Taking the Last Steps Across the Bridge

If you are trying to resist temptation, you may find yourself feeling the forbidden desires more strongly just when your ability to resist them is down.
(Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower)

When an addict tells you that from here on he will stop his destructive path because he has finally figured out how much he values life after all, you will be happy to hear this new-found commitment, but you will nevertheless be doubtful. Too often have you raised your hopes only to find that a little pressure or a simple reminder of the old drug-filled world immediately brings a relapse with it.

The journey of a spiritual traveler is remarkably similar in that there will be a phase towards the end of your journey when a a war will be brewing inside of you, with the self battling the Self. The reason for that is simple. There is a force inside of you that tries to prevent you from taking these last steps and will put all its remaining eggs into one basket, the last area of specialness that is dear to you. You will have to be mindful and vigilant at this stage otherwise you will waste a lot of time with an endless back and forth. This is where the comparison with the addict comes in, willpower alone will probably not get you over the bridge.

Have you heard about the Radish Experiment? A group of students were given the instruction to eat radish in a room with freshly baked cookies while waiting for a test. It turned out that in the test students had to work on a puzzle afterwards and those who had already used up their willpower on withstanding the cookie temptation dropped out earlier than students who were allowed to eat cookies in the waiting room. So it turns out that willpower is a muscle, you want to use it on occasions, you may even try to strengthen it over time, but you can't strain it for too long otherwise you will give in fact give even more power to your temptation.

There is only one guaranteed way to take the last few steps over the bridge. Simplify your life, surround yourself with things that give you spiritual energy instead. Find projects and people that you are passionate about and let this mission put you on auto-pilot. The Tao will present all your temptations as simple choices for or against your sacred mission and your love for the people and the work will get you over the bridge without problems. So what is your calling in life? Once you have decided on something, trust that your soul siblings will show up shortly afterwards. As a matter of fact, your soul siblings signed up for their mission eons ago to take those few steps with you. All you have to do is to drum up that little will-power to follow their lead. Let love show you the way.

When Willpower Meets Temptations

In an experiment a group of people were asked not to touch the cookies in the waiting room while others had no such temptation. All participants were then asked to solve a challenging puzzle. The group whose willpower was tried before gave up earlier. Apparently they spent all their willpower trying to resist eating cookies so there was little willpower left to tackle the puzzle. Willpower is like a muscle, it gets tired as you use it.

A spiritual path traveler will face temptations; things that one thinks one shouldn't do, but  you do them nevertheless just because they feel great only to find that you are left with a bad conscience afterwards. We all remember Jesus and Buddha's temptations before they reached their final liberation; why can't we do it we ask and promise ourselves that next time we will try  twice as hard.

My personal view is that you should stop banging your head into the wall. Let the cookie example speak to you. If you promise yourself to stop doing something for the rest of your life, you exhaust the willpower you have right there just because 'for the rest of the life' happens to be a very long time. Instead, try understanding what the consequences of your actions are and start analyzing what happens when you follow your 'pernicious habits' and what happens when you stay clean instead. Passion versus peace, sensation versus serenity; experiment and the trade off becomes very clear to you. In my experience your drives and desires fall of naturally along the path, if something is struggle then you are not quite ready for the next step. Keep trying, keep analyzing what your trade off is and how you can express your uniqueness and the answer will come to you. Very much like a mother will stop drinking and smoking when she discovers that she is pregnant, a spiritual path traveler quits what interferers with her peace and serenity for the very reason that there is no alternative.  

On Willpower

And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself.
(A Course in Miracles)

Roy Baumeister and John Tierney quote a study in their book 'Willpower' that shows that willpower works like a muscle - if you use it, you will get tired at one point. Everyone has a temptation, and if you think you can travel your spiritual path with willpower alone, you are either a stoic or a super-hero. A spiritual path is a lifelong commitment, if you want to bang your head into a wall over that time you are in for a big headache.

It doesn't have to be that way. Explore your dark side, every misstep will bring you precious insights about yourself and why exactly you have these desires in the first place. Every of these insights will give you the opportunity to reposition yourself and try again. There are no mistakes really, only learning opportunities. This way your temptation should fade into oblivion over time.So rest your willpower muscle, a spiritual journey should be a happy stroll instead.

