Essay: Fundamentals of the Human Condition

[Cleric K]

Would it be correct to say that the world around us (outside our body) are images that manifest themselves through the activities of higher beings, just as our activity manifests itself in thoughts.
That would mean that our cosmos consists of mental activity, which presents itself differently depending on the depth.

It was said that higher beings cannot perceive the sensory world because they have no sensory organelles. But they do not live separately from it, but rather create it.
However, can the beings of the hierarchies see the world visually in imaginations?

Yes, we can say that. However, we should also be careful not to fall for the 'painter fallacy'. The naive view of reality as being mental is often conceived as if MAL imagines the world. If we go along with this superficially, World Creation would look something like this: we imagine a blank conscious state, like a canvas (soul space). Then various levels of beings impress their activity in that canvas and we imagine that slowly our soul space begins to resemble our visual picture. Rocks appear, plants appear and so on. All of this is conceived as if the beings behold our visual canvas and just like a painter impress details in it through their activity.

This conception has so many problems that I won't even start enumerating them. To understand better how things stand we should try to imagine that when the etheric body is loosened we attain to a clearer experience of our body and life processes (the pleasant buzzing feeling of a part of the body 'going to sleep' is already such slight loosening, although not yet imbued with the cognitive element). We can sense how different parts of the brain, different organs of the body become reflective for our consciousness. This is all inner experience. It's not as if we see our organs in front of us, as we would in an anatomy textbook. Through our normal thinking we more or less know how the brain is experienced, how it is a reflector for our consciousness. When we develop new forms of thinking movements, we find out that these movements can find their reflection in other parts of the body. Thus for example, our liver can become a kind of brain. We can think there, although these thoughts no longer are experienced as sensory words or anything resembling intellect.

Even the eyes and visual parts of the brain are experienced differently. In a way, our consciousness can flow out through the eyes, as if tracing and merging with the floods of light. This is no longer our familiar visual experience but it is as if our brain extends and now we can think also with the light outside, its inner nature becomes reflective for our consciousness, just like the brain is.

Actually, newborns still live in such a more or less expanded state and only gradually contract in the bodily organs. This will make it clearer also how acquisition of language works. The babies' consciousness still lives in the sound ether and experiences not only how the ear organs and brain parts resonate with it but the outer sound ether is in a way also a screen of consciousness for them. When other human beings impress their activity in the ether, it is possible for the baby to grasp through actual Inspiration some of the meaning. Gradually, these inspired ideas become linked in the brain with the corresponding neural patterns. Then later we begin to live only with that which the brain reflects as consciousness without being able to follow the stimuli to the outside (as a side note, when we listen to someone very attentively and with admiration, the meaning that we grasp can also be received as a kind of Inspiration).

It is interesting that there are studies which show that babies are unable to learn language from artificial sound sources, such as TV:

https://www.wayfaringhumans.com/can-a-b ... tching-tv/

Of course, today's science believes that babies simply depend on visual cues from their parents and other subliminal sensations in order to make the associations between sound and meaning. Hopefully, if the spiritual depth of reality is taken seriously, it will become more and more clear that language is acquired in a much more spiritual way, it is indeed Inspired.

Clearly, it is not easy to imagine how such consciousness feels like, simply because it can't be patched up from our familiar sensory forms of perception. For one, an Angel can't be said to be 'here' in space and looking in 'that' direction. Its consciousness fills the space of human beings, animals, plants. They are like inner brain-organs for them. And if we try to imagine this in our familiar visual sense it will be very difficult because we have to approach a state that can be compared to seeing in all directions simultaneously. So an Angel can't speak about in front, behind, etc. in a spatial sense because it fills with consciousness all directions simultaneously. It can still speak about 'vertical' axis - that of the depth within and without the concentric circles that you mention but this doesn't coincide with any of the spatial axes.

So we see that we can grow into these domains only very gradually. There are so many things that have to be organized in our sheaths, so many novel inner movements that we have to acquire. In time we'll even be able to experience what it is to see in all directions simultaneously.

And to return to your question: these things should give a hint that higher beings experience reality in a different way. They don't have a flat visual picture of the world because they don't need it. They fill with their consciousness and experience from within, that which we experience only as a flat projection in our brain organ.

