Discipline

TUES., JULY 7, 1987, 6:20 AM
FARM, STUDY

The title for the morning is in place, but you can’t seem to manage the discipline to begin the Teaching. You remain quite a combination of disciplined and spontaneous in your self. You are carrying out both of your commitments to Me, which is a positive display of discipline, and yet you let your mind wander in very distracting ways. Try to reduce this latter tendency as I speak to you on discipline, appropriately.

Legitimate spiritual paths range from the extremely disciplined to the very random and spontaneous. And, I assure you, it certainly is all right to have combinations, for one is not good and the other bad, but rather are complementary extremes.

A disciplined path allows, even demands, accomplishment. If you were a disciplined reader of Scripture you would be much more able in theological discussions to represent a basis for your faith much better than you do now. If you were a disciplined letter writer may people would be pleased and enriched by receiving epistles from you. If you were a disciplined gardener you would be prouder of that plot of ground and would be enjoying more founds that you helped produce. Yes, there are some genuine advantages to developing and maintaining disciplines. You do have some, and you appreciate these rightly.

A disciplined task is often serious and joyless. If one is completely disciplined, then there is a pleasure, even a joy, in carrying out disciplined action. It is fulfillment of something that is expected. It requires energies and attention that the person has allotted to the task, regularly. Not carrying it out would bring discomfort, even sorrow. So when a discipline is truly developed an expectation is built, and the task is carried out both for the pleasure of it and to avoid the discomfort that comes in failing in the commitment.

Is there any virtue, then, in reneging on a discipline or being relatively undisciplined? Certainly. Life is not a mechanical, predictable process, and the time and energy expended on some disciplined action cannot be available for some simultaneous spontaneous happening. It certainly should be a joy in life to be free to do something that is utterly unplanned and immediate. I encourage you to sit down to this form a meditation, receiving this Teaching, early in the morning when there is little competition for your time and attention. You know you can do this, but it requires the discipline of going to bed earlier and missing the spontaneous pleasures of late night solitude. Yet morning is a good time for you, and you muster enough discipline to complete the meditation. If you were more disciplined you could complete this in considerably less time, and you would be more accurate. But I realize you are not likely to develop this kind of self and mind control at your age. Therefore I encourage you to more discipline, mostly to combat natural atrophy of this somewhat unnatural response to life. I also accept you as you are and know I must “speak more insistently” if We are to carry on this relationship.