MindBlow

Conscience and Emotions

Before I start, know that what gets explained in this chapter is very important. So remember what you read. Write it down, whatever helps you to never forget. They're so important because they form the basis of understanding yourself.

The thing that will come back a lot in future chapters is conscience and emotions.

Let me explain the difference between them, since people use to disarrange them a lot. You see, conscience is your thinking; you can compare it to a voice in your head, it tells you not to put your hand in a fire, since it hurts. Or not to steal, because it's bad. You can compare conscience to logic.
Your emotions are a whole different thing. You could almost call it the opposite of conscience. Emotion is what you feel: happiness, sadness, jealousy, hate, love, etc.

Emotions are unstable. Conscience is (more) stable.

The mistake people make a lot is to put the two in the wrong order. Most people base their logic on their emotions. Not their emotions on logic. What causes an effect what makes you unstable.
Let me give you an example. Most people think like "I hate it because this, and this and this." And not. "Because of this and this I hate it."

What's so important about the difference? It causes the outcome of how you react to things. As I said before, emotions are unstable, conscience is stable.

If you have your emotions as basis, then your basis in unstable, what causes your logic to be (more) unstable. And that causes you to react in "unstable" manners and that can have unpleasant outcomes for yourself and others.
But if you have logic as your basis, then your basis is more stable, what also causes your emotions to be more stable and you can keep yourself under better control.

You can compare it to standing on a bridge with a camera in your hands and you want to take a picture of something. Now I ask you, which picture has a bigger change of succeeding? On the unstable bridge, or the stable bridge?
Of course you can still mess up, but it's less likely to happen on a stable bridge (aka a stable basis)

I hope this chapter explained the important difference between emotions and conscience. As I said before, this is an important chapter that will be mentioned a lot in future chapters. If you read a chapter and you don't really remember, just go back to this one and read it again. This forms a part of your basis, and your basis needs to be stable to be able to control yourself.