of shaktipat, an immense shaktipat.

I heard about a woman who had an NDE a long time ago and what had marked her was obviously the tunnel, the beings of light, but also the fact that she had heard the question “How have you loved?” After her return, answering this question became her reason for living.

And sometimes the person is sent back without having a choice.

Those who have experienced it also testify that during the out-of-body experience, their problems, their profession, and even everything related to their family, all that disappears in a snap of the fingers, it no longer exists. But when the choice to return presents itself, it’s often in relation to something that hasn’t been accomplished, probably in relation to the basic value.

And what’s incredible is that often, these are incurable patients, and they come back healed.

To finish things, to do your « si-do ».

There are many things we can do beforehand.

Going towards death is like going on a journey. In the preceding weeks, there are things to organize, you have to prepare for the journey, you’re in action. Once everything is ready, you go to the airport…

… you sit in the plane, and there you let go of everything.

When I relax, especially before falling asleep, and I’m really in this existential relaxation, I see the basic value springing forth.

I love this moment of dissolution, just before sleep. But I can’t find that quality during the day, because there’s always a kind of tension in the background, things to do…

This compassionate anger with love is what has sometimes been called divine anger. It contains something just, which touches nothing else. Whereas the other anger necessarily puts you in separation.

With the rejection of the other.

With frustration as well.

It’s a reaction to powerlessness, facing something that doesn’t go as they want.

It’s clear that at the origin, you always find powerlessness.

According to the enneagram or other models, anger will function differently depending on the types of people.

I agree about the transformative power of negative emotions, but I’m not convinced that this is true only for anger. It seems to me that for other people, it could be other negative emotions, like sadness for example.

And sometimes, it can consist of not being able to get angry. But it’s always anger.

The expression can be different, but the essence is anger. It’s obvious.

I wonder how I can work on this.

But concretely, when I feel it rising, what can I do?

There is a frustration linked to the same origin. Either it’s anger, or panic, but it’s linked to powerlessness.

Knowing is not enough. I know this well and I want to emphasize a point: it’s about taking absolutely all opportunities, even minimal ones, to welcome the necessary suffering, because the more you do it all the time, the more easily you will be able to do it when it’s big. Because otherwise, when it’s big, it’s too late. And you have to manage to get on an ascending spiral. Otherwise, you always return to the same point and you don’t move forward. And as W. says, what is very important is to find everything possible to remember at the moment when it’s vital.

And I think you can identify the conducive contexts, the contexts where there are warning signs and where vigilance must be absolute.

Yes, there is a red light that comes on.

It’s really about refining vigilance. Like in the metaphor where at first, you only see that the elephant has already passed, then you see the elephant’s tail, later, you see it when it shows its trunk, and finally, you know it’s going to pass before it arrives. Here, you detect anger, but then, you will perhaps detect a little earlier the rationalizations you make to temper an incoming anger with thoughts like “it’s not serious”, when perhaps, precisely at that moment, you are not welcoming the true necessary suffering, but generating an accumulation of frustration that risks exploding. And afterwards, when you are discussing with someone who would normally trigger your anger, you will find more accurate words that will defuse the process. It’s really about tracing back further and further with vigilance. It’s observation.

When in your childhood, you experienced anger, through that of the father for example, there are two reactions: either you reproduce it, or you refuse it by withdrawing, but that’s false. That’s not welcoming.

Exactly. And anger is a good way to realize these two facets; just because it is not expressed doesn’t mean it’s not there!

So it’s about immediately seeing the necessary suffering that I’m trying to hide through anger?

The original belief.

I’m starting to understand. Things are falling into place for me. Because anger, I know it very well. I would even say that it provides my vital energy. But I hadn’t yet made the connection with withdrawal. I believe there’s really a huge blind spot here.

And moreover, you had this way of taking refuge in silence, solitude.

Yes. Completely.

Yes, regarding anger, internalized anger, as Ab experienced it, which consists of taking refuge in no longer being there, being absent, I realized that I know this, and it strongly moved me; it’s a kind of “protective background” to not go deeper while remaining in bodily consciousness, and it’s still the expression of an identity mechanism.

The worst part is that what we just explained about anger, I knew it intellectually, and it had completely faded away.

Maybe pride, vanity.

