Training the Will: 7

[ecosophia]

Let's talk one more time about training the will. 

We've already covered the essential principles of will training:  start with things that don't have any emotional loading, develop conscious action and conscious attention equally, build the habit of success before you start trying things where you might fail. The remaining ingredients are time and effort. If you work at will training over the months and years to come, following these principles, you'll develop the habit of conscious willing and you will be able to do things that seem unimaginable to you right now. 

Whether you do this or not is entirely up to you.  I can't do it for you, and neither can anyone else. Nor can you blame anyone or anything else if you don't do them; one way or another, this is on you.  The first exercise you need to do, if you want to develop a strong, supple, powerful will, is to choose to do will training exercises, and then do them. 

What exercises should you do?  Longtime reader Violet Cabra has helpfully posted 100 will exercises, any and all of which can be put to work in this process. Reading those and the exercises we've discussed here already, you should have no trouble coming up with many more. 

You can also take up some basic set of spiritual, religious, or occult exercises, make them a regular part of your daily routine, and keep doing them for the rest of your life. That's perhaps the most traditional of all will training methods, and it reliably produces people who can accomplish what other people think is impossible. Still, that's only one option; there are many others. Anything that requires regular practice, from playing the piano to lifting weights, can be approached in the same spirit. 

One thing to watch for, as you approach the continuing work of will training, is the failure melodrama. That's a habit, quite common these days, of deliberately setting yourself up to fail and then moaning about your failure in public. This has several emotional payoffs; it allows you to claim that you want to do something praiseworthy without ever having to do it; it allows you to feel sorry for yourself, which is apparently quite an addictive practice; and it allows you to parade your suffering in front of everyone you know, which seems to be even more addictive. There are various forms of the failure melodrama, but they all share the common feature that they're performance pieces -- it's all about displaying to others. 

Thus I'm going to suggest one more rule for training the will:  don't talk about what you're doing. Don't boast about your successes and don't moan about your defeats. Simply keep on going, learning from each success and each failure, watching the antics of your ego as it reacts to the whole process, and letting the process teach you. 

Got it?  Good. Now go for it. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I was wondering whether you might not consider consolidating these pieces into a PDF on training the will. The reason I suggest this is that Israel Regardie's The Tree of Life has a section on training the will, and even the editors don't condone part of the training method. I think the book is wonderful, but having something to point to as a replacement for that chapter, or to complement Rudolf Steiner's will training exercise (just one that I know of), might be useful to have in one place.

[ecosophia]

I plan on consolidating them, and quite a bit more, into a book. Stay tuned -- I have other aspects of self-training in mind!

[(Anonymous)]

1. Good to know that a book on training the will is in the works. Will the book include a section on discursive meditation? Or is that in another book or book-to-be?

2. Is 'Training the Will: 7' the last essay of this series?

3. Before seeing your series of essays, I had no idea that the Will could be trained. Certainly the broader concept was 'out there', but not in such an explicit, clear manner. Your work in this is greatly appreciated. I look forward to buying the book.

4. "Failure melodrama" - yep. I've been guilty of that - good know it for what it is. Thank you. Over the years, I've been less and less vocal to others with this (having gradually realized other people get tired of hearing it). Now it's more of an internal endless tape, still there.

5. The cell salt experiment - at the very least - has been useful to me for training the will, even if in a minor way - baby steps.

[ecosophia]

1) I'm not quite sure yet about the frame of the book. My current thought is that it will be my equivalent of the Sâr Péladan's How to Become a Mage -- in my case, it'll be partly the matter of ethopoeia (ethos-making) that Péladan discussed, and partly exercises for basic occult training. If that's what it turns out to be, yes, it'll include a discussion of discursive meditation. Still, we'll see.

2) Yes, for now.

3) Thank you! I'm glad to hear that.

4) It's a very, very common habit; I did it myself when I was younger and more clueless.

5) Baby steps are the most important steps of all -- they're the ones that get you started. After that it gets easier.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for this series! I was able to learn how difficult it is to change a habit which I have emotions invested in, because I tried to break such a habit and failed miserably. I then took your advice and successfully broke a habit that I didn't have such an emotional investment in, and the difference between the two attempts was striking. Thanks again!

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it. Now you can work on the middle ground, changing habits in which you have just a little emotional investment, then a little more, until finally your will is free enough that emotional investments aren't a problem. Remember that regular journaling is a good way to help get in touch with old emotional issues; unpacking them is a good way to step down the intensity of the investment.

