DISCIPLINE
“We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us with action and more action”. B.B., Page.88
The restless mind does not know the way of devotion. The mind is a wild elephant, mad, and reprobate wandering in the illusion of Maya. With out accepting the Will of God the mind does not poise until it discards the egoism, distinction, and maladies of doubt. It is avaricious and forgetful. At times it is meditating, performing austerities and at other times indulging in pleasures of life. It is gripped with desire and duality. Sometimes it is king or hero in the battle and some time praying and meditating. It sheds fear and pride with the Grace of God and becomes devoted and thoughtful towards the love of fellows. As it is being purified with spiritual progress, it develops the divine vision.
To become disciplined one has to break the bondages of too much attachment to material things, considering one self as guests in this world for few days.
One should be very careful about ritual piety being performed egotistically. One should subjugate the lower instincts and develop virtues.
The person who knows how to conquer, lust, wrath, avarice, boasting and pride can possess the sovereignty of the whole world.
Self discipline and self-control enables us to organize and unite all forces. This increases our power for both thought and action. Under the influence a person may do some thing, he will always regret, the very thing he knows to be destructive. It is because he has allowed destructive thought to over power him. Endurance is one of the greatest assets in life. The Self is the friend of the self for him who has conquered himself, his lower self but one whose self is unconquered his self-acts as an enemy. We become our own enemy when we are thrown out of balance by anger, hatred, grief or any intense emotion.
We pray, meditate, study, go through all practices and think it should give us spiritual impetus, yet we stand still. Or even take back a step. A person may use morality as a ground but lacks in patience, forbearance and forgiveness. When anger comes in all dogmas and theories will go for nothing.
There are two ways to approach self-discipline by self-exertion or self-abandonment. The one’s who have surrendered themselves wholly and willingly to the highest power that there is no room in their hearts for any darkness, anger or evil. It is a vital necessity in our lives if we could maintain social order and keep harmony. When our thought, mind and heart as a whole being is focused in the new way of life according to all the twelve steps in the program, then we shall find high ideals arising with in us spontaneously and the lower instincts will touch us no more.
With the right attitude of mind, with right control of ourselves, we work for our own well fare, but when our mind is distorted or clouded it becomes our enemy. Like wise when we are puffed up with vanity or full of egotism, we turn away from our divine nature. Ego works in both ways.
Spirituality is not a question of calculations or doctrines but it evolves in us and we are the first to benefit, because our lives have been transformed. We are the same and yet we are not the same. The only way we raise and lift our fellow beings is to find a higher level of consciousness. What we manifest in the body and mind is the result of what we are in our spiritual consciousness.
Unfeeling people are often self-centered and selfish due to their thinking and living. Seek not self, but seek the truth. Truth is above all and above truth is truthful conduct. Truth is something we should absorb and assimilate. The self-adjustments and self-possessions are essential to our well-being. One who has self-control is serene in the midst of all dual conditions. We need individual discipline. The mind may not enjoy this, because it has formed the habit of lighter interests. The ordinary mind finds more pleasure in reading a novel than in studying the big book or 12 and 12. Yet one who wishes to sustain his spiritual nature has no other course than to cultivate such a habit to attend meetings and study AA literature, until it becomes a second nature and he begins to love it. It is to be obtained through the silent practice of meditation as well as meditation in action. The conquest, which any human being seeks in the external world, is insignificant in comparison with that which lies with in his own-self; and until he has conquered his inner kingdom, all outer conquests must be fleeting and uncertain, for his own unwise actions may at any moment cause his ruin.
If one has dirt out side, it can be removed with a shower, more so with soap and put on clean and business clothing to impress others. What about the dirt inside, which cannot be seen? I t can only be removed with spiritual progress.
A person is not a conqueror in the spiritual sense unless he is willing to save his soul life in exchange for any material advantage. Each one must bring out what is best in him. When our lower nature no longer exerts it self in us, what ever may be the provocation, then self-conquest is complete. One should be concerned about internal cleanliness and discipline rather external cleanliness. The discipline of life is very wonderful for mind and body.
“A spiritual man is calm and the vulgar are always fretting”
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