Awaken the Conviction That Stirs True Conscience

Our fundamental prayer is, "What I really want is to not have this pain, to not fall again." There was a woman who had a fight with another woman at the market and when she passed a mirror she could see that the heart in her was not her heart but the heart of an angry, hostile person. Something had taken residence inside of her. She realized that she had several similar experiences in her past. She vowed not to have that heart again. The heart in me is not my heart. She knew she needed somehow to remember her aim because she knew she would forget again. 

The nature of a being is what the being does. We don't say, "I am an animal". But what are hatred, resentment, aggression etc.? We need something to help us remember because we don't want to be these kinds of people anymore. We are handed off from one group of "I's" to anything, not knowing whose hands we are in. One negative state to the next because we can't remember these negative states don't help us. We need to remember that left to ourselves our tendencies are towards anger, resentment, judging, criticizing, know it all and fighting. We wander through the allies of our past looking for a purpose for today. 

What is required of us is to remember. Otherwise we lend our body to darkness instead of to the Light. Instead of doing the being of what is dark, rushing, hating and swimming in resentful feelings ruing the past, our life can be spent in remembering what we are suppose to be doing. Remembering our aim to be connected to one thing. 

There was once a special part of the world that was a good and pure place that had 12 schools of True Teachings. Each year one student from each school was given an urn with a small flame in it and was to successfully take it to the 13th school. They all set out but returned. One came back because of a storm, one's light went out because he was eating a snack, and another came back because he ran up the mountain and the flame went out. Only one student made it. He made it because that he kept his eyes on the flame. He feed it with other material. He took every measure to keep the flame alive. Without remembering our aim for God's life something cold comes into our hearts and we fail. 

To remember requires conviction. Real spiritual conviction is the seed born out of the recognition that we need to take the entirety of ourselves into every moment. We realize to forget ourselves means we are goners. We need to have one love, one purpose, one flame, and one single mindedness for our whole mind. Be conscious of our tendency to go asleep. Realize when we go to sleep we are in the hands of ourselves and we will pay for it. Practice right conviction to remember yourself. Start with working at remembering yourself for one minute, 2 minutes, and 5 minutes and continue to try to stretch it out. Your true conscience is waiting for you to water it. You have to pay for it, meditation, conscious effort, not going into dreams. Start over and over again. One small absolute conviction will awaken conscience. Make the awaken life more important to you than the sleepy life you give yourself now.