It has been over two months since I published any new writing on this blog. I started to feel really bad about this about a month ago, as I had previously made a goal for myself to write something every 2-3 weeks. The days kept passing and I just didn’t feel like it. On three different occasions, I sat down and started to write about something that I knew I had previously felt inspired to share, only to find that I seemed to have lost that inspiration. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t my best writing with this approach of trying to force it. I pressed on, thinking I could resolve my writer’s block through sheer willpower. Nope.
It got to the point where I could see how ridiculous it was. I was fighting with myself and not accepting the reality that I simply didn’t want to be writing right now. I started to question my reasons for the original commitment, wondering whether it had turned into yet another “should”. I was craving less intellectual forms of creativity, like getting started on my next stained glass project and learning Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie on the piano.
Then, I saw it: The polarity of discipline and desire. Of course! My mind had become fixated on the value of discipline to the neglect of desire and I was stuck, suffering from my inability to make progress with what I thought I should be doing while feeling guilty about doing the things I really needed in order to revive my creative spark!
This polarity can seem particularly paradoxical and self-contradictory. Is letting go of the “shoulds” and doing what I feel like doing an act of wisdom and deep self-honoring? Or is it neglecting an important commitment to myself for the sake of fulfilling a short term substitute for real happiness? These kinds of paradoxes have a way of genuinely confusing my mind to the point where I am completely paralyzed, unsure of the truth and hesitant to make any decision for fear I might be headed down a wrong path. But only when I forget that it’s not all up to me.
With all polarities, there seems to be a sense of “inner rightness” that when relied upon through complete surrender, knows the difference and can discern what is best in any given situation. Getting attached to any mental concept of what is generally right or generally wrong seems to often miss the mark on either side of this polarity, bypassing the surrender that is necessary to tune in to my higher wisdom. Sometimes, my ego really doesn’t want to accept that it can’t find the answer on its own and it really doesn’t like to accept that surrender is necessary. Can you relate?
What I love about polarities is that they can help me to see how following the higher wisdom is actually in my own best interest and how I just wasn’t seeing clearly. Exploring the polarity can help me to get honest about the nature of my own resistance and it can make this process of ego surrender easier. By looking for the positive synergy that emerges between the two poles of this polarity through both-and thinking, I can see clearly what I’m missing out on when I get stuck in suffering caused by either-or thinking, valuing one pole over the other:
- Discipline, when applied toward achieving goals on the path towards my true heart’s desire, allows me to achieve the bigger desires in my life while causing me to grow through the journey itself.
- Desire, when motivated by self-love, brings deeper meaning to goals that require discipline, helping me stick to my commitments through adversity.
- Discipline tells me when my desire has become unhealthy and I am at risk of losing myself in substitutes for what I really want.
- Desire tells me when my discipline is channeled towards the wrong thing, disconnected from higher purpose and buried under a pile of “shoulds”.
- When I am on the right path and taking the right action, the healthy expressions of discipline and desire agree with each other. If they disagree, then it’s a sign I’m on the wrong path and need to re-assess my goals and why I am committed to them.
So, if what I am committed to through acts of discipline lacks meaning, then I can ask myself if it’s time to drop the “shoulds” and come back to remembering what I deeply long for and what commitments are actually needed to get me there. “Shoulds” are the shadow of desire that my mind creates when the soul of desire is missing. Let me say that again in a different way: “Shoulds” are what my mind creates as a substitute when my soul’s desire is absent from the meaning making process but I want to feel committed to something anyways. Sometimes it’s not what I’m doing that needs to change, but the reason why I’m doing it. Might it be healthy to stop doing it temporarily in order to discover the real reason why it’s actually important to do? Perhaps so, but not if my attachment to this idea causes me to bypass the surrender required to fully hear the guidance! Building my relationship to the guidance is of primary importance.
Likewise, if what I desire through acts of self-gratification lacks commitment to something bigger than myself, then I can ask myself if it’s time to let go of what I think will bring me happiness and re-assess what actually will. “Grasping” is the shadow of discipline that my mind creates when the soul of discipline is missing. Let me say that again in a different way: “Grasping” is a false commitment that my mind creates as a substitute when my soul’s commitment is absent from the meaning making process. Might it be healthy to stop grasping for what I think will make me happy, temporarily, in order to discover the commitment my soul longs to be in alignment with? Perhaps so, but again, not if my attachment to this idea causes me to bypass the surrender required to fully hear the guidance!
After spending a few weeks on my other creative pursuits, today I felt inspired to write this, so I did. In hindsight, I can see now that sometimes I just need to let go of discipline and let desire have a turn. Also, high leverage action steps are those things you can do that support the upside of both poles of a polarity. In the case of discipline and desire for me, this meant pausing to reflect on why I would want to be committed to blogging regularly. It also meant choosing what to write about on a given day based on what feels deeply interesting to me at the time. Hey, look… this was interesting to me today, and it worked. I finally just finished a blog post!
