The challenge this month is the same as last month: to dedicate ourselves to a daily regimen of doing something relatively simple. Last month’s exercise was to gain mastery of thought. This month’s exercise is to gain mastery of will, to take charge of our own actions.
In last month’s exercise we were to set aside 5 minutes each day for an entire month to think about an unexciting object. We could imagine a pencil or a pin or a button. We could think about what it’s made of, how it was manufactured, how we use it, etc. That exercise works best with our eyes closed. For more details, including the results we can hope to experience, see last month’s post.
The second exercise of six is to focus on something we do every day for a month. Once again, we should pick something unexciting to do that is out of the ordinary. Steiner’s example is to water a flower at or near the same time each day. Clearly, a flower, whether it’s in a vase or in a garden, doesn’t need to be watered each day, so we want to choose an activity to do every day that doesn’t need to be done. Some people turn a ring around their finger or a watch around their wrist once a day. That’s it. If we can see that accomplishing this one unimportant thing each day is easy, we can add another thing to do at another time of day.
More examples will not help us because we really have to come up with our own ideas; we shouldn’t use the examples given here in this post.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
When this exercise has been practiced for, say, one month (see last month’s blog for first exercise), a second requirement should be added.
We try to think of some action which in the ordinary course of life we should certainly not have performed. Then we make it a duty to perform this action every day.
It will therefore be good to choose an action which can be performed every day and will occupy as long a period of time as possible. Again, it is better to begin with some insignificant action which we have to force ourselves to perform; for example, to water at a fixed time every day a flower we have bought. After a certain time, a second, similar act should be added to the first; later, a third, and so on… as many as are compatible with the carrying out of all other duties. This exercise, also, should last for one month. The action must spring from our own initiative, one must have thought of it oneself.
But as far as possible during this second month, too, the first exercise should continue, although it is a less paramount duty than in the first month. Nevertheless, it must not be left unheeded, for otherwise it will quickly be noticed that the fruits of the first month are lost and the slovenliness of uncontrolled thinking begins again.
Care must be taken that once these fruits have been won, they are never again lost. If, through the second exercise, this initiative of action has been achieved, then, with subtle attentiveness, we become conscious of the feeling of an inner impulse of activity in the soul; we pour this feeling into the body, letting it stream down from the head to a point just above the heart.
Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.
This series of exercises will move us toward becoming masters of ourselves. By directing our thoughts in a focused way, we will eventually be able to control our thinking instead of having random thoughts intrude in haphazard ways throughout the day. We also begin to have more faith that we are doing things we consciously intend to do; we aren’t wondering why we did something uncharacteristic because we are conscious and directed when we act.
None of us is a finished product; we are always on a path of becoming. We should expect and guide ourselves to pursue mastery of our thinking and our doing. That is the point of these simple exercises; they get us started on that path.
If we continue last month’s effort for 5 minutes a day and add this second one this month, we may well begin to experience subtle changes in our capacities. We should try. After all, we are the ones responsible for ourselves.