This article by John-Roger was first published in The Movement Newspaper, 1983.

Even though rules and regulations were made for your protection, disciplining yourself to obey them can be difficult. All of us innately feel we should have freedom from restrictions and boundaries. It seems like human nature to question why you should have to do this or that. When you can accept rules as guidelines and reference instead of seeing them as limitations, you can have the freedom you want.

The biggest key in disciplining yourself is the attitude in which it’s done. The magic word for the Golden Age is going to be attitude. Whatever is going on in your life, whatever you are doing, your perception of what is happening will influence your whole beingness. If you can’t have a positive mental attitude about a particular situation, you can use the attitude you do have to correct the situation. For example, if someone is severely bleeding it doesn’t help to sit back and have a positive attitude. They might bleed to death! If you see that the person is bleeding badly and could die, the best thing you can do is get busy and act to remedy what’s going on. In this case, action is called for, not contemplating a particular attitude.

It doesn’t work to sit with a good attitude and not be involved with life. You need to be involved, but not attached. Being detached is something you will probably be working on until you leave this planet. Do not be afraid of entering into life, because through experiencing life you gain awareness and strengthen your soul.

Before participating in life there are two important parameters I suggest you set: Take care of yourself, so you can take care of others; and don’t hurt yourself, so you don’t hurt others. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what is right and what is wrong when dealing with other people, or what will hurt someone else. A simple guideline to use is to ask yourself, “Will this distract that person from God? Will it throw them off their awareness of their own loving heart?” If the answer is “yes,” don’t enter into it.

Use your creative imagination to imagine the consequences of your actions. If there is a doubt or a funny feeling inside you, don’t do it. Talk to the other person and tell them you weren’t sure how to handle a particular situation in regard to them. You can tell them you were thinking of doing this or that, but had a funny feeling about it. The other person may agree that your actions would have hurt them, and they may be glad you didn’t carry them through. At the same time, you’ve let them know how their behavior is affecting others. From that point on it’s their responsibility to correct their actions.

In disciplining yourself to fully participate in your life, first move in and do what needs to be done. If you have to get your car washed or the bookkeeping done, you need to move yourself to do it. If you want to write, but have difficulty disciplining yourself to do it, you need to put the seat of your pants on the seat of the chair, put something in the typewriter and hit the keys. Once the physical action is set in motion, your repository of information and knowledge will open up inside of you. Sometimes it will start flooding through you so fast you may need a tape recorder to take down the information because you don’t type fast enough.

If you work long enough on something, you will master it. The things you want to master become difficult when you don’t put your mind to it and move physically on doing the things you need to do to become proficient.

Wisdom is practice – doing what needs to be done over and over again to get it right. You don’t win until you get to the end, and you can’t get to the end until you endure all things. At that point you’ve gained the strength and conviction of your ability. In gaining that wisdom, you become free from the negativity which binds you.

When disciplining yourself, or when disciplining anyone, it’s important to use love first and above all else. When you berate yourself and judge yourself for your actions, your subconscious mind records these negative feelings, and the negative associations it makes with your behavior produces guilt. You can carry these negative attitudes about yourself throughout your life and end up passing them down to your children who pass it down to their children. At some point you need to break this line of inheritance by gaining the awareness to change your attitude.

The lower self needs to be trained much as a child needs to be trained. You may find yourself making the same “mistakes” over and over again. You need to bring yourself into balance with love. The actions you do that cause you unhappiness in life can be perpetrated by your negative attitude toward yourself. If your attitude toward yourself is loving, your lower self will reflect that love back to you by giving you the energy you need to accomplish what you want in life. You can bring those things that are working against you in your life to completion by your love and understanding.

Through your life experiences you gain understanding of what works for you. Don’t be ashamed of your experiences and label them as “bad” or “wrong,” because they’ve brought you the wisdom you have today.

When you try to be “perfect” you become afraid to participate in life. You reflect that attitude of perfection onto others, and it can be the source of difficulty in your relationships. Many people who have been divorced know what it’s like to look for perfection in a partner.

The perfection in disciplining and in relating must be in the loving. Give yourself room to grow and expand instead of thinking you should be a certain way. Each one comes into this world with certain divine elements that are unique. Learn to appreciate those qualities in yourself and in others. They are what you’re here to express.

By attuning yourself more and more to the love within you, the wisdom and power present within you will automatically appear. If you try to assert your power over someone else, the love and the wisdom is gone. It becomes a negative action, and you lose. The old homily, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” is really quite true. You can catch more of what you want with the sweetness of your beingness than with your negativity.

Some people, however, can mistake kindness for weakness. If someone is causing you emotional disturbance because they’re abusing you in some way, you don’t need to allow it. Almost 100% of the time, however, the tendency is to allow the abuse on whatever level, because you want something in return. When you discipline yourself in your actions you automatically discipline those around you in their treatment of you. Set a deadline for your “return.” If the other person doesn’t deliver (affection, friendship, or whatever), at that particular time, have the wit to see you’re not directing your energy to your own advantage. Let that other person go their way, and let them be free inside you. Love them if they come or go, no matter what they think of you or what they give to you. That’s called unconditional loving.

The first discipline is to yourself. If someone is doing something that annoys you, it may point out the next level you need to work on (a weakness to be strengthened, a hurt to be healed). Use these situations to become more aware of yourself. No matter what environment you find yourself in, direct your attitude toward what needs to be improved. By entering into the discipline of your own beingness, you can be prepared to handle whatever is going on around you.

Accept responsibility for your actions and move into the spiritual flow of your life. Whatever you decide to do, place it under God’s will. Approach your life as though God said to you, “It’s yours; it’s blessed.” Do everything so willingly, lovingly and completely that anyone coming behind you can say, “You did it perfectly.”