Conscience is the truest good of the soul—the beacon of morality that shines upon us in dark and stormy seas to guide us safely home. Conscience is the voice within that reminds us of our duty to uphold the complex set of values and rules that form our individual perceptions of what is right. There is goodness in each of us—a desire to nurture what we believe to be right and to manifest our honor in our actions toward others. Conscience is a filtered view of all that we come to perceive to be good and bad, which focuses our hearts on our intentions for good. The mind, however, is easily distracted from the calls of conscience by a variety of explorations and urges in that which we know to be bad. Our intentions to become the goodness that we believe in are dependent upon our abilities to sensitize our minds to the calls of conscience…the calls of the truest good of our souls.

Our Truest Course
From our earliest days we are taught through loving tenderness and through sharp and pointed warnings, to formulate an understanding of what is right and wrong. Conscience is a complex assemblage of what we are taught by others, as well as what we come to believe of our own accord to be good and bad, and right and wrong. While there are many facets of conscience that we share universally with others, there are also points of variation and personal differences that appear in every individual, making conscience similar to others in many ways, but also unique to all. Conscience is the best of all that we come to know in life through our experiences with others and through personal discoveries, but the point of conscience is that it steers and directs us toward the goodness that we believe in. Conscience is our truest course to becoming the good we know and achieving integrity of heart, mind, and soul.

Happiness and Misery
In time we come to understand the intricacies of right and wrong as we gain familiarity with actions that lead us to happiness or sorrow. As we grow in touch with conscience, we learn to favor actions that are less self-serving and that make us more able to be of service to others. Conscience teaches us that when we engage in actions that we know are wrong, we will always pay a price, whether that price is an overt consequence of justice, or a more subtle detriment of happiness or self-respect. Conscience can always guide us to happiness, but we must be willing to heed its call.

Ignoring Conscience
For whatever reason, we sometimes ignore the calls of conscience, seeking satisfaction in ways that stray from our better judgment. Though the alarms continue to blare, while light reaches out to us through darkness, we find ourselves captivated by the intrigue of wrongful actions, deafened by unwholesome desires, and blinded by our careless curiosities. There are times when we blur lines between right and wrong, or ignore them altogether. We all make mistakes of varying seriousness, as we attempt to navigate the seas of our lives. We all find ourselves dreadfully off-course when we continue to sail unguided in the obscurity of our errors. At times our refusals to heed the warnings of conscience force us to learn lessons in the most difficult of ways through the roughest of seas, and to the most dangerous of destinations.

Learning Without Experience
There are better ways to learn life’s lessons than by getting lost at sea. We will commonly drift from our most appropriate headings as we journey through life, but we can avoid some of the most perilous waters and deadly conditions by learning to refine our senses. It is neither necessary, nor desirable to learn every lesson in life by experience, or by closing our eyes and covering our ears when conscience calls. We make enough mistakes in life through simple carelessness to justify a greater degree of attentiveness to conscience, and yet at times we choose behaviors that we know will place us at risk of harm and unhappiness. We often observe the actions of others and the mistakes that cause them to suffer greatly, and yet we commonly follow the same destructive patterns of behavior that set us off-course and force us to learn the same painful lessons. There is so much happiness to be gained and so much regret to be avoided if we simply allow ourselves to learn without experiencing, the lessons that others have learned the hard way through experience.

There are times when we drift so far into darkness that we lose hope of being saved by the calls of conscience. There are times when our mistakes seem to pile up so heavily upon us that we can never get out from under them. We will all experience occasions when we will find ourselves severely off-course to the point that we are ready to succumb to the great waves and mighty winds that beat upon our vessels, but we must always remember that the light of our conscience is never too far away to see if we are but willing to look for it with the eyes of our souls. When we are willing to return our eyes to the light of conscience, there is always a way to regain hope, and to restore the honor that exists in becoming who we wish to be. Though at times it seems we have strayed too far, and that our cause is lost, we must only set our sites upon the ever-true light of conscience to be led at last safely home again.

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Learning Something New Every Day: Learning something daily that is beneficial to our lives is a possibility, but it is not guaranteed without a conscious effort on our part.

Controlling Thoughts: Mastering our Minds and Thoughts: We evaluate ourselves based on things we do, finding joy and regret in actions, while scarcely noticing that the driving force behind them is our thoughts.

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