Keeping the Watchman on "Attention Alert"

All religions and spiritual groups place a lot of importance on the virtue of discipline. Without discipline you do not manage to transform negative habits and you do not create a new state of awareness where the self is nourished through the experience of spirituality. Every day you eat, you brush your teeth, bathe, drink water, and breathe, and all of this you do not consider a discipline; you have adopted them as something natural in order for your body to continue working properly.

➤𝐎𝐧 𝐚 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 you also need to nourish yourself and to have a discipline that, with practice, a time comes when it becomes natural because you make it a part of your life. In the process of change, you need to discipline yourself in order not to let old habits come back. Until you have burnt the old habits and they have died, you should keep the watchman of attention alert in order to maintain your self-control, given that each time you use a negative habit in action, you strengthen it. When you do not use it, you allow it to die.

➤The path of the spiritual traveler is, therefore, one of 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 (𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥)and sleeping (under the illusion that the self is this physical body), waking and sleeping. We tend to fluctuate between the two (like dawn and dusk) until we find stability in 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗹-𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀. This is why it is important to awaken and stay awake, and this is why it’s important to give our mind and intellect good spiritual food (spiritual wisdom) and exercise (meditation) every day to keep them fresh and alert.

➤Being conscious of the soul, and acting from that consciousness, the scars (habits and tendencies) left by past actions based on illusions of bodily awareness are healed. Discipline is necessary for spiritual growth and personal transformation if you want to obtain satisfying and permanent results. If not, the old habits continue to rule in your life. The evidence that our discipline in the practice of meditation is working is mental lightness, an increasing easiness in our interactions with others, and success in everything we do.