April 2010

RIGHT DISCIPLINE
     You'll grow to the extent that you're able to put yourself under your own discipline, and one purpose of this class is to show you how to do that. You know all the facts. You can sit here for an hour and say the same things I do. But do you live them out there? Right discipline really means forcing ourselves against our own will to make knowledge turn into being.
     Last night’s exercise of taking up to five different work projects at once and trying to do as many as you can will help you do this. For those of you who weren’t here last night, do something very slow such as walking across the room. At the same time, add a second work project to it — be aware of your tension in walking slowly across the room. Can’t you see that your jaw is tight? Now, you've at least done two things at once. Don’t take this as being too simple. 

DROP NEGATIVE THOUGHT
     When you see a negative thought of any kind, a devil (that’s what the devil is — any kind of negativity) when you see it instead of suppressing it, pushing it away, then a second thought comes in and says, “I shouldn’t feel angry” and so on. When you see it, then you have the possibility of dropping it and ending the mechanical flow, right? You have now put an end to that thought, and when you do that, you leave the blank space so that the second thought, which is a judgmental one, finds it harder to follow the first one.