Training the Will: 5
Oct. 27th, 2020 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Let's talk some more about training the will. We've talked about habits. Those are the patterns that keep your will going when you have other things on your mind. As we discussed last week, habits are good servants but lousy masters. One of the central goals of will training is therefore to establish habits that serve you well, and eliminate those that try to boss you around.
Many people have had the experience of trying to break a habit and failing repeatedly. That's one of the things that establishes the habit of failure -- the habit that, above all, you need to break. The usual cause of failure in changing a habit is trying to get rid of it without replacing it. The key to success, in turn, is to choose habits you don't want and replace them with habits you do want -- or at least can live with.
Here's an example. I know a guy who'd gradually developed the habit of drinking alcohol. It wasn't a serious problem for him, but he'd seen one of his parents become dependent on booze and knew how that movie ends. He tried just stopping a couple of times, with very limited success, and then we talked. On my advice, he replaced it with another habit -- drinking strongly flavored black tea. Instead of pouring himself a drink in the evening to wind down, he made himself some tea, and sipped that while doing the things he normally did of an evening. It worked. No fuss, no bother, no white knuckles, just one habit gone and a less physically damaging habit in its place.
Why did it work? Because the new habit gave him everything the old one did except the specific, narrowly focused chemical rush of ethanol, and it replaced that with a different chemical rush, the one you get from the caffeine and other stimulants in tea (and in some of the flavorings -- look up sometime how many spices have effects on your brain.)
You can do the same thing. If you've got a habit you don't want, replace it with a habit you do want -- or at least are willing to live with. Make sure the two of them are similar enough that the new habit meets the same emotional needs that the old one did. Remember that your goal here isn't to display your heroic virtue or, for that matter, to prove to the world that you can't do anything right. (An astonishing number of people have that emotional habit in place.) Your goal is to swap one habit for another, and turn a master into a servant.
That's one of your assignments for this week. If you don't have any habits you want to change, good for you; see if you can find a habit you want to have that you don't have yet, and take it up. Your other assignments are to continue with last week's project, changing the specific exercises you're doing. Remember -- one exercise involving conscious action, and another involving conscious attention. By doing this you're replacing an unhelpful habit -- the habit of neglecting your will -- with a helpful one -- the habit of training your will.
Got it? Good. We'll go further next week.
Tech aids for building will?
Date: 2020-10-27 06:26 pm (UTC)'DiviniSlate' & 'WillBuilder' smart device
Form Factor:
Slate tablet
Screen size:
6x4 or 12x8
OS:
Rock Solid
Boot Time:
0 seconds
Keyboard:
Just write on the slate surface
Memory:
Permanent until wiped
Multiple Monitor Support:
Yes - just place additional slate tablets next to each other
Connectivity:
Yes - To connect with friends and colleagues, simply hold up the slate for others to see
Tech Specs:
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism.
System Requirements:
Requires slate or soapstone pencil for interactive screen to work
ShieldChart will run on all sizes of tablet
HouseChart requires a minimum of one 12x8 DiviniSlate
Recommended Apps:
Training the Will
The Art & Practice of Geomancy
QuickStart Guide:
Training the Will - Write your WillBuilder task on the slate and prop up in a place you will see it
Divination - run the divination app of your choice using Meatsack & Wetware and record results on the interactive screens
Green Credentials:
Sustainably sourced requiring little maintenance to its PerpetualScreen™ technology and as long as the slate is not cracked, the underlying EternalBattery™ will give many intergenerational years of service.
"...back away from the slate and put down the soapstone, earthworm" ;)
Re: Tech aids for building will?
Date: 2020-10-27 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 06:34 pm (UTC)I do have habits I want to change, but I need to work on my will first, get used to the process of changing habits, and do a lot of journaling before I try on anything big. So making a change for the sake of making a change seems like a good idea for now.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:Snoozing alarms
Date: 2020-10-27 06:57 pm (UTC)Also, can you recommend any strongly flavored teas?
Re: Snoozing alarms
Date: 2020-10-27 09:53 pm (UTC)As for flavored teas, I'm much fonder of plain green and white teas myself, but if I recall correctly, the guy I mentioned was into various Bigelow and Twinings varieties.
Re: Snoozing alarms
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Date: 2020-10-27 09:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-28 01:54 am (UTC) - ExpandWhen you can't completely give something up
Date: 2020-10-27 07:39 pm (UTC)I don't use a phone for email, so I don't have that problem, this is opening it more often than I need to on the computer. I don't use automated alerts because I don't need even more interruptions, I log in and check it. (This is one community where that may not seem eccentric.) Some days, a fixed schedule for looking at email makes sense, but other times I do need to look out for something coming in, and that legitimate frequent checking triggers a habit reflex of looking at it very often. That is a problem when I am between other tasks or waiting for something, and it then leads to procrastination.