Yes. Sometimes, I feel superior to others and it shows in the way they bore me. Interactions with others quickly become tiresome for me and I can sometimes brush them off, even if I don’t always realize it.

Yes. And I feel a tension within myself. These past few weeks, I’ve been trying to observe it more and not express it, even if I still feel it. Arrogance also shows in the fact that I’m very curious, I try to thoroughly research a subject and if I believe in something, I go all in headfirst. It’s as if it becomes the truth for me and as a result, I perceive everything else as inferior, even if I don’t necessarily try to impose my point of view. For example, I do organic gardening and had all my vegetables eaten by voles, but despite that, I look down on those who use Roundup and similar methods that I judge as archaic.

The example you just gave is the very definition of intellectual pretension. I have better information than others and I’m going to impose my point of view.

No, I don’t try to impose my point of view. It’s more underhanded, through snickering for example. I can be quite crafty and it would express itself more that way. It probably also comes from my family environment with my grandparents who are very religious, very rigid. My grandfather believes he knows a lot about life after death for example.

Yes, but especially among the men. The women are submissive, they’re rather dependent on men.

Yes, because it’s a small religious branch that’s convinced they know better than others. And my father, in trying to escape this environment, reproduced the same thing by joining a Gurdjieff group. And maybe I did the same thing on my side.

Maybe not exactly, but there’s this impulse and this searching, perhaps with less blindness.

Regarding my grandparents’ ideology, I’m completely detached from it. My father doesn’t talk about it, he’s very secretive. But there’s a marked spirit of superiority in the family. Even if on the surface, my grandfather might appear very humble, in the background, there’s pride and something he won’t let go of. And when I put less pressure on myself, when I let myself go without judging myself, without having a grip on my character, sometimes I observe mechanisms of pretension; I try not to take myself too seriously or judge myself about it.

No, definitely not, because if I go down that path, it’s hell for me. It’s unbearable.

Yes. But my father taught me to be proud and arrogant because otherwise, I was nothing. Sometimes, there’s frustration being with people, old friends for example, and seeing the mediocrity of their behavior around me. And then, I feel surges of this pretension.

It’s more a question of posture in relation to that. When you’re building yourself, you have to take a position and that’s where I built this character who was searching for something superior. And I wasn’t at all on the same wavelength as my friends who were content with alcohol, drugs, and negativity.

Yes, I think so. Identity in general? Yes. Whatever the pretension and however it expresses itself, I think it’s a pretension, a certain pride, a certain affirmation of the elusive, or something like that. I don’t know if that resonates with you.

It’s nothingness trying to pass into posterity. That’s how I feel it in spirit.

It’s the only option. I want to build my identity, but not be content with an intrinsic personality, already given, as if by default. That’s how I see it. Identity is a wrong path.

And that’s where it can become heavy.

Yes, that’s it.

There are several definitions for pretension. The first: “Claiming the exercise of a right over something. Example: A prince maintaining his claims to the throne”. The second will speak to us more: “The act of asserting, more or less presumptuously, an advantage. Example: A pretension to elegance”.

Yes, in the sense that ego is a pretension. We pretend that we are.

The third: “Attitude of someone based on an overly advantageous opinion they have of themselves”.

Yes, but it’s not neutral. Someone who is rather crushed, modest, when they see the word pretension, they think it doesn’t concern them.

There’s a fourth definition: “That which in something reflects the desire to show a certain superiority. Example, furniture full of pretensions.”

First of all, the ego pretends to exist. What could be worse than that?

But when you say, I pretend to exist, it’s relatively neutral. There’s no good-bad value judgment in it. There’s just an illusion, whereas in all the definitions we’ve seen, there was a notion of “I pretend to be better than.”

You could also say, I pretend to be different from nothing, and there, there wouldn’t be the “better than” and yet, I wouldn’t be in nothingness either. I would be in neutrality.

No, because in reality, as W. said, you pretend to be God. We shouldn’t say it like that because the word “God” is too loaded with meaning. But you pretend to be better than nothing, that’s very clear.

The synonyms: arrogance, emptiness, infatuation, presumption, self-importance, and vanity. The antonyms: modesty, simplicity, humility.

I don’t know either. All I feel is that it’s not normal.

But I can’t manage to.

