on discipline

What if Discipline is a Pleasure Practise?

What if Discipline is the commitment to following the flow of your body’s/mind’s/spirit’s highest needs, rather than a commitment to its suffering for the sake of an illusory delayed gratification? What if the delight is in the culmination of the small actions and the presence within the process? What if healing is our most creative act?

In our healing, we can intuitively know it is a non linear journey—but might still expect a clean, orderly rise and fall of action. A neat story that begins before the harm—the middle engages the struggle, and by the end we are repaired or transformed by the harm.

The reality is that our healing, much like any creative practise, requires us simply to show up because are called to. We show up for the pain. We show up for the wound. We show up for the scab. We show up even for the necessary delays—the re-breaking of the bone to better set its healing, the picking at the scab until it must heal again, the re-telling of the trauma to process new information.

The presence is the discipline. The forgiveness and grace within you're ability to be present is the discipline.

As a deep romantic infatuated with the illusion of structure, I enchant myself often with the lure of schedules, plans, and rigiidity for the sake of Ego focused Discipline. This “Egoic Discipline” centers sacrifice and brutality, the act of punishment for reward, the endurance of suggering for a hope that may never come. This approach is intentionally self -aggrandising because it depends upon pain, it finds the comfort in misory and dis-ease. This Discipline can therefore only breed creations of its disconnected maker—which is why so often we hear stories of winners who, once they achieve, ultimately find themselves disillusioned, lost, inconsolable, and even more unhappy than when they were in their Egoic Discipline.

I find myself teetering in and out of the Egoic Discipline, and the balance is key. Eradication of the Ego is fraught, largely because Ego has its own wisdom and medicine. There are worthy pursuits Ego can identify with. There is an athleticism to a Discipline that inckudes endurances and a healthy relationship with discomfort or sacrifice for the sake of growth. Ego, even its flawed approach, still ultimately loves you and desires the best for you. Ego is flexible, highly adaptive, and has capacity for evolution. When we investigate its gifts and its core drive to love our dreams into being, we can counsel and channel its passion into a practice of True Pleasure, rather than punishment.

Where Ego may have guided me to approach healing grief as something to “win” by doing a series of activities, particularly the “right” kind of activities, and putting myself on a one week bereavement plan to then show up “over it” and able to focus on work—another Discipline was taking place instead.

It is a Patient Practise that lives within us, our Higher Conscious Self who observes us without judgment or critique. And through their observation, often when we allow ourselves to be still and simply Show Up for our own expanse, that is when our Highest Conscious Self shares simple fragments of wisdom.

For me, it has told me: Allow.

Other days, it has said: Have the Courage to Rest.

Today, it simply told me to start the day writing.

This Higher Self of ours is not dissimilar from our innate connection to our Creator. For my practise, I use God to encompass the whole of my relationship to Time, my ancestors, my predecessors, my guides, the various deities whom I serve, our Earth, and our plant/animal allies. So when I listen to my Highest Self, I allow myself a creative disciple of connecting to the God/Creator with-in me to that I may hear more clearly the God/Creator with-out me.

The Discipline here is simply to follow and commit to following. It is the metaphor of “The Disciple”. There is already. a loving spiriti within you, all you are asked to do is follow it. Follow the Love without fear, scarcity, judgement, critique, or pain that overwhelms you/your spirit. When it overwhelms you, you are engaging Egoic Discipline—rather than True Discipline. This is not to say you can or should eradicate fear/scarcity/judgement in totality.

In fact, befriending the Egoic traits, holding their hand along the journey, can lead to a more loving integration of self that embraces a wholeness and self forgiveness inside of you.

To expand upon our Disciple interpretation further, let us engage the most common metaphor of the 12 Disciples of Jesus Christ.

If we look at Jesus as the embodiment of an effortlessly Loving Consciousness, we also are reminded that this Loving Self was not without Humanity. In fact, Jesus often carried anger, contempt, and righteousness in the face of Injustice. He also carried Fear of his own path set out before him. His deep reverence for humanity was also his deep capacity for human emotions—and we also must not forget that Jesus lived an entire human life, not exactly well documented in the Holy Books, from birth to his 30s.

There is surety the adolescent Jesus was not without faults, the same surety that we are not without faults but still have a deep capacity for self-love and forgiveness.

So, as Jesus is this Higher Self and Love, we look to his Disciples for their wisdom in Discipline. The Disciples follow not out of fear, enslavement, or abuse. They also do not follow without reflection, curiosity, or their own Humanity. They follow with the fullness of their being, their deep alignment with a Higher Love, and practice Obedience through Right Relationship.

I often push up against words like “Obedience”, “Servitude”, “Submission”, and “Surrender” when they are misused to subjugate, oppress, and enslave people. Make no mistake: Obedience in Discipline is simply detaching Ego and moving with Trust towards the Divine with-in and with-out you. Obesdience is Showing Up for the sake of Showing Up, as often as you can.

But, of course, we cannot talk about the Disciples without the most controversial and important Disciple: Judas.

And so we begin to understand, as Satan was God’s favourite angel, as Judas was Jesus’ most devout Disciple, that our suffering and commitment to Punishment is often inexplicably linked to the deep love for a Higher Self. Both Satan and Judas’ faults lie not in their love of God, but for their distaste in how others do not love God enough or as much as they do. So too does our Ego love us tightly, desire us to have Dominance, desire us to be immortalised only after punishment, shame, and guilt.

In our lives, however, we have the opportunity to transform and learn from Judas’ faults. When we engage our Discipline, we can invite our Ego/Judas to walk beside us. We can invite our Ego’s fears and choose to invite Judas’ qualms with a shared trust between us. We will not cast out our Ego but integrate it and thank it for its deep love. We will follow our bliss with patience and reverence. And through this True Discipline, we then learn our greatest task: how to walk and integrate with one another.