Re: When you can't completely give something up
Date: 2020-10-27 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 08:16 pm (UTC)On Saturday evening my wife and I watched a horror movie. This is not something we do often-- we take in a few hours of visual media at most per week. Horror is something we usually avoid, because we're both hyper-sensitive to basically everything. But it's Halloweentide, so what the heck. That night as we were falling asleep she was unable to get the images from the movie out of her head. And I could tell, because anytime I looked at her I could almost see them swirling around in her aura! I seriously felt as though I could rewatch the entire film by staring at the area of her brain. Well, I woke up after midnight unable to breathe. I've recently been working with eliminating food allergens, though I don't think I had any that I know of. I struggled for air for a bit, then my throat finally relaxed, and I took a pile of benadryl and fell asleep. (This isn't a health-advice question).
Now, the impact on the will-training:
Well, the next day I was so groggy and miserable that I missed my morning practice of magic, which is my usual habit. I didn't do the recall-exercise either, because I do that in the morning. That day I did do the attention and intention exercises I had planned, but that was roughly all I got done, because my mood was terrible. That night, I was afflicted by horrific nightmares in which I struggled for my life against a demonic snake. The following day I again skipped my morning practice, including the recall exercise. At this point, too, my emotional state had cratered. I have a bad habit of dwelling on things of the past, but at this point it was totally out of control, and I felt myself careening between unbearable guilt over wrongs I've done, paranoid jealousy and resentment at wrongs others have done to me. I did, again, do my two exercises-- but again, that was about all I got done that day.
Today I feel better, though not back to 100%. I'm back on my usual morning practice, and I've just done a new attention exercise. But I was wondering...
What do you make of this sort of thing? What do you do when a curveball like that (it was all genuinely terrifying) knocks you off of your habits? Just ignore it and move on? Are blows like that usual?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 09:57 pm (UTC)David Lynch & Habits of Creativity
Date: 2020-10-27 08:19 pm (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyVPEDS2VGk
David Lynch's body of work speaks for itself in terms of the power of habit for fostering creativity.
Carnelian Oracular Toad
Re: David Lynch & Habits of Creativity
Date: 2020-10-27 09:58 pm (UTC)Re: David Lynch & Habits of Creativity
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-28 02:25 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 08:20 pm (UTC)Or should I find some colorful word or phrase, maybe something traditional, to replace it with, then work of eliminating that later on?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 09:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 08:21 pm (UTC)- Autopilot actions and thoughts: morning and bedtime routines, for example.
- Actions/thoughts that require will, but are driven by external events or demands (such as job-related tasks, household repairs, etc)
- Emotionally-driven thoughts about the above item (ie, my mind constantly flipping back to think about stressful things at my job when I don't want it to)
- Things I don't have to do, but are driven by habit (checking the news online when I should be focusing on work)
- Things I don't have to do, but aren't habits (yet). Things such as sonnet-writing, choosing which book to read.
- Things I don't have to do, but which have become habit through acts of will (my daily DMH practices, morning stretches)
So far, pretty interesting!
I did start looking at my Shadow (an act of will in itself), and after analyzing a lot of my past relationships to see which people irrationally irritated me, I seem to have found that my Shadow is vain, arrogant, lazy, very nerdy, superficial, dogmatic, fragile, sneaky, conformist, and paranoid. My wife helpfully added selfish and hypocritical, too. (Serves me right for letting her play).
There are hints at some darker stuff in there, too, which I'll need to explore further.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2020-10-27 08:31 pm (UTC)Many thanks for this series of posts.
Last week, I did the draw seven cards exercise. That went well, so… I thought looking at my ogham staves every morning would make a goon new habit. OK. Mix-mix-mix, draw three, drumroll… got ngetal reversed, ailm reversed, and phagos reversed. Looked in TDH. Not ready, asses more carefully, lack of knowledge. Oh… I forgot to ask a question.
How does asking, “What will this day bring?” followed by mix, draw three, read TDH entries for an exercise and new habit sound to you?
Rusty
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-27 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-27 11:13 pm (UTC) - Expandrage coffee
Date: 2020-10-27 08:33 pm (UTC)Re: rage coffee
Date: 2020-10-27 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-29 03:29 pm (UTC) - ExpandResults
Date: 2020-10-28 12:36 am (UTC)As for actions and habits, I have often throughout my life stopped to re-assess what I have been doing and make changes. Sometimes, "keep doing what I've been doing" is the outcome of that process. So even my old habits, or the job that I don't particularly like, can be willful action, if I decide to make them so.
So my epiphany was that my will is in effect all the time. Even when it's not, the act of surrendering my will to a habit or to somebody else is, at its root, an act of will. I'm in charge, all the time, even when I'm not (or can be at any time I choose).