[Güney27]

Would it be correct to say that the world around us (outside our body) are images that manifest themselves through the activities of higher beings, just as our activity manifests itself in thoughts.
That would mean that our cosmos consists of mental activity, which presents itself differently depending on the depth.

It was said that higher beings cannot perceive the sensory world because they have no sensory organelles. But they do not live separately from it, but rather create it.
However, can the beings of the hierarchies see the world visually in imaginations?

Yes, we can say that. However, we should also be careful not to fall for the 'painter fallacy'. The naive view of reality as being mental is often conceived as if MAL imagines the world. If we go along with this superficially, World Creation would look something like this: we imagine a blank conscious state, like a canvas (soul space). Then various levels of beings impress their activity in that canvas and we imagine that slowly our soul space begins to resemble our visual picture. Rocks appear, plants appear and so on. All of this is conceived as if the beings behold our visual canvas and just like a painter impress details in it through their activity.

This conception has so many problems that I won't even start enumerating them. To understand better how things stand we should try to imagine that when the etheric body is loosened we attain to a clearer experience of our body and life processes (the pleasant buzzing feeling of a part of the body 'going to sleep' is already such slight loosening, although not yet imbued with the cognitive element). We can sense how different parts of the brain, different organs of the body become reflective for our consciousness. This is all inner experience. It's not as if we see our organs in front of us, as we would in an anatomy textbook. Through our normal thinking we more or less know how the brain is experienced, how it is a reflector for our consciousness. When we develop new forms of thinking movements, we find out that these movements can find their reflection in other parts of the body. Thus for example, our liver can become a kind of brain. We can think there, although these thoughts no longer are experienced as sensory words or anything resembling intellect.

Even the eyes and visual parts of the brain are experienced differently. In a way, our consciousness can flow out through the eyes, as if tracing and merging with the floods of light. This is no longer our familiar visual experience but it is as if our brain extends and now we can think also with the light outside, its inner nature becomes reflective for our consciousness, just like the brain is.

Actually, newborns still live in such a more or less expanded state and only gradually contract in the bodily organs. This will make it clearer also how acquisition of language works. The babies' consciousness still lives in the sound ether and experiences not only how the ear organs and brain parts resonate with it but the outer sound ether is in a way also a screen of consciousness for them. When other human beings impress their activity in the ether, it is possible for the baby to grasp through actual Inspiration some of the meaning. Gradually, these inspired ideas become linked in the brain with the corresponding neural patterns. Then later we begin to live only with that which the brain reflects as consciousness without being able to follow the stimuli to the outside (as a side note, when we listen to someone very attentively and with admiration, the meaning that we grasp can also be received as a kind of Inspiration).

It is interesting that there are studies which show that babies are unable to learn language from artificial sound sources, such as TV:

https://www.wayfaringhumans.com/can-a-b ... tching-tv/

Of course, today's science believes that babies simply depend on visual cues from their parents and other subliminal sensations in order to make the associations between sound and meaning. Hopefully, if the spiritual depth of reality is taken seriously, it will become more and more clear that language is acquired in a much more spiritual way, it is indeed Inspired.

Clearly, it is not easy to imagine how such consciousness feels like, simply because it can't be patched up from our familiar sensory forms of perception. For one, an Angel can't be said to be 'here' in space and looking in 'that' direction. Its consciousness fills the space of human beings, animals, plants. They are like inner brain-organs for them. And if we try to imagine this in our familiar visual sense it will be very difficult because we have to approach a state that can be compared to seeing in all directions simultaneously. So an Angel can't speak about in front, behind, etc. in a spatial sense because it fills with consciousness all directions simultaneously. It can still speak about 'vertical' axis - that of the depth within and without the concentric circles that you mention but this doesn't coincide with any of the spatial axes.

So we see that we can grow into these domains only very gradually. There are so many things that have to be organized in our sheaths, so many novel inner movements that we have to acquire. In time we'll even be able to experience what it is to see in all directions simultaneously.

And to return to your question: these things should give a hint that higher beings experience reality in a different way. They don't have a flat visual picture of the world because they don't need it. They fill with their consciousness and experience from within, that which we experience only as a flat projection in our brain organ.

Cleric,
When you say consciousness, do you mean the astral body?
I think I've reached the limit of understanding here, and it makes no sense to try to understand from my perspective how higher beings perceive the world.


Would it be advisable to concentrate on the point in your head where you feel the thoughts while meditating? Or should you ignore the body?