I have a good example: before leaving, I tidied my desk and found a text I couldn’t bring myself to send because to me, the words were pathetic. In the background, there’s an attachment to the fact that I’m used to figuring things out on my own. And in this case, I couldn’t manage it, so what I’m saying seems trivial to me. I was used to describing the whole process, including my solution, and here I couldn’t do it.

Yes, I recognize that, but that’s just a visible expression; what’s much stronger is that I can’t do it alone, and for me, that’s terrible.

Besides, you’ve been explaining to others for years that we can’t do it alone.

I know it’s obvious that I need someone, since I’ve been here for years.

Yes, but I come.

Now, it’s a real request.

In a true request, there’s an element of humility that we don’t yet feel in L. Behind her words, I hear a request, but I don’t sense the humility, or maybe not completely. As if it were: “I’m making a request because I’m stuck,” but at the same time, there’s this little voice saying: “It bothers me to make a request, because it’s as if I’m putting myself in a position inferior to the other, and I’ll be indebted for something.” That’s what I heard in what L. was expressing, whereas in a request with humility, there’s abandonment, without the thought “I should be able to do it on my own” polluting it.

Yes, that speaks to me.

You see, right now what I’m experiencing is that there’s an truly incredible detachment, and at the same time, there’s a lack of innocence, and it troubles me, because it’s not normal.

That’s why I don’t know. I observe. Right now, I’m so much in the lack of this state of joy and innocence! I can be in a moment of wonder, but what I miss is the child in me, and when I see freshness, I’m moved, but I don’t have it in myself.

I know.

It’s linked to responsibility, as if I had a responsibility that prevented this, but it’s an illusion, I know that. And yet, I can’t decode the mechanism, I can’t break it.

And what do you put behind the word “responsibility”?

Even towards others, there are times when I say things, and times when I don’t say them, but I see things through the other.

Yes, right now, there’s a great detachment.

It’s terrible sometimes when I see everything. I see in the other, it’s sometimes awful.

And even when it’s awful, I try to say what comes.

It’s as if I had the responsibility for that.

Yes, but I was.

What came to me is that humility is the surrender to “I don’t know.”

In any case, I can tell you that it’s causing quite a stir in my family, because precisely, it’s no longer possible for me.

Yes.

I experience that at the level of daily life. For example, I stay five minutes with my son and his friends who come to eat, and then I leave, I isolate myself. So, he comes to see me: “Are you okay?”. And two hours later, he comes back, but I don’t want to get up. The next day, he asks me again if I’m okay. And now he has understood, and it’s him who will say “she’s resting”. As for the stays here with you, my son and my daughter don’t ask questions anymore, they have understood. But I can’t pretend anymore, at that level. In the family, there have been frictions because of that.

That’s why I talk about mourning to do.

It’s a suffering every time.

It can make me change an operating mode.

There can be different expressions, but at the core, never, and that’s where there can be suffering. It’s always a challenge for me to welcome that suffering.

Yes, absolutely. For example, I regularly get feedback about my “selfishness” and I understand very well why they tell me that, I understand that they haven’t understood anything, and I understand their point of view and their suffering. In the family context, it’s the most difficult. At work, I have the image of someone a bit weird, but it’s part of the character they appreciate, because it allows to question things and there, I act a bit as I want, it’s accepted.

Yes, the most extraordinary example is when I announced I was moving to M. There was no problem, and they even offered me a permanent contract to make it easier with the banks.

At home, it’s not like that.

And it’s true that when we do things, with the children for example, I always validate that I agree, deep inside me. I’ve noticed it often, it’s probably why I’m still in a family environment, despite the big disturbances. It’s true that I can do things differently, sometimes, but I don’t do what I don’t want to do.

Yes, completely, but that happened a long time ago. For example, I never call my mother, while she calls my sister almost every day; but not me, and it’s fine like that. Before I used to feel guilty, but I couldn’t. It’s like that.

Yes, but without pressure. They ask me, I can or I can’t, but I don’t feel harassed at all.

No, not at all, on the contrary.

But I do it.

I never call my mother, she only calls me from time to time, but the others, they call her every day; I’ve never done that.

Actually, at the moment, no.

Sincerely no, because I was asked, and I said no.

Yes.

That’s true, even one of my brothers doesn’t understand that I don’t know in advance what I’m going to do, for him, it’s inconceivable, and they are very disturbed.

But how come it doesn’t happen to you?