Re: Results
Date: 2020-10-28 04:10 am (UTC)Re: Results
From:(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 01:54 am (UTC)Attention: notice a different two digit number each day.
I'm already trying to break the habit of youtubing by reading instead, it's going pretty well so far.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 02:50 am (UTC)I’m saddled with a lot of negative habits. I’ve been able to at least moderate the worst of them. But I’m left with that thought of “least I could live with.”
Replacing a bad habit with a less bad one feels good. Feels like I could find one to replace this week. I worry about how to deal with what’s under those habits.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 04:11 am (UTC)Field report
Date: 2020-10-28 02:52 am (UTC)I also reflected a lot on my will. I spend most of day on purposeful action, and I work very hard. I also have various service obligations and pets, and an occasionally very ill husband to care for. Then for a few hours at night I mindlessly go down internet rabbit holes, usually initiated by twitter. It's a ridiculous waste of time.
What I get from it: relief from my day job - it empties my brain, and rewards a sense of having earned it for working so hard. It has replaced my regular dance regimen, which served the same purpose =(. It was precipitated by the new normal being stuck at home all the time, and the end of some regular spiritual and service opportunities outside the home.
As for giving up a habit, I am not ready to quit smoking, but hoping to work up to that. Instead, I will time limit my BS web surfing and replace it with studying formal garden design.
I already feel more energetic and I picked up a new service commitment this week. I'm not quite ready to start dancing yet, hopefully soon.
Rose Red Loon (been having trouble logging into OpenID lately)
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Date: 2020-10-28 04:56 am (UTC)On second thoughts, though, things tend to fill the place, albeit most of the times in a less destructing way. Plugging the hole with something else seems to be a good idea, the uncontrolled substitutes sometimes are worse. Thank you for this advice.
Getting over a girl
Date: 2020-10-28 06:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 07:49 am (UTC)My mother was able to hide her alcoholism for at least fifteen years.
Eventually, she found herself on the brink of death. She almost died and finally stopped drinking. She recovered and regained her health. Now instead of drinking, she eats cookies and sweets, but now she's starting to replace these with fruits.
After her huge change is much easier for me to work on my bad habits. I've already made successful changes in my life (starting with small ones), not so long ago, and now your training of the will is helping me even more.
I hope that my determination and hard work on myself will help other people around me.
We're starting now a second lock-down in Poland - officially I can't work - so now I got plenty of time to train my will.
Thank You, Mr Greer, for your work!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 09:47 am (UTC)A couple of days ago, I started applying what I've learned to my yoga practice that I've managed to beat all the fun out of. I'm just rolling out the mat and doing yoga -- no plan, no streaming instructor, just me and my body. I've created my own practices before, but always so I could be my own drill instructor. This is an experiment in listening. Does it count as a new habit?
I'm still working on what the other two will be. Jazz hands are likely to be involved.
Making better habits
Date: 2020-10-28 10:19 am (UTC)I have always been somewhat obsessive in my habits, and had very little direction in my life, until I began to wake up...
I used to play computer games for hours and hours. But this gets dull quickly, then for work reasons I needed to learn a foreign language, so I swapped the games for different language learning activities. I use Anki (an SRS database) for vocabulary learning and various audio and text activities for structure. The language learning itself becomes like the most amazing immersive adventure game. Everyday I travel a bit closer to fluency city, sharing my adventures with fellow learners on the many dedicated forums.
I also swapped watching hours of American TV with only watching drama TV from the language that I am learning. This is the best bit - I find myself falling in love with the language and the culture and of course the people of the culture. So rather than being a chore I need to be doing it.
These changes have brought a professional bonus, I became a teacher of English to foreign learners. I find it easy to care for my students and anticipate their problems as I am also a student of their language.
A few small changes and my life is filled with purpose, feels like magic !
Best regards Ben
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 02:04 pm (UTC)2. A question for the commentariat: the habit I'd like to try changing is one of opening up twitter or some kind of political blog and reading about politics/current evens immediately after work, for anywhere between half an hour and a couple of hours, something that inevitably sours my mood and fills my mind with negativity afterwards. The emotional need this meets, I believe, is a certain kind of mindless zoning out that's very, very different from the kind of focus my job requires- it's a kind of passive consumption of intellectual junk food (interestingly, I find I often have a craving for physical, literal junk food at the same time). I'm guessing this is a fairly common habit (I saw a comment discussing something similar immediately above this one), enough that I'm wondering if anyone else here has had any success changing/suggestions for more constructive habits that meet a similar need to put in its place? My first thought is to establish a ritual of making a cup of tea and doing some spiritual reading, a practice I've neglected recently, for half an hour or so quietly by myself, before going on to any other "chores" or set tasks for the evening- still gives me a ritual and downtime, but hopefully without the addictive quality- maybe trying to establish a habit of a few quick minutes of physical exercise while I wait for my tea water to boil. Still, I'm not sure if this still will feel too much like *work* to meet the needs the previous habit was supplying, so I'm very open to suggestions about what worked for other people, if y'all have any.
