Self-restraint

Aug 11, 2021

It occurs to me that there are various types of self-restraint we human beings can practice.

On the physical level, our body mass is constantly pulled down to the earth. In our early years of development, we experimented and we struggled as we learned to align our muscles to our will, learning gradually to hold our head up, then our upper body, and then learned the balancing act of standing on our own two legs, and later even to shift our weight from one leg to another and to step forward, repeatedly, thus learning and mastering the art of walking. And though this struggle is oft forgotten by the regular adult, each of us, as we live and move in our daily activities, is practicing a constant and complex self-restraint against our body mass' tendency towards falling downward, whether consciously or not.

On the physiological level, we have also learned to restrain the natural urges our body feels fairly continuously throughout the day. Hunger, thirst, the urges to urinate, defecate, to sneeze, or even to breathe. These all the body seeks in order to survive, to seek homeostasis, as its design compels it to. And most of us learn to restrain these urges at some time or another in order to uphold values on a different plane. Social norms override the basic urges of hunger and lust, as they rank the values of neighborly respect and social cohesion higher than those driven by the primal urges. In these cases, among others, we exercise self-restraint of our physiological urges, and a large number of these overrides has also sunk down into our subconscious.

We have learned to restrain our emotions as well, though the process is still ongoing in the species, as can be observed when a person speaks or acts driven by emotional impulse, then suffers from his own remorse after the emotional wave has quieted down. We know sometimes to hold in our sadness, our anger, our jealousy, our hurt, and even our excitement at times.

Restraint of emotions recognizes there is a value higher than that of our emotions. It negates the priority of one's own emotions and yields it to another value within ourselves, such as our logic and ideas. In the same manner, restraint of thoughts recognizes there is a value higher than that of our thoughts. It negates the priority of one's own thoughts, which sometimes involves considering that our own thoughts are incorrect. Such self-restraint, I notice, is not common among humanity as a whole. Accepting, admitting that oneself is wrong - not only to others, but to ourselves, is something I have had difficulty accomplishing, or even realizing as a possibility; I notice in the behavior of other people that they have difficulty too, or do not even consider...

September 1, 2021

their mind may not be correct or complete, that it may have interpreted reality incorrectly.

Upon each of these levels we build the framework of our bodies. The elemental forces on each plane exert their own tendencies upon our bodies, be they to flow, to release, to yield to entropy. And at each plane we observe, we yearn to master our expression and our balance. And then we struggle, seek, fight to gain command upon these bodies, upon the various levels of our existence. Life struggles through us to discover Itself, to observe in these planes what It grows Itself into.

At each level we build. In the unordered elements at each level we learn to discern, we choose to grow, and therein our work lies. The struggle is to erect a framework in ourselves, and in the world, that is guided, operated, and controlled by our consciousness, by Life.

Self-restraint, I believe, is a key element to this struggle. It is the imposition of the willpower upon the elemental urges of the bodies we sometimes feel so much as our own selves. At each level we explore the shapes, patterns that align with our will, and via self-restraint we give it strength, solidity. And upon the framework we build upon the denser levels, can we rise and continue to explore and build upon the subtler.

And so we build. We began defying gravity while even in plant form, we detached from the earth as animals, and as humans higher still we rise. With healthy and self-controlled bodies, we now explore the planes or emotions and mind, seeking to build a stable framework upon these as well, guided by our awareness, driven by our will.

So it is worthy to realize that to grow, at times, it is valuable to restrain our own emotions, as well as to restrain our own opinions (thoughts), and to listen instead. When and where to do so is a matter entirely chosen by ourselves. And doing so can help us build ourselves, and rise to higher levels.