Failure melodrama

[(Anonymous)]

Gosh darn this is interesting.

I recall an experience when I was 14 of conscious deployment of the failure melodrama. We had a book reading assignment for english class, so I consciously chose the thickest book I could find in the house, feeling certain that I would (and reasonably so!) fail to read it during the allotted time for the assignment.

I failed with the melodrama - succeeded easily in completing the book. It was Frank Herbert's Dune.

No doubt the experience had lifelong impacts in ways I'm only dimly aware of.

Cheers,
Graeme

Re: Failure melodrama

[ecosophia]

Graeme, thank you! That's a great story.

Essay links?

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any way you could post the links to these essays in one spot, in due order, until such time as your book is available? It would save a lot of searching and scrolling.

Kevin

Re: Essay links?

[ecosophia]

If you click on the tag "will" at the bottom of the post it will take you to every post in this series, in reverse order -- scroll to the bottom and there you are. I tend to be careful to make sure at least one tag in a series relates to that series and only that series.

A question

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,

I noticed that in the list of Violet's will exercises that you linked to, some of them are workings of one sort or another (#33 is the hoodoo bath, for example). Is this OK for someone who may not necessarily know what that that's what they're doing? I mean, if the list got wider exposure on the internet among people who wouldn't recognize conjure and such. Should there be a note that those particular exercises have an extra dimension to them than simply will training?

Re: A question

[ecosophia]

None of the workings that Violet has included will do any harm to anyone, so I'm not too worried.

Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

Have you given consideration to self publishing little things like this *outside* of traditional e-book market places (amazon, Apple, etc) for $5 or $10 each?

Converting a simple set of essays into both a PDF and epub is very straightforward if you keep things simple with no DRM and no fancy typesetting - I would expect your IT guy could help here, eg setting up pandoc to do that behind eg wordpress is quite doable.

And there are platforms like gumroad that do all the payments side for you (there is a longer list of options here from some quick googling: https://blog.appsumo.com/patreon-alternatives/)

You could end up with a nice little library of content to point people at.

Re: Publishing

[ecosophia]

No, I hadn't considered that yet. Hmm. I'm not sure I want to put in the extra work, but it's worth considering at some point.

Keeping quiet

[(Anonymous)]

That part about not telling everyone what we're up to is so key. Learning to apply our will by choice is challenging enough given the jealousies, doubts, and antics of our own egos. Adding to that the jealousies, doubts, and blind homicidal rage of other people's egos can make that challenge utterly impossible.

As a survivor of child abuse in a family that trained me for the role of eternally bearing all of my family's sins and dysfunctions, it took me several failed attempts at individuation to finally realize that every single thing I told them was being used against me to keep me entrapped. But I did learn... Silence can truly be golden!

Once we begin changing in any meaningful way, we will change the dynamics of all the systems we are part of, some of which will be overwhelmingly resistant to allowing us to accomplish any changes that disrupt their own equilibrium or status quo (as the deplorables well know by now.) If your boss, spouse, parents, drinking buddies, etc. know that you are trying to shed your skin and become your own person, some of them will try to "help" you by preventing you from ever succeeding. It's very hard to know in advance who will be threatened by which changes, and who will unexpectedly thrill to see you finally take flight.

I've found that sometimes the most profound silence can be achieved by laughing liberally at the preposterous inanities of life in general and of my own projects in particular. Few potential obstructionists ever imagine my "crazy talk" about will-building, divination, or casting spells might actually be in earnest when I'm just laughing my head off while talking about them. Laughter can be golden, too!

-Christophe

Re: Keeping quiet

[ecosophia]

These are all excellent points. Silence is an extraordinarily effective tool, and in some situations, an equally effective weapon. It's earned its place as one of the four magical virtues!

[tunesmyth]

Thank you for this series, I’ve been enjoying both reading it and participating immensely.

At one point I believe you said something along the lines that there would be an exercise where we list and rank the importance of actions and goals in our life, or something to that effect. Is that going to be part of a different series? Or perhaps I misunderstood what you wrote in the first place?

[ecosophia]

That's part of a different series. The personal inventory is a standard part of introductory occult training; Manly Hall gives one good version of it in Self-Unfoldment through Disciplines of Realization, his manual of training, and Franz Bardon gives another in Initiation into Hermetics; I've lost track of how many other examples I've gotten in correspondence courses, and all of them have been useful. We'll get to that in due time.

