Unconventional in a Conventional World Part 2: Discipline

How to do it? It’s taken me many years of asking this question to gain some understanding of what it takes to be full of color in a world that demands us to be black-and-white. I must say, however, that, even after a lifetime of looking at this, I still continue to get new bits and pieces of information on how to do it better. Keep in mind that what I write here is still a work-in-progress and is subject to revision.

I think I want to start with discipline. It is an element that’s required for any kind of “practice.” Whether it's athletics, college studies or baking bread, you need to practice it to gain a deeper understanding. As the old saying goes, “You don’t really know what it is unless you get at least to the middle of it.”

As long as we’re talking about conventionality, the conventional people view discipline as a form of self-suppression. It’s where you have to resist and fight your desires in order to get something else done. For example, an overweight person must resist and fight his desire for food in order to lose weight. Or, when a video game junkie makes himself study while he resists his desire for playing games.

Discipline by self-suppression may bring results in the short term, but it never works in the long run. (Of course, as John Keynes said, in the long run, we’re all dead) It doesn’t work for one simple reason. Self-suppression attempts to combat the desires and to keep them as deeply buried and unexpressed as possible. Of course, something that is suppressed must come out sooner or later. Desires tend to come out fairly quickly and you can imagine what then happens to the discipline. Poof…

Personally, I recommend self-discipline that is based on something entirely different than suppressing desires. The first step to this approach is to first identify your higher and lower desires. Again, using an overweight person as an example, his higher desire may be to be fit but his lower desire may be to eat a donut.

Once you are aware of what your higher desires are, you allow them to rule over the lower desires. Not through resistance, but through your loving action grounded in understanding and compassion. Of course, I am talking about love for yourself and compassion being simply when you feel all that there is to be felt and do what needs to be done, no less and no more.

It takes some introspection and asking yourself some difficult questions. Such as, “What do I really want?” And, “How does what I am about to do help me get what I want?” At first, it may not be easy to get a clear reply from yourself, but if you keep asking questions, the answers will always come.

And, with the answers comes the ease of discipline. You will stop looking at practicing as a “necessary evil” and will begin to see your practice as a way of love and compassion towards yourself.