SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS – THE WRONG ROLE OF THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE

As much as a person, driven by their inner spirit discontent, tends to seek satisfaction in sensual, mental and emotional experiences, his guilty conscience also forces him to seek satisfaction in the feeling of his own moral righteousness. Guilty conscience is a consequence of our refusal to listen to the voice of conscience, which invites us to resist our inner discontent and repent for the abuse of sensual, mental and emotional experiences.

Guilty conscience can be manifested in many ways: through our tendency to use euphemisms and the incapability to admit our own sins or mistakes, through various fears and phobias, over-sensitivity to criticism, a disposition to suppress our motives and to project them to others, and also through our tendency to cynicism, false morality, pseudoreligiousness, asceticism, false self-criticism, etc.

Guilty conscience incites a need to feel morally righteous, and we can trigger it by either instigating a feeling of love (through meditation, pseudo-religious methods, and so forth), or by sticking to the moral principles which have no purpose other than their own end and for whose formal fulfillment we will endanger our own and other people’s existence. For example, some religious people who refuse blood transfusion can jeopardize their own lives as well as someone else’s. By blindly sticking to the rules, the biblical Pharisees put in danger the needs of those for whom the rules were established in the first place. Jesus Christ revealed their fanaticism by referring to the examples in the Old Testament which showed that man was not made for the law, but the law was made for man. Since this kind of “Pharisee” righteousness is not a response to the needs of our sphere of influence, but our personal need for satisfaction, we will refer to it as self-righteousness.

Our motives define the meaning and purpose of our intelligence as well as all the other physical and mental abilities. Whether our abilities are used to answer the actual needs of our existence or to our and others' damnation depends on the quality of motives that drive us. As human beings we are at liberty to define the meaning of our lives by letting the reason choose the motives which will drive us throughout our lives: motives that are indeed purposeful to our needs of life (unselfish kindness), or the ones which “parasite” off of our sensual, mental and emotional experiences, and are as such recognized as meaningless by our reason and sinful by our conscience. In any case - unless we responsibly resist our sensual, vain and selfish motives, they can lead us into actions which endanger our existence, so their justification cannot suffer the criticism of our common sense.

Due to the conflict with reason and conscience, every psychological type of Zodiac signs is characterized by a unique behavioral motive as well as defense mechanisms in the struggle against the voice of reason and conscience that call them to resist their basic behavioral motives. Defense mechanisms are a result of the resistance of man’s Ego to the voice of reason and conscience. Namely, when common sense exposes our behavioral motives as meaningless, our conscience attributes a negative moral value to them: it exposes them as sinful, asking us to resist these motives willingly. In case we do not want to resist the temptation, we are bothered by our voice of reason and conscience, and we fight them with our defense mechanisms. The aforementioned motives and defense mechanisms represent our temptation and the obstacle on our way to take responsibility to govern ourselves and our actions in accordance with the principles of sound mind; these motives inhibit our growth in becoming human, in the most supreme sense of the word.

A sensible and responsible person behaves purposefully to the actual needs of life, and not to some principle which is the end in itself. Unlike a grown person who governs themselves and the world around them in harmony with common sense, an immature person's behavior is determined and governed by their destructive motives which, unfortunately, astrologers describe as quite natural and normal.

We will herein briefly define the basic types of Zodiac signs based on their driving motives. The abuse of sensual experiences is a trait of the psychological type of Scorpio. The abuse of mental notions is a characteristic of the psychological types of Libra, Sagittarius, Aries and Leo. The abuse of emotions is a trait of Gemini, Virgo, Cancer and Pisces. In other words, Scorpios are sensual. Libra, Sagittarius, Aries and Leo are proud (vain). And Gemini, Virgo, Cancer and Pisces are selfish. Nevertheless, it does not mean they overtly express their essential motives. For instance, Virgos tend to become burdened with guilt, so their selfishness (stinginess) is frequently suffocated and prevented from open expression.

Their sensations and emotions are weak, so, instead of enjoying them, they enjoy the image of their own moral righteousness, and for that reason they hypocritically prevent the expression of their weaknesses. Aries is too proud to satisfy their vanity by publicly expressing it in a parading manner as the psychological type of Libra does. In the same fashion, the Libra type, which naturally is not a slave to their feelings, uses feelings to a great extent, but within their mechanism of manipulation over other people with the purpose to achieve the ultimate effect, the effect not being their own pleasant feelings, but the made-up notion about their own worth and magnitude in their minds.