[(Anonymous)]

My experience with crash nʻ burn drama is quite extensive and difficult to talk about, so reading this today caused a bit of discomfort. Fortunately this morning I had a vision in meditation that set me up to be able to handle it, and maybe someone else can benefit.

I am walking on the razor edge rim of an active volcano in the arctic cirlce. To my right is a sheer cliff leading to certain death by fire and rage, on the left is an icy plunge into endless depression and self pity. In the middle of the path it is the perfect temperature where the swirling forces meet. It takes intense concentration and discernment to navigate each step in order to stay on the path, but up there I can learn and experience things that can be found nowhere else.

[ecosophia]

Just remember that you choose to be there and to walk that very fine line. There are other paths that run between less extreme alternatives, and there's also much to be learned on those.

[(Anonymous)]

😬

Zipped!

—Lady CK

[ecosophia]

"To know, to dare, to will, and to zip it" would be a good variant; thank you!

[syfen]

So, I took your advice from the second post on training of the Will and did some systematic journaling about the origin of my anxiety when I become aware of my will. Dear gods did that lead down a very deep rabbit hole. Now the work to fix it begins.

[ecosophia]

Excellent! As Jung used to point out, it's by going down into the underworld that you recover the treasures to be found there.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank You, Mr Greer, for those series of exercises. They are very helpful.

I'm starting to realize how being silent about your doings and plans is so important. The same time so difficult! Need for sharing experiences and thoughts with others is very strong in us. How to do it without interfering with our efforts to improve ourselves or to achieve our goals? How to communicate our successes without paving the road leading to failures?

BTW We have a good proverb in Polish "A cow that moos a lot gives little milk".

[ecosophia]

That's a great proverb -- thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Coincidentally enough, this research paper stumbled across my email inbox recently. To get an idea of how things are stacked against people when it comes to using their own will, just consider the name of the subject area of the paper: Behavioural Design. I've only skimmed the paper so far, but it surveys the types of behavioural 'problems' (read: people not doing what we want) and solutions to these problems that designers of software systems, service designs, and policies can draw on.

To give you an idea of how much effort goes into this sort of thing, there is a little known area of User Experience Design called Service Design, which is a discipline concerned with how companies and governmental institutions can design the interactions that the general public can have with them. At its best, it eliminates hurdles that people with disabilities, for example, have when interfacing with a healthcare system. At its worst, it enters the political sphere and seeks to subtly manipulate the wills of people. You'll find throughout the paper I've linked to below references to similar themes that you've outlined in this series about will, including habit formation and the role of emotions in this process. This shows how aware Behavioural Designers are about the techniques of shaping the will.

Here's the link to the paper for those interested: http://www.ijdesign.org/index.php/IJDesign/article/viewFile/3952/899

[ecosophia]

That's why silence is important, and it's also why separating yourself from the locus of control is important. What do I mean by that? Figure out the means by which the system is trying to exert control over it, and distance yourself from that. For example, the main locus of control in the consumer economy is advertising, especially but not only television advertising. Separate yourself from the locus of control by throwing out your TV and getting a good ad blocker on your computer, and you become much less easy to manage.

[abrahamjpalma]

Here I was going to share my success with the practice in lesson 1 and on my way to the exercise in lesson 2, only to see you asking not to talk about it. LOL.
I hope we can at least talk about it with other initiates.

Next time, put this advice in the first place...

Small question. how long should I keep repeating the new silly habit? Just one week and then forget about it?

[ecosophia]

You get to decide that. If you let go of one silly habit, take up another, and do it for a longer or a shorter period. Experiment and see what helps you get control of your will the best.

All makes perfect sense

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John Michael,

Just wanted to chuck in the extra idea that one side of the 'don't talk about what you are doing' story is that it is OK to talk about what you have accomplished - as long as it is not bragging which is another way to say boasting. That's not a nice activity for people to do and rarely comes across well.

Dunno about your experience, but I tend to learn far more from failures than I ever do from an easy win. For me failure is when consideration, cogitation and meditation produce deeper insights into a subject or activity. Dunno.

Cheers

Chris from Fernglade Farm (having troubles with the website OpenID codes)

Re: All makes perfect sense

[ecosophia]

My take, for what it's worth, is that it's only useful to talk about your successes when there's a specific reason to do so -- and have at least one success that you never, ever discuss with anyone. The difficulty you have following that last rule gives you a good measure of how dependent on other people's praise you've let your ego become.