Is there a way, at the beginning, to temper this freedom?

Is it all at once from the beginning?

There are stories of Buddhist monks considered crazy, who were totally wise and crazy, who had unexpected behaviors.

What leads to hypocrisy is self-interest, when someone wants to get something from someone else. You recognize it by observing whether the words are consistent with the actions, and by feeling it. Very often hypocrites unmask themselves in this way, they will not do what they should have done (or will do what they should not have done).
I make a distinction between “pretending” or “acting as if” and being hypocritical. Pretending is a matter of survival, or even a game like when we are children, whereas being hypocritical comes from one’s identity and self-interest in order to obtain something. I have countless examples in my life of “pretending” but not of having been hypocritical.

I would say that what drives someone to be hypocritical is a need to be accepted and recognized; it seems to me that the hypocrite’s discourse goes against what they feel is true deep down, and that they may not want/or cannot recognize (or assume) it.
I identify this type of person by the way they express themselves, by the intention behind the words. They go along with the interlocutor, but the tone implies the opposite of what they are saying and all the falsity in the background. You sense that they are forcing themselves to put on a front, which only partially conceals the reproaches/resentment that are intuitively felt below the surface.

What can lead to hypocrisy is the refusal to see one’s own shortcomings, the fear of feeling unloved, lifeless, so we construct appearances. And perhaps later, if we manage to believe them, it can become strategies for manipulating others… I think it can be detected by the lack of congruence, of vital energy throughout the body.

Here is the Larousse definition: “The attitude of concealing one’s true character or intentions, of affecting sentiments, opinions, virtues one does not have, in order to present oneself in a favorable light and inspire confidence” and/or “an action or statement intended to deceive about someone’s true feelings or intentions.” Put differently, I would say that hypocrisy is “acting as if” for personal interest. It is a form of the identity mechanism “pretending.”
It seems to me that a typical case of hypocrisy is making someone believe that you love or appreciate them in order to take advantage of their services or generosity (lure of gain). On the opposite end, it can be a way to protect oneself: someone may be hypocritical towards their boss out of fear of losing their job if they tell them the truth to their face.
Most often, it is a conscious act, but I believe one can be hypocritical unconsciously, especially to protect oneself. To recognize it, one must have a detector of incongruence, but if the hypocrite is a good actor it is difficult, and all that remains is to put oneself in their shoes to hope to detect it.
And personally, I cannot find an example. There were moments when I could have been hypocritical to avoid conflicts at work, but where I refused to be, and other examples where I “acted as if” to avoid hurting the other person, and not out of self-interest.

What leads someone to be hypocritical is the prospect of deriving an advantage, for example from a situation or a relationship. The person acts hypocritically out of self-interest.
I don’t really know how to recognize it, I tend to always believe what people tell me, the situations I encounter. I suppose there must be something recognizable in the unspoken, the behavior, but I fall for it very easily and only realize my naivety much later.
In my life I think especially of the period of adolescence when I was undoubtedly hypocritical in order to be part of a group, even though I felt completely out of step with the behaviors and values of its members. In this case, it was primarily not wanting to be rejected by “society” that was the source of the hypocrisy, or the lack of courage to assume my differences.

In my opinion, to be hypocritical is the opposite of being frank, it is not being sincere. It can come from internal consideration, fear of conflict, lack of responsibility, denial. It touches on manipulation, even bad faith, it is self-interest.
The example that comes to mind, in a company, is the person who does not want to get involved, who does not want to take risks, the person who wants to avoid being seen in a bad light, who goes with the flow, who says yes in front of you, and no behind your back.
It is an identity mechanism that prevents the person from being confronted with a deep lie on which their life is based. I’m thinking of our dear politicians.
I remember a situation at school where I arrived late and my teacher asked me where I was coming from. I spontaneously replied that it was none of his business. This response really angered him! Having been called to the principal’s office where I was confronted with the prospect of serious sanctions, I decided that it was not worth standing my ground, and I decided to apologize hypocritically. It was so unexpected for the principal that he was left speechless, but there was no other way out, he had to accept my apologies.

