Mark's Pages

March 7, 2004:

Monofocus.

Is it disciplined to structure your life around the thing you most long to achieve? Or should that discipline more properly be termed "obsession"?

Some currents of the Western mystical tradition have a concept called "will". Will is the soul's purpose for which its current incarnation was undertaken. To put it another way, it's your life's specific task. Discipline, in this vision, means to arrange all the minute particulars of your life so that they further your will. Apart from that they have no purpose, and neither do you.

It's ironic that Crowley's slogan, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, is often interpreted in Anglo-Saxon cultures as a libertarian call to hedonism. Its intention is the polar opposite, a principled call to discipline. It's equally ironic that when we encounter discipline of this sort in real life it seems odd. It's as though all the driving forces of our culture undercut it.