Will our conscience ever become stronger than the mind?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and read Bhagavatam more and more so if we consider there are certain habits or certain temptations, certain behaviors which we will just not do because we strongly feel this is wrong there are certain other things which we may do which we may not do there are certain other things which we may just unthinkingly do although we may know that it is wrong so what has happened is the conscience is always there but the conscience can become numbed when the mind gets habituated to some things so for example if we know this thing if I do it is harmful for me and I am not going to do it I will give you a simple example say if this is the home of a person, this is the office and there is a person who is an alcoholic addict and another person who is not having that addiction now both of them may have to pass through the same area to get to the office the person who is not an alcoholic addict that person just passed by not even noticing the bar now anybody who notices the bar I don’t want to get involved in this, that conscience is very strong now the person who is an alcoholic addict that person what happens because they indulge again and again their desire is very strong especially that person who is a recovering addict there is a voice inside them, don’t indulge in this right now but the conditioning that is there that has become too strong so the Gita explains that our desires can become like shackles and when we repeatedly indulge in a particular activity then that shackle becomes thicker and tighter so for a person who is a compulsive alcoholic addict as soon as that person comes out of the house their mind has already gone into the bar I am going to drink or even in the office, I want to drink so what has happened, that craving has become so strong that the conscience just doesn’t have any voice it is there but it has become muted so now the solution is two fold for this first is that the more we spiritually connect ourselves we spiritually reorient ourselves the conscience becomes stronger and all of us have a conscience as I said there are certain things which we will not do there the conscience is strong but in some other areas it has become weaker so overall by spiritual practices our conscience overall becomes stronger and specifically we need if we have a particular area in which our conscience has become weak we need two things, intelligence and vigilance intelligence means specifically with respect to that particular weakness we need to read, we need to contemplate maybe write down and convince ourselves with our intelligence that this is something which I don’t want to do this is harmful for me rather than thinking when we get into morality is this right, is this wrong it may seem like moralizing, you can focus on wisdom is this wise, is this unwise there are certain things which you can see, by the consequences they are dangerous they are harmful, this is unwise these are the reasons why it is unwise and that’s why I will not do this so that way intelligence second is vigilance, vigilance means if we know that we have certain weaknesses then it is our responsibility to protect ourselves see our willpower is not an infinite resource our willpower is a finite resource and we need to use it wisely that means if say again going back to the example of alcoholic if a person wants to recover from alcoholism and if they have a house that is just above a bar now you see I will go to my house, I will not go to the bar, it’s very difficult because the temptation is so close and our willpower sometimes is very strong but willpower is like a muscle if I keep lifting weights for a long time my muscles get tired, at a particular point I just can’t lift any weight so what we need is that we can’t rely only on willpower vigilance means we definitely have to be vigilant so that if some undesirable things are tempting us we say no to that but because our willpower is not infinite vigilance means also we don’t put ourselves in the danger zone unnecessarily so whatever be our particular area where we want to strengthen our conscience then we can use our intelligence to convince ourselves why this is not good and also we become vigilant that means we minimize that particular tempting situation and that way as we keep avoiding doing that the rope that is pulling us towards that becomes weaker and weaker and as the rope becomes weaker and weaker that means the mind is not going to push us towards that wrong thing and conversely by our overall spiritual practices our conscience is becoming stronger so definitely by steady spiritual growth we can come to a stage where the voice within us which guides us towards wiser choices that becomes much stronger in the voice which guides us towards unwise choices which pushes us towards unwise choices that definitely happens by the practice of