Hypocrite, yes I probably was; mostly a liar and deceiver out of shame, I was ashamed and unhappy that I didn’t understand anything, ashamed and unhappy that I wasn’t like the others, deceiving to pretend to be like the others. Until the day I let myself be unmasked for the first time with W’s NLP. It took me some time to understand that concealing and lying preserved my identity, closed off the possibility of seeing my demons (at the cost of suffering that I didn’t know was useful), my emotional fears, and discovering that I was lying and lying to myself out of self-interest, for profit to preserve a space where no one would come and unmask me.

I long believed that I was being hypocritical during our meetings, and this was a major impediment for me to be able to relax, because I sometimes expressed “insights” or real but non-permanent experiences, while having moments of straying in my personal life. One day I understood that it was vanity (to think that I was being hypocritical), and it was a great relief.
I regularly find myself pretending in my social life, mainly to cut short any attempt or possibility of discussion about opinions (generally political, social, …). I think that what leads to hypocrisy is manipulation, in order to serve self-interest. Recognizing hypocrisy would therefore amount to recognizing the other person’s self-interest (through their incongruence), and their (now futile) attempt to manipulate the situation. Of course, at bottom it is an attempt to escape the necessary suffering.
I have the memory (very painful, very shameful, followed by remorse…) of having “preached falsehood to know the truth”, especially in my romantic relationships. I think that was hypocrisy.

For me, hypocrisy is a dishonest attitude, a role we play knowingly while thinking the opposite, to protect our self-interest (fear of losing something). In my opinion, it is to be distinguished from “playing along” or “acting as if”, which I see rather as a useful lie, for example on a social level, and which simply serves to preserve a certain intimacy, and not to throw to the dogs what is sacred in me (and which is not linked to any fear).
I have an example dating from my adolescence. Between the ages of 13 and 18, I was very close friends with a classmate, we were inseparable. At first this friendship was extraordinary for me, it brought me out of my bubble; then I realized that our relationship was unbalanced and my friend was very exclusive, wanting to always be the center of attention. It had become too suffocating for me, and at a certain point I decided that at the end of our studies, I would stop associating with this person. In the meantime, I was hypocritical, I continued to play the role of confidante, I “acted as if nothing was wrong” to avoid conflicts, knowing that I would still be in contact with her for a few more months. But I knew that as soon as we stopped going to class together, I would cut off all contact.
What drove me to act this way: cowardice. I wanted to preserve my personal comfort, I was afraid to talk to her, afraid to give her my point of view, afraid to tell her that I was suffocating by her side. I mainly wanted to avoid getting into conflict with her.
Acting without hypocrisy would have been to distance myself from this person after realizing that the relationship was unhealthy.

I’ve been racking my brain for several days, but I’m having a hard time finding an experience where I was hypocritical. I think I’ve understood why I didn’t use this identity mechanism: my original belief being “I am not loved”, I must have been afraid that the hypocrisy could be unmasked and result in the loss of affection, consideration from the “victim” person and perhaps also from other people around me, who would think that I am not reliable in terms of my true feelings; in short that I am false, and that as such I should be avoided. I clearly see the link between my original belief and this fear of losing others’ affection because of a hypocritical attitude.
Since I don’t have any direct lived experience, I based myself on observations around me to deepen this theme. The hypocrite’s motivation seems to me to be a desire to manipulate others, to have power over them. But also a desire to please despite everything, and to become intoxicated a little with this conceptual scent that would express itself thus: “even this person whom I despise, or hate, or who matters little to me… finds interest in my opinion”.
There is a form of arrogance, a feeling of superiority that is expressed by a false interest towards others, perhaps to extract information from them to potentially use against them later, to mock or blame them, or more prosaically to manipulate them or gain an advantage.
How to recognize it? I think we feel the irrelevance of their remarks or questions, we guess a hidden ulterior motive. Perhaps through a set of non-verbal behaviors, if not in the tone, or in a relational approach that we sense is artificial.