And is maintaining concentration also crucial in prayer, or should it fall more into the realm of feeling?

[Cleric K]

Cleric,
When you say consciousness, do you mean the astral body?

Well, it depends on the level of evolution. For example, we as ordinary humans can initially fill soul space only with our mental body - the "I". In other words we have to spread out our thinking 'feelers' as if we want to touch with thought and repeat the shape and dynamics of everything. The Angel is already becoming creatively active in the astral body. Its "I" has grown into it and can will its transformations as we can for thoughts (in other words, the astral body becomes more and more expression of conscious ideal activity). The Archangel would be active also in the etheric and so on.

Would it be advisable to concentrate on the point in your head where you feel the thoughts while meditating? Or should you ignore the body?

The concentration shouldn't be focused in some sensory-like perception in the brain. Let me try to explain. Use the nail of your index finger to scratch the skin of your body somewhere. Do that continuously and try to focus on the sensation. Then stop scratching and try to remember the sensation, try to imagine that you still feel the scratching sensation. Then gradually try to become fully conscious of the fact that you really try to produce that sensation with your focused ray of imagination. The latter is what really matters. There's no physical sensation. You simply use the spatial point on your skin as an anchor into which you try to create the sensation, as if your imagination acts as a movie projector and you try to project there the imagined sensation. You don't expect anything from your body - the goal is to feel how you try to summon the imagined sensation through your own activity.

It's similar with concentration in the head. We don't seek do dig into the bodily sensations in the head, we don't expect to find something there. The point has role as much as it should become the focal point of our imagination. We choose that point not because we want to dig into the neurons but because there we naturally feel in the 'center'. For example, in our ordinary consciousness, if we focus on our toe, it is normal to feel that we're 'somewhere' and we send our attention down into the toe. We can try this with different points of our body (to make it easy we can even scratch the place) and try to feel whether it feels in front, below, above and so on. It's interesting to scratch the back of the head and see if it feels 'behind'. So in this way, gradually we can 'triangulate' that our natural center feels somewhere in the head. That's also why we place our focus there in meditation. This center will become the center of our Mandalic experience. The spheres of higher consciousness will feel to grow around that place, as with the growing slowflake. But I repeat that it is our focused attention that creates that point, it is not something that we seek readymade in the head, in the way we can find readymade scratching sensation on the skin.

And is maintaining concentration also crucial in prayer, or should it fall more into the realm of feeling?

Yes, concentration in prayer is also critical. Once again, the point of concentration is the center of our Mandalic experience. Prayer is like breathing of Cosmic potential - the ideas and impulses of the higher beings. Through prayer we attune to everything that works for the harmonious unfoldment of the Cosmic artistic process.

Think of your present Mandalic experience as a frame of the Divine movie. Out there in the Cosmos are spread out, superimposed, all the infinite possible future frames. These are shaped according to the evolutionary ideal flows of higher beings. It is up to us to attune to the flow of frames that correspond to our high ideal. Practically we breathe in Time. We can imagine that these frames contract more and more and become more certain until they pass through our center and become our present.

[Cleric K]

PS: Describing prayer like this makes it sound as if we simply have to choose our best future and wish for it. But in reality our present Mandalic experience is like a puzzle piece that can only match with specific incoming puzzle pieces. In other words, we have to continually transform ourselves. Every next frame is not simply more pleasant contents for our "I" to enjoy. The next frame itself should be experienced as a better version of ourselves. We breathe in our higher, wiser, loving being.

As our Mandalic puzzle piece transforms it will correspondingly be able to unite with similarly shaped incoming frames (forming a flow), which otherwise would never be able to become actuality if we had remained with our old self - its puzzle shape wouldn't match this flow of being. In short, to be on the path of consciously evolving flow of being, every next frame shouldn't simply bring new sensations for the enjoyment of our never changing self but should bring some transformation in our consciousness, our habits, qualities and so on.

[Cleric K]

PS2: And of course, this breathing in doesn't concern only our prayer states. It continues through our daily life. We can't stay home all day and simply breathe in the 'best future'. This best future consist of frames not only of what we feel and think but also of our will - we have to work in the world.

