Discipline of the Personality
The “disciplines of the personality” are the paramount work of any who have become consciously aware of the process of evolution.
The third step is that step which, when accomplished, renders one the most humble servant of all, transparent in personality and completely able to know and accept other-selves.
[…] To become the Creator is to become all that there is. There is then no personality in the sense with which the adept begins its learn/teaching. As the consciousness of the indigo ray becomes more crystalline, more work may be done; more may be expressed from intelligent infinity. – 74.11
For the positive path, the discipline of the personality results, eventually, in the whole knowledge of the self in micro- and macrocosm, and in a finely tuned compassion and love which sees all things as love.
Author’s Note: To Engage in Self-Discovery
Discipline as a noun is a field of study (the archetypes and sexual energy transfers being two such disciplines of spiritual evolution), but more often than not Ra uses discipline as a verb indicating an activity, exercise, or regimen that trains the mind, body, and spirit to seek the Creator upon the path of adepthood.
The word seems to have a pejorative connation to thinkers within the New Age community who see it as antithetical to love, freedom, and spontaneity. I believe that one part of this confusion stems from simply not knowing that in discipline exists true freedom (see quote above). The other part of this confusion stems from the fact that discipline on this planet indeed has often been used in a negative sense, as a means of negative control of self and other-self. Discipline is, in fact, key to advancement on the service-to-self path. Discipline is also, however, key to advancement into adepthood on the positive path.
I’ll explore the positive use of discipline by attempting a rudimentary reasoning for the necessity of discipline: With or without discipline, one will move through life. The body will age. Catalyst will strike. Choices will be required. Expectations of conformance to one standard or another will be placed upon the self. But who is doing this living? Who is responding to the moment, making these choices, and processing this catalyst?
Undisciplined, the self may exist as a vast composite of past conditioning absorbed from the experiences of life. The voices of parents, schooling, social circles, the mass mind, and our reactions to them offer inputs that literally condition the self to think, behave, respond, and exist in certain ways. Undisciplined, much of this is unconscious and running on auto-pilot, causing suffering and a divided, fragmented experience of self and others in a hall of mirrors reflecting only images of separation.
Discipline, then, may be seen as the conscious determination to engage in self-discovery. In that light it is the practice of becoming conscious of the conditioned processes already in operation, and the deeper identity hidden underneath those patterns.
In this journey, the most fundamental thing being disciplined is the attention. Attention is power, but the past conditioning makes conflicting claims upon this power, each voice within the self attempting to have its needs met and its objects of desire fulfilled. Discipline, then, gradually seeks to collect and focus this attention. But toward what end?
Enter polarity, for the negative entity will harvest and focus its attention upon control of self and other; the positive entity will harvest and focus its attention upon loving and accepting self and other. It sounds funny that seeking love is a discipline, something one consciously entrains the attention to do, but it’s quite true. Our past conditioning likely does not teach the self to constantly seek love. The awakening self, however, disciplines the attention to do so.
The same holds true for all values of the positive path. The disciplined use of will consciously seeks service instead of sleep, declines distraction in favor of focus, and frames the moment with the highest questions worthy of pursuing—e.g., Where is the love in the moment? How may I see the Creator in the other-self?
Learning to cultivate gratitude and invoke faith are also disciplines that the self trains the self into. Even spontaneity—the seeming antithesis of discipline—arises through a fine-tuned discipline of the self who has come to know itself, to accept itself, and to become the Creator. This is the will that has been so cultivated through discipline that the self is no longer shackled to past conditioning[23]—the voices of “should” and “do’s” and “do nots.” Instead, the centers crystallized and balanced through disciplined work in consciousness, this is the self who surrenders and “lives day by day and moment by moment, for the true adept lives more and more as it is.” (73.20) This is the self who acts from a place of inner stillness and who moves in harmony with the One Will, free to be and manifest who they are..
The way that discipline intersects with the positive values of the loving, forgiving open heart is explored here:
Ra: I am Ra. In actuality these things are of importance in third through early seventh densities. The only correction in nuance that we would make is your use of the word, control. It is paramount that it be understood that it is not desirable or helpful to the growth of the understanding, may we say, of an entity by itself to control thought processes or impulses except where they may result in actions not consonant with the Law of One. Control may seem to be a short-cut to discipline, peace, and illumination. However, this very control potentiates and necessitates the further incarnative experience in order to balance this control or repression of that self which is perfect.
