Discipline and Freedom
Written on December 28, 2009 by Tom Stine
A while ago, a reader sent me the following question: “Do you have any thoughts on discipline and freedom?” After exchanging a few emails to clarify more specifically what he was asking, he sent me the following:
I’m on a spiritual path and I pick up stuff from all sorts of places like the Sedona Method, I’m checking out A Course in Miracles and the Work of Byron Katie and non violent communication, and other sources, and sometimes with all the techniques and stuff my mind can get really jumbled and I wouldn’t know which to use or when, and it gets to be this mess in my mind, where all messes are made—haha. I think a reason I cling to the forms and techniques is I would achieve pieces of peace and my mind would identify “Sedona Method” with peace and that would get me in trouble. Anyways, my question with discipline and freedom is I don’t know what to do! Should I keep with just one or how should I make sense of this? Should I stick with one discipline and go all the way with it or let freedom guide?
These are excellent questions. This dilemma he is facing is a very common one amongst spiritual seekers. There is a vast array of spiritual ideas, techniques and practices, and even worse pseudo-spiritual ideas, techniques and practices. In case you’ve been sleeping, try googling words like “manifesting” or “The Secret” or “abundance” and just look at the ads in the margin. Yikes! You could go nuts just trying to come to grips with all this… um… well… “stuff” for lack of a more polite term.
But, as is said, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and even in pseudo-spiritual teachings that pander to the basest human instincts, you can find some true gold. But how does one navigate through the trash and hopefully find the treasure?
Well, you don’t, to be honest. You will never find your way through this endless sea. However, that which you are, the Infinite, will lead you and show you the way. It always has been leading you, and it will continue to do so.
So, my suggestion to my reader is to do the following: sit down with any single one of the techniques and practices and work with it until you feel done with it. Just give it a whole hearted effort and see what happens. A bit of earnestness, as Nisargadatta called it, works wonders. We could also call this willingness to let all be undone and transformed
In my own experience, when I was going through a phase like this one, I found that if I would really dive into something, really give it my all, within a very short period of time, it would fade away. And then on to the next, and the same thing would occur. That little bit of intense effort would be all that was needed.
Eventually, all the techniques, all the practices, gave way to the only real practice there is: stillness. When the Infinite begins to awaken through you, it increasingly wants nothing to do with techniques or practices. It has one seeming agenda: to shine it’s light on everything in your mental-emotional system, to open every dark corner and shine a light into it. And what you discover is that it is operating on its agenda and its program, not yours. As a matter of fact, yours never mattered in the slightest. It has always been the Infinite doing its thing.
As a matter of fact, the first realization of truth that was experienced came in the midst of a rather odd “choice” of practice for me at the time. Something in me simply wanted to sit quietly and do nothing, no practices, no techniques, nothing. Just sit and be still. And within minutes, well, there was nothing but Stillness.
I find these days that all I can really do most of the time is sit, allow whatever is arising to arise, and simply watch it merge back into its Source, the Infinite. Ultimately, that is the only real practice. The only “discipline” required is to do one thing, one simple obvious thing, and do nothing else. How interesting!
Namaste.
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