[Güney27]

PS: Describing prayer like this makes it sound as if we simply have to choose our best future and wish for it. But in reality our present Mandalic experience is like a puzzle piece that can only match with specific incoming puzzle pieces. In other words, we have to continually transform ourselves. Every next frame is not simply more pleasant contents for our "I" to enjoy. The next frame itself should be experienced as a better version of ourselves. We breathe in our higher, wiser, loving being.

As our Mandalic puzzle piece transforms it will correspondingly be able to unite with similarly shaped incoming frames (forming a flow), which otherwise would never be able to become actuality if we had remained with our old self - its puzzle shape wouldn't match this flow of being. In short, to be on the path of consciously evolving flow of being, every next frame shouldn't simply bring new sensations for the enjoyment of our never changing self but should bring some transformation in our consciousness, our habits, qualities and so on.

How could the mystics from the Middle Ages (e.g. Boehme) achieve clairvoyance through prayers?
Don't you have to go through meditation to do this?

Why do your limbs start to vibrate when you concentrate long enough (is this the body going to sleep)?

[Federica]

The intuitive context

Take a look at your current environment. If you are in a room, there will be many perceptions that you can focus your sight on – furniture, things on the desk, the computer screen, keyboard and so on. Try to find something in your visual field that you don’t know what it is. Not that easy, is it? Almost everything we perceive in our room, even if we don’t specifically think about it, even by just glancing over it, feels as something familiar. Try moving your gaze sequentially through several objects in your room. Try to resist thinking about them, don’t even search for their words. If we are observant, we’ll notice that even though we don’t seek the clearcut concept for the object, it still feels as if we know what we’re looking at. Then if needed we can focus on the concept, for example by anchoring its meaning to the word for the object. But would we say that the perception felt as some mysterious unknown up until we pronounced its word? Or is it rather that at the moment our gaze falls on the perception, on some more ‘blurry’ cognitive level we already have some general awareness of what we’re seeing, and bringing up the concept and word for the perception is similar to concentrating that general awareness into focus?

We usually don’t pay attention to our inner life in such details because most of it unfolds quite automatically. To get an idea of how much we really take for granted, consider the following image:



Imagine you are told that this is a photograph of a dwelling of some alien life form. Do you know what you are seeing? Of course, there are forms and colors that can be compared with forms and colors we know from our Earthly life. But even these are not readily comprehensible. Imagine that you have to describe what you see over the phone. How would you go about it? Do you think that after ten or twenty words, the person on the other side will have a proper picture of what you’re seeing? But forms and colors are only the most superficial aspect of this perceptual panorama. What are these forms? Are they organic, are they mechanically manufactured? What if you’re told that the alien life form itself is present in the photo too? What are the structures in that dwelling? Are they kind of furniture? Home appliances? Computer interfaces?

And even this comprehension of what we’re seeing is only one aspect. Imagine that you find yourself in that dwelling. What would you do next? You may try to touch and feel the objects, to see if they have moving parts and so on. But what if some of these parts are analogous to exposed electrical wires? Or they are organic substances that are poisonous to our human biology? If we try to livingly imagine this situation, most of us will feel, at least initially, a kind of inner paralysis. We behold an inexplicable sensory panorama and we’re filled with a sense of complete uncertainty about how to proceed.

When we compare this with the kind of experience we have in our own room we realize that our knowing of what we see does not consist only in the names of perceived objects. Instead, every perception is also associated with temporal knowing, which is our understanding of how things function and how they are used. For example, when we see a chair, we don’t simply have static awareness of what a chair is but within that awareness we also have the potential for interaction with the object. We know that we can move towards the chair and sit on it. In this way our perceptual field is also a kind of palette for the possible actions we can undertake. If that knowing is absent, even if we have words for the static perceptions, we would feel as in the alien dwelling, where we have no idea how to interact with the environment.

Hopefully, through these examples we have gained deeper appreciation for how much we really take for granted in our everyday life. At all points of our existence we live in something akin to a background of knowing awareness. We can compare this to a general sense of orientation – we feel oriented in what we see, we also feel oriented in how we can navigate through the perceptual environment. Let’s call this ever present sense of meaningful orientation – intuition.

Very much in parallel with this illustration of the intuitive context is today's substack by Max Leyf, Being that can be understood is language. Language - Logos - is another perspective on the intuitive context.

This other way of expressing the same thing could help see the problem with our current eagerness to define things and to believe that, if we only can be rigorous with putting the right labels on things, and stick to them, we can grasp the nature of reality, as discussed a few times in recent posts.