Instead, we appreciate and recommend the use of your second verb in regard to the use of the will. Acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will; this is the path towards the disciplined personality.
Your faculty of will is that which is powerful within you as co-Creator. You cannot ascribe to this faculty too much importance. Thus it must be carefully used and directed in service to others for those upon the positively oriented path. There is great danger in the use of the will as the personality becomes stronger, for it may be used even subconsciously in ways reducing the polarity of the entity.[24] – 52.7 (See also 52.11)
In this way you see that discipline is the art of consciously applying (or consciously remembering) one’s seeking. Which is to say, discipline is the art of using catalyst. And for the positive adept, discipline is about penetrating the veil (first quote below), the work of spirit in the indigo ray (second quote), and the contact of intelligent infinity (third quote).
It can be viewed as straightforwardly as the analogy of forming a new habit through repetition, but especially visible in learning a skill. Take she who desires to learn to play the piano well. She must discipline her use of time and focus, making short-term seeming sacrifice (choosing to practice the piano instead of watching TV) for long-term gain. This disciplined practice is not self-control as the negative entity wields it. This is harnessing the will and aiming it upon the heart’s desire in the midst of infinite choices. It takes repetition and constancy, a continual re-focusing of the attention on the desired practice, and an exercising of the will to practice.
The complex of mind, body, and spirit—with all its chakras, dynamic interrelationships, and pathways of energy—is, itself, a piano of sorts. The self must learn to play the instrument of self with creative but learned artistry. This produces harmony, balance, resonance, and beauty.
The mind/body/spirit complex is not a machine. It is rather what you might call a tone poem. – 54.8
There is an interesting conversation to be had regarding discipline in the perennial debate of nature vs. nurture. How necessary is self-effort in opening the indigo ray, performing the service of the adept, and realizing the self? Ra touches on this question in a few places, including:
Ra: I am Ra. There are two main ways, just as there are two main ways of, shall we say, polarizing towards service to others. There are those mind/body/spirit complexes upon your plane who do exercises and perform disciplines in order to seek contact with sources of information and power leading to the opening of the gate to intelligent infinity. There are others whose vibratory complex is such that this gateway is opened and contact with total service to self (with its primal distortion of manipulation of others) is then afforded with little or no difficulty, no training, and no control. – 11.20
In the nature vs. nurture question, one hears stories of entities who, without seeming practice or effort, simply “awaken” to higher consciousness—Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, and Byron Katie come to mind. Yet, Ra’s information speaks again and again to the disciplined use of will upon the long, upward road of spiritual evolution. In my understanding of the Law of One, everything which unfolds does so as a function or consequence of the operation of free will; so in that light, those who do have spontaneous awakenings have likely performed significant work in previous incarnations. In my read of the following quotes, Ra seems to point to this possibility:
Ra: I am Ra. They remember the disciplines necessary for this activity which is merely useful upon other true-color vibratory experiential nexi. – 58.20
Ra: I am Ra. This entity learned the ability by a natural kind of remembering at a very young age. – 17.19
Carla described how she was able to “coast” on her spiritual gifts of cheerfulness and faithful attitude without much seeming effort. Ra here points to pre-incarnational design:
Learning to consciously set one’s compass and hew to that direction, continually adjusting one’s bearings in forward movement through the many deaths, distortion-leavings, and transformations—this is discipline.
Citations:
For further exploration, see also:
- 11.20, 52.7, 52.11, 54.8, 54.15, 60.13, 74.9-10
- Author’s Note see also: 20.24, 52.11, 58.19, 64.4, 71.15, 74.8
- Disciplines of mind, body, and spirit: 4.17, 5.2, 61.6.
- Negative use of discipline: 7.15, 11.11, 66.32–33, 69.17,
- Specific uses of discipline: In fasting: 41.21 – 22. In meditation: 42.12. In parenting: 42.20. In dream recall: 86.10. In archetypal study and use: 76.9, 90.15. As “understanding”: 4.19. In training the subconscious: 69.18.
- Sending love to negative greeting vs. combating it through disciplines of the will: 51.2
- Discipline for travel and communication: 51.2, 52.1–6, 60.13, 62.21, 67.4,
- Discipline as armor: 46.2, 67.13,
- The Great Pyramid is only “metaphysical training wheels” for that which can be accomplished by the disciplines of the personality: 60.13
- Discipline in non-indiscriminate mating: 84.22
- Fifth- and sixth-density entities become so disciplined that they know when to end the incarnation: 105.20
- In this guide: Healer, Program of Training