One way to make progress
Your efforts are like water filling a basin.
When the water gets deep enough, it will flow in some direction. An awful lot of effort seems to go nowhere, but it helps to fill the basin. (Avatar®) Masters who have been around for awhile have all heard the phrase "whacking at the beast." It means to keep making progress doing whatever you can do.
A good explanation of whacking at the beast is discovered by putting together a large jigsaw puzzle. There are so many different-colored pieces that the idea of completing the puzzle is quite overwhelming, so you just concentrate on what you can do.
Here are two yellow pieces that fit together. Here is an upper corner - you place that where it will eventually fit. You start collecting the pieces of sky into a pile. There is another yellow piece. And you just keep whacking at the beast.
Eventually, just by doing whatever you can do, the puzzle is completed.
If you tried to do the same puzzle by always looking for a specific piece, instead of just doing whatever you can do, it would take much longer and you'd probably succumb to overwhelm before the puzzle was done. So whacking at the beast has this element of doing whatever it is that you can do in the moment.
from The Avatar Master's Handbook by Harry Palmer
Awaken Your Will now with this practice!
Objective: To decrease mind drift, daydreaming, self-criticism and indoctrinated thinking, by awakening the will
Expected Result: Calming, perceptual changes, increased awareness
Instructions: Take a walk, notice something, and decide how you would describe it.
Move on to something else and decide how you would describe it. Continue the exercise for 20-30 minutes. If at any time you become aware of being distracted, just return to the exercise without any self-criticism.
from Determination: Basic Will Mini-Course
Simple. Straightforward. Effective
Please log in or sign up to comment.