Language only labels phenomena that it first disclosed, or “painted.” Imagine literally painting labels onto a scene with the same paintbrush that you used to compose it.

[Cleric K]

How could the mystics from the Middle Ages (e.g. Boehme) achieve clairvoyance through prayers?
Don't you have to go through meditation to do this?

Meditation, prayer, clairvoyance fuse together in the higher states. Prayer is like breathing in of the Cosmic Thoughts of which we’re weaved. We and the whole Cosmic Context are weaved of these Thoughts whether we’re conscious of it or not but by consciously opening for them, we declare that we want to live in the Truth. Meditation is like the exhalation that steps down the Cosmic to the level of normal human thought. Clairvoyance is simply the fact that our whole being aligns with the Truth and we are conscious of what aspects of reality come from the activity of what beings. The present human being is not clairvoyant by default because he prefers the illusion. For example, if we have the idea “What if there’s nothing but matter?”, this already shuts us off from the reality of the higher strata of existence. Now we build a conception of a mechanical world in our souls, which acts as a filter. We are now willing to think and feel only that which aligns with these ideas (and by their very nature these can never be experienced as anything more than shadowy thought-pictures of atoms, forces, etc. living in the brain).

The mystics of the past could experience images of the celestial happening because of that opening up through prayer. Their Love for God is so strong that they voluntarily give up their lower tendencies, imploring the Divine to fill them with his Spirit, to make them continuation of the Cosmic happenings (clearly, this is not the superficial understanding of prayer, as the act of asking God for favors). Then, according to their karma, certain important images could transpire in this way. This is already a form of meditation, which in the past has been largely assisted by the Angelic beings. In other words, the “I” still felt that the images are drawn in instinctively.

Today this mode of clairvoyance is declining because man has become even more independent in his thinking activity. The Angel today can’t easily force Images in our soul because we quickly fragment them into thoughts that feel as coming from our intellectual chatter. Forcing the images would be interfering in a sphere that is rightfully human – the activity of our “I”. The Angel still continues to work on the Images of Cosmic happenings and inflows them in the human soul but they don’t force upon ourselves. It is up to us to attune our soul to these images, which in the process are conceptualized by lucid thinking.

Our soul is infused with Imaginations not only by Angels that are aligned with the Truthful unfolding of evolution but also by such that try to build their own Imaginative realm. Esoterically, these are known as Luciferic spirit. They don’t seek self-knowledge (which would reveal that they exist within the Cosmic hierarchy) but prematurely seek their divinity by trying to create Imaginative world according to their desires. These beings are completely shut off to the world of Inspiration because otherwise they would immediately know that there’s an infinite world of beings hidden behind their activity. Thus they conceive themselves as top creators and weave in Cosmic Imaginations, trying to shape a realm according to their desires.

Man in our age is much more susceptible to these Luciferic images because they are so much more tempting. They offer a conception that has been seen many times even here on the forum, where man imagines that he has fallen into a temporary trap on Earth but by cutting all ties with human development, after death he’ll be like an Angel which undisturbed will create Imaginative worlds and forms.

As we have mentioned many times, there’s one important distinction between these different images and corresponding conceptions. Those of Luciferic nature press themselves powerfully into the soul, they are often even much more colorful and beautiful than those that the progressive Angels inflow. However, these images remain only that – powerful visions of Cosmic life, yet the human “I” is always left in a kind of expectation. These images are expected to become realities only after death. The other Angels’ images can be much more modest. This is not because there’s no splendor in the Devachanic worlds but only because they present Truthful pictures and these also show the massive pain and largely diseased state of humanity. These are images with which the Lu angels are not concerned because they suggest that all will be left behind anyway.

The great distinction is that the images inflown by the Truthful Angels do not need to remain only as pictures of what to expect after death. Our “I” can work its way through them and be led to the higher spiritual worlds i.e. to the creative intentions of the hierarchies. Only from this perspective we can actually see spiritually, how the Lu beings and the human “I”s that inflow their Imaginations, sit as if in a cloud of fantastic expectations and simply wait for the future time when they will become real.

Why do your limbs start to vibrate when you concentrate long enough (is this the body going to sleep)?