Larousse definition: “the act of disguising one’s true character, of expressing opinions, feelings that one does not have. Synonyms: dissimulation, duplicity, falsity, deceit.”
Immediately, I thought of the play by William Shakespeare “Richard III”. This character acts as the absolute master of hypocrisy to achieve his ends, to become king. Hypocrisy is a conscious dissimulation to achieve one’s ends. It is the weapon of manipulation, it is the weapon of cold revenge, self-interest is the driving force. Recognizing it is not at all easy for me. The person who employs it must be a good actor. I remember nuns or priests who seemed perfectly hypocritical to me. Syrupy on the surface, and calculating underneath. I remember their tone of voice, which I felt was polished, worked on, and which drove me crazy.
Did I use this means to achieve my ends? After reflection, I must say yes. When R. announced his departure, I was shocked, even though I suspected it; and quickly, I also saw the advantages. But this feeling of deliverance, I never showed it to him. So yes, in this case, I was indeed hypocritical so that he would not change his mind again. Otherwise I use hypocrisy when I have difficulty expressing my emotions, when they are confused, intertwined, rather than looking them in the face and trying to untangle their threads. These emotions can be: anger, guilt, avoiding feeling “mean”, or wanting to be thought of as “nice”, not wanting to hurt the other person, not being able to bear the hurt I risk inflicting on the other person. So avoiding conflict? Then yes I flee, and I can use hypocrisy to hide these emotions. In this case, it is indeed my self-interest that comes into play, not necessarily to want to harm the other, but rather (and this is paradoxical) not to harm them.

Hypocrisy is to be distinguished from “acting as if”, which I understand rather as an intentional “pretending” to remain transparent by adapting to a given context. Being hypocritical implies a surreptitious intention to deceive the other, to conceal what one really thinks, to hide what one really is, to hide behind a lack of frankness so as not to reveal oneself, to protect one’s self-interest. I certainly used hypocrisy during adolescence, out of shame at my ignorance, with a touch of pride or naivety to avoid being unmasked.
I almost intuitively sense the manipulation that lies behind hypocrisy and lying, because it resonates as false through my body. Either I denounce it wholeheartedly, or I keep it to myself depending on the context, and I distance myself.

Yes, the first thing is to look inside myself, to see what self-interest makes me allow the other to enter me. Then, to ruthlessly reject any attempt to respond to his self-interest.
I have also implanted a “quantum” demand that my life no longer be ruined by toxic people, for the rest of my life.

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.

I know I’m in this dynamic when I feel an underlying sense of gratitude, for no apparent reason (like a continuous bass in a piece of music). In ‘response’, I’m sometimes given a fluidity, an ease in external events, resulting in joy and lightness, but this isn’t necessary to perceive this sound.
I know I’m not there when I feel that life is a burden, an enormous task. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this weight in an overwhelming way, but it can resurface as a trace. So I immediately denounce it.

I know this because I’m seeing the weight of the past being uprooted from my daily life. And I occasionally spot a few limitations rooted in the past. So I’m determined to sweep all that away. One illustration of this is the absence (or at least a marked reduction) in my procrastination. When I take action without waiting, I have the distinct feeling that I’m relieving myself of a potential burden from the past: because procrastination encourages us to delay and postpone taking action, we quickly find ourselves encumbered by what we refused to do. So we’re left with a burden of the un-done but still-to-be-done past, which exhausts and pollutes our vitality. But I also have the feeling that I still have a lot of work to do in this area.
It’s very clear to me that this work of cleaning up the past necessarily involves, in my case, a daily practice of releasing the tensions that have built up in my body, to allow them to dissolve naturally. Simply by giving them space to dissolve, under the light of a non-voluntary, but simply observant and benevolent attention. I have the intuition that this ‘tool’, as far as I’m concerned, is of primordial importance at the moment. I even have the impression that I was getting hints over the last year to return to a daily practice of chi-kung. As if those hints were preparing me by leading me to actions that I now realize the significance of.
I’ve noticed that once these inner impulses have been respected, taken on board and put into action, the universe presents me with circumstances or understandings, and even aids that validate this work. It’s as if the universe is collaborating with me from the moment I place myself in the direction of the current of life. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything becomes easy, but even when circumstances require even more effort, I’m convinced that what I’m doing is right (“right” in the sense of “following the flow of life and participating in it at the right time”).
Not being in the flow of real life currently represents for me the opposite behaviours to those I’ve just described: procrastinating, accumulating tension in my body and justifying it with judgements or accusations, forgetting my creative power in the service of life, allowing myself (out of sheer laziness, cowardice or immediate self-interest) to be hypnotised by identifications. Not taking into account the inner impulses that can flow through me, allowing myself to be swayed by doubt, particularly in relation to the new and the unknown, not daring to experience openness (and possibly the necessary suffering that I may receive through this openness). And above all, at the moment, DON’T DARE: don’t recognise the creative power within me, don’t trust it, castrate it, mainly by refusing to surrender to it…