[(Anonymous)]

As part of my ongoing DMH studies, and this series on will, I've noticed what for lack of a better term I'm calling 'thought-drifts', which are the repeated 'bloomings' in my mind of involuntary thoughts that I am then compelled to think about.

This is perhaps different than ordinary wandering thoughts, which have a tendency to be at least somewhat related to what I was thinking about before my thoughts wandered, and subsequent thoughts just tend to spiral outward from semi-related topic to semi-related topic.

These thought-drifts are different: they will come over and over again throughout the day, overwhelming whatever else I am thinking about, and often will be related to the same theme. And very often these thoughts will be driven by external events, problems, debates, politics, basically anything that is usually driven by the agendas of other people. It can be a great struggle to stop spending time with my train of thought absorbed in the agendas of other people.

My question is: are these thought-drifts reflections of the wills of other people? I would assume I am sensing some sort of wave on the astral plane? Or am I choosing to think about these things, and there is some emotional payoff I'm getting from doing so?

I am trying to figure out whether or not this is indeed the case, or whether these are also due to psychological baggage, indeed, whether archetypes such as my Shadow are also at play.

An example to illustrate: due to the recent US election, media coverage of Critical Race Theory (I did see your post on the subject a few weeks ago about this) I've been finding I've been getting a lot of 'thought-drifts' on this subject. At work yesterday we had to attend a virtual conference on diversity and 'sharing our privilege'. The first speaker went on to claim that we're all living in a system founded on white supremacy, etc. In the spirit of trying to learn from an experience I'd been forced to partake in, I tried to note both criticisms of what was being said along while noting useful things that did make sense.

Since then, however, I've been just constantly assailed with these 'thought-drifts' and now I can't tell whether this comes from my Shadow and unresolved baggage, and/or whether these thoughts are the wills of the speakers emanating outwards into my own thoughts. Indeed, I have little experience with spells, but being forced to think about these topics in my free time like this seems like a spell to me. Or am I completely wrong, and it's all me choosing to think about these things?

[ecosophia]

No, you're not wrong at all. There are collective currents in the astral that are full of thought and emotion. If you've gotten to the point in your DMH studies of being able to use the Sphere of Protection for practical magic, consider doing workings to clear your mind of these thought-drifts, and banish them using all four elements -- each such drift includes thought, will, emotion, and changes in perception.

[(Anonymous)]

My ego was scrambling for cover through later parts of the post and coming up with ways to "melodrama" reading this. I did not see that coming! I know what I have to do now, thanks for this.

- Nomad

[ecosophia]

Excellent! Now that you've hooked that fish with the bait I offered, reel it in.

Willpower and poverty and similar burdens

[(Anonymous)]

Are you familiar with the research about poverty causing decision fatigue?
(The landmark paper is called "Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function". There is a PDF here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sendhil/files/976.full_.pdf)

I think, from what I've seen in life, that other issues such as disability and being a carer, or working multiple jobs, can also cause similar issues.

How would you see will training as applicable to people in strained circumstances like those?

Does this kind of training take account of the idea of willpower as a finite resource, as found in recent studies like this? (I get the impression it does, as it's about building up like strength training, but I haven't read the theoretical background.)

Re: Willpower and poverty and similar burdens

[ecosophia]

Yes, I'm familiar with that. The most useful response is to treat it the same way you'd treat exercise if you were very weak -- say, just finished with a year of bed rest due to a debilitating illness: start very small and very simple. I've seen studies that show that very elderly people who have little strength can improve their health remarkably by something so simple as picking up a soup can and lifting it into the air ten times on each side. In the same way, starting with the simplest and least demanding forms of will training is a good approach for those who are in difficult circumstances. The important thing is to begin building the habit of conscious willing, even in very simple ways, so that what willpower the person has can be used as constructively as possible.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Thank you so much for this introduction, it already helped me break from habits I thought would require a lot of teeth grinding!

I'd like to ask your permission to translate it to my native language and run it with friends and interested parents like a brief workshop, with the objective of gathering donations for a local non-profit waldorf school (your name, blogs and books will, of course, be referenced as author and recommended).

With your blessings, thank you again!

[ecosophia]

Yes, that would be fine. What language will it be in?

[michaeliangray]

> don't talk about what you're doing.

This one tip is the most important thing so far. In the past when ever I have being doing something of the will, as soon as someone mentions the change or worse, I mention the change - that is usually the sign that I am about to drop the ball completely.