This is the gentle loosening of the etheric body. Now when we say that, we shouldn't simply imagine some sparkling overlay on top of the physical body which becomes loosened. It's important to try experience this in the first-person dimension. For example, without knowing it, every day we become sucked into our physical body in a not very balanced way. If we're too engrossed in out skeletal and muscle system, our movements become jerky, we become clumsy. This reflects the nature of our "I" activity as we can observe it in our thinking. Very often our thinking is not at all eloquent, it rather resembles hectic stuttering. We produce words left and right without inner cohesion. When an "I" with such habits descends deeper into the joints and muscles, the will receives the imprint of such hectic spiritual activity. This holds true also for other organs. Many of our diseases proceed because our clumsy spiritual activity disturbs the physical process.

This however doesn't mean that we can go back and say "Then I'll simply let go and let Nature take over my will in the best way." This we can no longer do today. Instead, we have to find the spiritual forms and movements and consciously instill the harmonious will into the body. A simple exercise could be just to relax our limbs and do few slow and smooth movements, trying to feel the musical continuity of the movements through time. We should do this in such a way, as if we're moving in water and we're concerned not only about how our body looks but also how we disturb the water. We should want to achieve beautiful movements not only of the hands but also of the eddies that we shape in the water. When we do this, our imaginative activity already lifts itself a little from the joints. Our imagination now becomes a kind of smooth curvature in spacetime, which extends around the body (in the water as it were) through which our limbs freefall. If we manage to do this with the needed intensity, we'll feel that the buzzing sensation is not only in our limbs but spreads in the environment too. This is simply due to the fact that our imagining activity has spread there, our thoughts fill space. This is the loosening that we speak about. As we can see, it's not about seeing some perception that lifts itself from the vicinity of the perceptions of our body. It's about lifting our spiritual activity that has been locked into joints and organs and fill our whole body and environment with it, in a smooth, musical and beautiful way.

[AshvinP]

PS: Describing prayer like this makes it sound as if we simply have to choose our best future and wish for it. But in reality our present Mandalic experience is like a puzzle piece that can only match with specific incoming puzzle pieces. In other words, we have to continually transform ourselves. Every next frame is not simply more pleasant contents for our "I" to enjoy. The next frame itself should be experienced as a better version of ourselves. We breathe in our higher, wiser, loving being.

As our Mandalic puzzle piece transforms it will correspondingly be able to unite with similarly shaped incoming frames (forming a flow), which otherwise would never be able to become actuality if we had remained with our old self - its puzzle shape wouldn't match this flow of being. In short, to be on the path of consciously evolving flow of being, every next frame shouldn't simply bring new sensations for the enjoyment of our never changing self but should bring some transformation in our consciousness, our habits, qualities and so on.

How could the mystics from the Middle Ages (e.g. Boehme) achieve clairvoyance through prayers?
Don't you have to go through meditation to do this?

Why do your limbs start to vibrate when you concentrate long enough (is this the body going to sleep)?

Related to what Cleric mentioned at the end of the last post, some may also find these sorts of intent-driven, 'ceremonial' exercises helpful.

Another means of deepening the will entails bringing special attention to the normal actions of daily life. In the world of Buddhist mindfulness, Jon Kabat Zinn has made popular the conscious eating of a single raisin. Such attention can be given to any action we choose. So choose something: a short walk across the room, the drinking of your morning coffee, or the weeding of a single flowering rosebush. Slow the pace; attend to each intention and subsequent action. “Soften” the will so you enact each phase of the journey with receptivity. The world works back on you with each action of your own. Imagine that your work is part of a sacred ritual that is unknown to others, but which completes a large ceremonial composition. You morning coffee becomes a Japanese tea ceremony, your weeding a holy trust to care to the Earth. Each act is infused with artistry and meaning by being caught up in the imaginal, in story or myth.

A firm will is remarkably efficacious and can overcome apparently insurmountable adversity. The stories that most inspire are often those of human achievement against great odds, for example Helen Keller, who overcame blindness and deafness, or Ernest Shackleton, who led his crewmen to safety through seas of Antarctica and severe weather when all seemed lost, or Lance Armstrong, who overcame cancer and won the Tour de France seven times. Mahatma Gandhi observed that “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Yet the will, like thinking, requires schooling. Starting with small, simple exercises and practicing them faithfully can help enormously to strengthen one's resolve. Having practiced daily, when a firm resolve is required later we can be surprised at how deep the reservoir has become.

Zajonc, Arthur. Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love (p. 82). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.