I know I’m in the dynamic of real life when I’m surprised, in the childlike sense of the word, by the magical unfolding of life at every moment, by what manifests itself and lovingly responds to my intentions, whether I’m aware of it or not.
By the subtle and permanent reminder that “I” am a participating manifestation of this same real life, born of the same non-matter, linked by the fascias of the universe.
I delude myself that I’m not there when I think I’m a separate entity controlling the course of ‘my’ life.
When my body tenses up and I can no longer feel the dance of the thousands (millions? billions?) of cells that make it up.
When the veil of the mind gone mad, instilling fear and doubt, hides beauty from me.

I know, or rather I feel, that I am in the dynamic of Real life when I let my heart speak and my mind is its servant. So I play, like a child on a sandy beach, I play and I rejoice. But not only that: sometimes, like the child in the sand, I play and get sand in my eyes, so I cry. In any case, I live! I feel the vibration of life inside me with a gentle intensity, and amazement is present at almost every moment. Then comes the gratitude of an adult, grateful for everything, absolutely everything, that makes up ‘my’ life.
When I’m not in the dynamic of Real life, I feel a bit numb, and this is one of the criteria that, when I spot it, makes me shake myself existentially and even physically sometimes (as dogs do), as if to ‘dispel the spell’. This ‘spell’ that I’ve created for myself, out of laziness or a refusal to feel the necessary suffering, or because I’m not yet mature enough to face up to a life circumstance and see it in all its impersonal nakedness.

I know I’m in the dynamic of real life when I feel existential relaxation, with an open heart, whatever the circumstances. This happens more often when I’m alone, out for a walk or simply in nature.
On the other hand, when I feel tension, it’s because my identity has become tense, and I’ve withdrawn from real life. There may be ruminations, or emotions like anger, for example. This happens to me more often when I’m in contact, interacting with people.

I’m there when there’s trust, and also awareness in what I’m doing or saying, even if sometimes it’s messy, although sincere.
I’m not there when the mind is intrusive and I lose contact both with my environment and with the feeling of confidence in my chest.

The confidence I have in Life is a precious witness to real life, as is the absence of fear.
I’m not there when I’m asking myself certain questions, when I’m preoccupied, as happened to me recently, with the health pass, the compulsory professional seminar, the fact that I no longer have a doctor, the pending application to renew my teleworking contract; by welcoming powerlessness, I felt confidence, relaxation, I rediscovered wonder.

When I am in body consciousness, I am “with myself” and in the world that unfolds in and through me with each breath.
When I feel physical tension and identify with the outside world, I lose touch with the real world within.

I know I’m in real life when I’m in body consciousness, in the moment.
I know I’m not when I shift this life into the mental and/or emotional spheres; somewhere other than in the moment.

I’m in this dynamic when I’m guided by joy and calm.
And it’s when worry or anger arise that I know I’m ‘slipping’. I also pay attention to the sadness that can emerge. In these cases, I ‘switch’ by watching a video or a text that inspires me, by listening to music that soothes me, or by singing, or by going for a walk whenever possible.
I also observe, when my ‘resistant’ side expresses itself, whether the desire to act comes from the heart or from the ego, and there I’m not quite there yet. So I go back to what I was doing before to refocus before making decisions.

I know more easily when I am not in the dynamics of real life. The proof is in the identification with negative emotions and internal considerations. With the characteristic presence of an inner monologue that seems credible to me.
When I’m in the dynamics of real life, I generally don’t notice it at the time. I notice it more on reflection, once I’ve slipped on a mental banana peel and have to retrace my steps to see what went wrong. I’d sum up my thoughts on being in the dynamic of real life this way: I do what needs to be done as if what’s happening in my consciousness is the most interesting thing in the world. There’s no emotional or psychological differentiation between when something goes wrong and when it goes right.

I tend to say that being in real life = being in body consciousness = being in existential relaxation. Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t physical tensions or external conflicts, but it’s still about accepting that ‘what is’ is, without unnecessary identifications or suffering.
And when I’m not in the dynamic of real life, it’s because I’m identified with a belief, a concept, something that deprives me of the freedom to respond innocently to the present moment.