discipline

I feel to say a few words about discipline, self discipline. During the spiritual journey, especially in the early stages, we need to apply discipline to follow some practice. This spiritual path is about changing our life, changing the very feel of life. To do so we need to break habitual patterns of behaviour and of thinking. We need to change the very energetic patterns of our being. All of this takes some effort to begin with.

So, having found some practice which we feel will help us, we need to use discipline to force ourselves to stick to the practice every day, for years usually. This discipline is a subtle violence against oneself, in a way, and yet we need to go through this stage on the path. It is only through such discipline that we can break down the patterns that have been in us for years, for decades, unhealthy patterns that are limiting our spiritual growth. So we use discipline.

What do we mean by discipline? We mean that the mind is split, half of us wants to do something and half of us wants to avoid doing it. When it comes to spiritual practice we use discipline to force the issue, to ensure that we do continue the practice regularly. In the end we have to abandon discipline, in the end our mind becomes un-fragmented and we no longer have conflicting desires, half wanting something, half not wanting it. In the end we go beyond all this but in the early stages of the path our mind is fragmented, we have conflicting desires. That is the reality of the starting point, and so we use discipline to force ourselves down the spiritual path in the early stages.

The ego will fight against this, for the ego is threatened by the spiritual journey, ultimately destroyed by it. It finds subtle ways to resist this destruction. It will create any number of excuses for not practising, it will argue against discipline even when the discipline is of benefit to us. We must put aside all such arguments and use discipline until we reach that point where the practice no longer meets with any resistance. Then life can become effortless, we will be following a spiritual path without the need of discipline. That is usually years down the line. In the meantime, find the discipline. It is needed, it is helpful in the early stages of the path.