My three children

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment that assists in distinguishing right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or norms (principles and rules).

– Wikipedia

Pretty straight forward don’t you think?

Ah well, I wish it was that easy to actually put it into practice. Google the meaning, understand the meaning, and follow the meaning. Simple! But there lies the twist. Just like each individual is different from another, an individuals’ conscience is different from another person’s conscience.

Sometimes I think why did this concept even come up? Why do you need something to tell you what is right and wrong? Clearly it was the existence of wrong that gave birth to a conscience.

All of us have a conscience. Some of us have a loud one and some, a soft one. We all do, just the intensity differs. And that is the difference between your soul and another. I say soul because your conscience is a part of your soul, or maybe in a way it’s actually the soul itself. It’s the energy, the infinite pure energy that exists, that can be felt but not seen or touched.

It’s that voice that whispers in your head non-stop until you have received the message. But does receiving a message guarantee that it has been acknowledged? Understood? Accepted?

Nope.

We always have an option to ignore a message. Ignore it, till it naturally fades away. And who helps with that?

The Mind.

The human brain, which takes pride in the fact that it rationalises each and every thing and only then arrives at a conclusion, unlike your heart or your soul that comes up with a feeling without backing it up with a rationalised argument.

But then do you always need a rationalised argument to back your decisions and choices? Do you need your mind to dissect every little thing about everything in life, and take an “informed, aware call”?

Sometimes, just knowing without knowing why, works perfectly well.

But a lot of people would disagree with that. A lot of them would say, “Why don’t you want to take an informed decision? God has provided you with a brain, use it!” My argument is that we also have a conscience! Why not try listening to that?

But there is a problem.

We’ve all heard that statement, “Don’t be a slave of your mind. Learn to control your mind and you can control your life.” I never really got that in its real sense. I never truly understood why it’s important to control your mind, until recently. And I realised that it doesn’t takecourage to follow your mind. It takes courage to listen to your conscience and go against your mind. Why? It’s because it takes courage to take a decision based solely on how you feel about it, rather than weighing the pro and cons. You don’t know why you’re deciding to do it. All you know is that you feel like it. There is something that is telling you to go ahead with it, without giving you a rational explanation.

I’m not saying this is always the case and that it should be followed for all the decisions you take in your life. That would be crazy. Seriously! You got a mind, use it! But for those times, when your mind comes up with brilliant, undeniable arguments and you’re still not convinced. There you have it before you- the work of genius, encouraging you to listen to it. But you are Just. Not. Convinced. Something is not allowing you to appreciate that wonderful logic that stares at you in the face. It’s for those times that you should at least acknowledge your soul (if not listen to it), that is trying to get a different message to you, through your conscience.

Of course if you’re in love, you can replace your conscience with your heart. Fabulous.  More confusion. Like we weren’t having trouble with the mind and soul already, lets add the heart to the circus.  Whoever came up with, “the more the merrier,” was seriously delusional.  -_-

So does that mean there can be a situation when all three are up and about and giving you the worst time of your life? Dear god. I don’t even want to imagine that kind of a situation.

But then, there will come a time when it will be too much for your body to deal with. Your body, that houses these three stubborn entities, will finally give in. It will retaliate by falling sick. Tired and exhausted with this continuous tug of war of contrary thoughts and opinions. And that will be the time when it’ll hit you that the problem was within you, not in your physical exterior environment.  All you needed was courage, to back up That unfathomable but real feeling. Like the famous quote by Ambrose Redmoon, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

It’s scary and I don’t deny it. It’s scary to do what you think is right in spite of what the world around you believes and what the general norms preach. But the fear of taking a stand should not keep you from doing the right thing. You know the beauty about this ‘taking a standing’ thing is? It’s easier to stand up for somebody you love or care about, than to stand up for yourself. It takes courage, no doubt, to be there for someone. But it takes immense courage to do that for you. Odd, isn’t it? I guess it’s a testimony to the fact that how much we value our own feelings and thoughts. You should have more faith in yourself and your feelings. The faith that your soul knows what is right for you, and that it can never steer you onto the wrong path, if you listen to what it truly whispers to you. But first, you need to learn to recognise that voice. The voice that many of us have ignored for so long, that it’s stopped communicating with you.

One way I know, is to spend some time with yourself. Listen to your thoughts. And if you listen to them carefully, soon you’ll know which one of the stubborn children is talking to you. And just like how a child brings happiness and joy in your life, but along with it that perpetually exhausted feeling? This is pretty much the same. You are happy, but tired of all the non-stop yapping.

The mind is your first child. The leader of the pack, the first one to process, analyse and interpret all that is thrown at you through your sense organs. The heart is your youngest one. The pampered kid of the lot, whose presence (or demands) cannot be ignored. And your soul, that’s your middle child. The one, that cannot argue with the older sibling and who always has to put the younger ones needs before his. So when your middle one has something to say, listen. He rarely speaks, but encouraging him would make him more pronounced, and he would help to attain that balance that each of our body strives to achieve.

So, the more faith you have in yourself and your gut feelings, the closer you are to your soul; the louder your conscience and the harder it is for you to ignore it, even if you want to. Trust me. It’s unbelievably hard, to not listen to it.