Let us therefore, my brothers, take care to guard our conscience, as long as we are still in this world

 Even if the world today has become worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, be careful to make peace with your enemy while you are still in this life.

 “Conscience is called an adversary because it always opposes our evil will and checks us for what we should do and do not do and accuses us for what we do and should not do.” That is why it is said that the best pillow is a quiet conscience.

Go to sleep. When you have remorse of conscience, you cannot sleep, no matter how many sedatives you take. You will have to settle your adversary, your adversary. You must forgive! Conscience says, you must forgive and you say, no, I will keep my character, I do not want to forgive, I do not want to be humiliated, I do everything, let him do it too… and you cannot sleep. Conscience does not let you, the adversary, the rival.

“Have good relations with your rival, while you are still walking together on the road”. In this life. Do not leave it after death. After death you cannot sort out your conscience. After death your conscience will be your condemnation. “The road is, as St. Basil says, this world”. While you are on the road, while you are in this world, sort things out with your conscience, find them, sort out your conscience. And we know what sorting out is, repentance and confession, the correction of evil. Behold, what great things confession offers, which no psychiatrist, psychologist, medicine, or anything can give you! It calms your conscience, because the Holy Spirit comes and tells you, my child, it is as if you had not done it. It is finished... I erase it, I erase it... and the person calms down.

“Let us therefore, my brothers, take care to guard our conscience, as long as we are still in this world, without provoking it to control us for anything, without trampling on it in anything at all, not even in the slightest.” Do not let your conscience control you. Since you know, what you will do now, your conscience will control you later.

The Ascetic Writings of Abba Dorotheos.