We may not posses free will, but we possess free won't

You may be surprised about the 'we may not posses free will' part, but how do we know if you do? There is research that shows that something in our heads clicks at a time of a decision well ahead of the time when we are consciously aware of this decision. Perhaps we are part of a pre-determined movie plot and all we do is to consciously assign a 'rational response' to a pre-determined outcome. Weird stuff, eh?

I have no idea about the 'free will' part, but I do know about the 'free won't'. Every morning I am heading to the gym at 5am, I say to myself, 'I won't quit'; every time I see yummy fast food and every time I am tempted to go for that extra cup of coffee or extra glass of wine and beer I say to myself 'I won't'. Of course there will be some who say that even that exercise of willpower has been pre-determined, well, then so be it, I feel proud of my accomplishment nevertheless.

Willpower

There are some who say there is a force inside ourselves, the ego, who wants to keep us from going home. Well, if that is the case, you will have to apply willpower to advance on your spiritual path, at least initially until you have figured out what the scheme of the ego is all about. When you look at the final temptations Jesus Christ and the Buddha had to endure before they reached enlightenment: it was authority in the case of the Christ and it was sexual lust in the case of the Buddha.

What is it that gets your passions going? Chances are the force that wants you to keep you from going home will zoom right into it. But if you get your chastity belt out you also know that you are doing something wrong. Don't torture yourself as the Course in Miracles states, it is more a matter of mindfulness. The initial stage is just about figuring out where the problem statement lies, that is, discovering the two forces at work. But once you have figured out the scheme, all you have to do is to apply mindfulness as well as a little willpower. Once your mind goes back to your favorite subject, the observer kicks in and gently reminds 'Here we go again!'

Willpower and Spirituality

You are passing the liquor cabinet and you see the open wine bottle from the anniversary party. You want to have a glass, but you know that one will soon become two and often three. You summon your willpower, take the bottle and pour the wine down the drain. Now you know that you are safe since there is no way that you would leave your cozy apartment and head to the liquor store.

Sounds familiar, sounds scary? While this story may or may not talk to you, spirituality is about willpower as well and the little tricks you find in order to stay on the Tao. By slowly eliminating all distractions along the way, you channel the fountain of energy within you into the desired direction. Everyone who is on a mission does it. The lonely single who is out on dates, the power-hungry CEO aspirant, the pro-golfer. Everybody channels energy towards the desired target; the stronger the urge to succeed, the more laser-focused the attention becomes at the exclusion of everything else.

Spiritual growth is a little different in that there is no target per-se with the noble exception of trying to stay on the Tao. Yet, in effect the process will be similar as you will get your cues along the way to cut out distracting habits and desires. On the spiritual path one travels light. Nobody should tell you what exactly you have to do, that is entirely up to you to find out. You are on a unique starting point with a specific mission, and it is up to you to find out what choices to make and how to creatively express yourself. As you wander along your spiritual path, the Tao will be a perfect feedback mechanism just for you. Accept that you have hit to gym in order to succeed, but that you will then use your acquired strength to express yourself freely and creatively.

You Need Mindfulness, Not Willpower

Will power is a popular concept for spiritual folks. If you enjoy pornography, exchange spiritual fantasies in chat rooms, cheat on your spouse, etc., you probably regret your action afterwards. You promise yourself that in the future everything will get better. You will overcome your dirty urges with the help of willpower, won't you? There is a big problem with the will power concept. Who is the authority that enforces this concept? It is your mind, is it not? This concept has conflict written all over it. The authority that sends you on the ego trips in the first place is also the authority that tells you afterwards that you shouldn't have done this egocentric action in the first place. You make the thief police chief and judge as well.

Mindfulness is the ability to monitor the inner workings of your mind. Catch negative thought patters, observe inconsiderable things you say or do. Spot the ego at work when you talk to the cab driver differently than to your boss. See how your mind goes off to sleep when you act compulsively. And to go back to the earlier described sex struggle, find the reason why you can't enjoy the sexual life with your partner and need those other outlets of your repressed sexual energy instead.

J. Krishnamurti advocates this monitoring process in his work, and the longer I study myself and the problems we are facing, the more I realize that observing is all we can do. The mind, with all its experience and psychological pitfalls can't be trusted with anything other than analytical problem solving. Luckily, when we are really silent, or really going with the flow, there is an authority that guides us. That is all we can do, be mindful of things that are going on in our head and outside of us.