Thanks!
-NPM
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 05:51 pm (UTC)I ended up discovering JMG's section of the internet in early August, and became obsessed with that instead with that, instead of the Youtube videos. This wasn't ideal but JMG's stuff is much "higher vibrational" content than some political pundit, and ended up giving me lots of ideas for things I could read. So now I still frequently check content in the Ecosophia world, but have started reading inspirational content frequently, instead of not reading, or reading mindless fiction. So I'd say the habit is serving me somewhat. Especially since I work from home which gives me time to check on internet things. JMG also made me realize that I can reread books, which will give me content to consume for life.
Instead iof Twitter
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-28 08:31 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-29 08:15 am (UTC) - ExpandWhat I have learned so far
Date: 2020-10-28 03:59 pm (UTC)With the exercises so far I have learned that it is very easy for me to actually take actions I have already resolved to do. It is moderately hard for me to *remember* to take the action at appropriate times, but it all seems going well on that front.
More difficulties I have had with taking notice of stuff. When there is not a positive action involved, I find it very hard to remember. Not that I cannot keep tag of things; if I recall I can do it just fine. It is that the thought to notice pops up in my head a few minutes *after* I was supposed to notice.
This I discovered by the exercise of noticing how long do I take to eat my meals, which requires me to notice the time at the beginning *and* the end of the meal. After the first day and a half, I basically was unable to notice when I started eating, but remember like 5 minutes later (which make for inaccurate records, but I was able to put a timestamp in the ballpark of the actual time I was interested in). Most times, this prompting allowed me to recall and do the second timing correctly, but some times I even went and *forgot* to notice the time at the end of the meal as well.
Is this any common? Easy to do, hard to remember doing...
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 05:16 pm (UTC)By the way, I'm not sure if you're still hoping for us to report our new conscious activity and attention exercises as we change them each week. This week, my activity is to draw a spiral with exactly 21 loops. My attention exercise is to set a timer for one minute, look at the sky, and notice as many different things I can about the sky as I can in that time period.
As for this week's exercise of swapping one bad habit for a better one, you used the example of someone quitting alcohol. But this was a case where you specified that they didn't have a serious problem with it. I'm guessing we shouldn't pick something that is a serious problem for us for now-- e.g. if someone drinks alcohol to the level where they experience withdrawal if they don't drink it.
The habit I'd *like* to address may be manageable, but I'm having trouble finding an angle of approach. It involves habitual scratching of itchiness (yes, I'm getting medical treatment for it), and so it may be a weak form of withdrawal in a way. So, please let me know if it seems unsuitable for this exercise. If so I will strive to choose a different habit for the exercise.
Basically, I have a consistent skin problem which for the last several years I'd been blitzing with steroids twice a year whenever it got serious. Finally I decided to quit doing that anymore, and it's been a tough and itchy year as a result as I tried various forms of self treatment. Eventually I started seeing a doctor who specializes in natural treatments, and she has put me on a helpful course of changing my diet and getting more sleep. I have seen continuous but slow improvement with this, so I'm still itchy a fair amount of the time-- and every time I scratch too much, it sets back my healing process.
I tend to become itchy and scratch the most in the midst of the normal stresses of normal human interactions, of which I have quite a lot in a working day. So, I'd like to replace my habit of scratching when I'm itchy with doing something else when I'm itchy. Unfortunately due to the nature of my work, and the fact that my itchiness is worst in social interactions, my replacement habit needs to be something a little bit unobtrusive. For instance, I considered my replacement habit being deep breathing or stretching of some kind; but I can't just start doing those things in the middle of teaching a student or talking to a colleague. Perhaps self massage in the general area where I get itchy, always replacing scratching with nails with rubbing with pads of the fingers? I am just afraid doing so might keep the itchy areas inflamed. I will try this approach for now, but if you or anyone else has a better idea for a useful replacement habit, I am all ears. Or should I perhaps choose a different habit to address with this week's exercise?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-29 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-28 05:47 pm (UTC)I'm going to replace it with an affirmation since affirmations seem to be able to override the side-stream thought process that chatters on about random distracting things.
"I sleep peacefully and am attentive to my dreams."
The last bit is to allow the things that worry me (or otherwise seem to want my attention) to make their way to my dreams if so guided.
Does this sound ok and does is it appropriate for this week's habit-training?
I may also approach a more classic example of a habit that I've picked up in the last few weeks - instead of going online one last time before bed, if that urge hits, I'm going to spend those few minutes in prayer.