[ecosophia]

Bingo. To know, to dare, to will, and to stuff a sock in it! ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Thus I'm going to suggest one more rule for training the will:  don't talk about what you're doing. Don't boast about your successes and don't moan about your defeats. Simply keep on going, learning from each success and each failure, watching the antics of your ego as it reacts to the whole process, and letting the process teach you.

This is also good advice for things other than training the will.

[(Anonymous)]

I have not yet started this, but I will do (...so hard not to type "try" after the "will".)
If I'd had this program a 35 years earlier it might have made the greatest possible difference in my life, because I was a super-procrastinator decades before it became cool or anyone even knew the term. Now I'm 60 and my life has been not bad and not particularly painful because of lucky circumstances (=being a first-worlder), but also entirely pointless......but its not yet over, so if your program lifts me up to the level of willpower where I am able to clean my appartment when I think I should, that would be a fantastic success! ;)
Best regards, Heinrich

[abrahamjpalma]

I thought exactly the same. What would I have become if I had this knowledge back in my twenties?

You see, I was smart enough to pass most of my exams up to high school without studying hard, with good qualifications even. But once in the University I was faced with stuff that required me to study for real and several hours per day and I didn't have that habit. Nor was I able to make the habit. So I entertained myself with sf/fantasy novels and games instead. You might guess the outcome. Five years later I suffered an anxiety crisis, I believe motivated by a lack of purpose in life, dropped the studies, got a job and found happiness in building a family, my son bringing meaning to my life. I don't regret it, but sometimes I wonder how could it have been if I didn't pass through those idle years.

However, if any of my teachers would have suggested to my younger self that I needed to gain this ability and that there was a wonderful program going on in a website ruled by a druid, I would have passed. I was sure I didn't need any of that. My ego was so big that I even refused to take classes outside the university since I thought I was smart enough to learn by myself, if I just wanted to commit to it, and I shall do it, starting next week, you'll see. And for a couple of months I was back to the fight, but constance was/is not a virtue of mine, and the habit of leisures without schedule was/is too strong.

Teeth grinding?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
Thanks for this series, I think it’s been one of the most profound things you’ve shared on this platform, thank you.

Instinctively (?) I haven’t shared that I’m doing this with anyone, not even my wife, so glad to hear it’s part of the process. This is interesting given that publicly declaring commitments is often a way to keep them - is that your experience?

My other question is regarding a habit I’m not conscious of, and that is grinding my teeth at night. It gets worse when I’m stressed, but other than using a mouth guard and trying to “relax”,I don’t know how to stop it. Have you got any suggestions for habits like this, that seem to operate unconsciously?

I’m currently working on crossing my legs at my ankles rather than my knees when I sit.

On another note, and I’m not sure if it’s coincidence, but my work life has been better since I started doing this too. Even if my biggest discovery is how little if my day is spent conscious willing...

Thanks again, this is powerful work.

Re: Teeth grinding?

[ecosophia]

A lot of the conventional wisdom about doing things is very counterproductive -- it's pretty clear that our popular culture is set up to keep people from achieving much in their lives. As for grinding teeth, there's not much you can do directly, especially when you're asleep. The major challenge here is figuring out what emotional forces are driving that habit; journaling can help with that, but it's likely to be a long slow process.

[jenniferkobernik]

JMG,

I realize that this is quite an old post, but I’ve been doing the exercises, and your description of the failure melodrama brought to mind my own self-defeating melodrama—the rebellion melodrama. It seems to be a form of divided will, but it’s triggered when I tell myself I am going to do something, at which point I immediately bristle at being told what to do and develop a perverse obsession with avoiding whatever I’m trying to do or doing whatever I’m not supposed to do. I was a rather rebellious child when it came to arbitrary or insulting rules, which wasn’t all bad actually, but it’s rather unhelpful that I can’t obey myself when I want to! Is there anything I can do other than continuing to try to notice it happening? I know that it’s silly and counterproductive, but that doesn’t actually seem to dampen the effect much even when I do notice it—I still find myself instinctively fighting the traces.

[ecosophia]

In your place I'd spend some time journaling, and try to get some sense of the deeper roots of that melodrama. Very often, there are unresolved childhood traumas underlying such habits, and until you get to the emotional burden from those traumas, that's going to come up.

You might also explore why you tell yourself you're going to do something, rather than just doing it...