Common steps and sub-activities
Follow dont lead
This requires you to give in to someone else when they tell you to do something. You serve and do not question. You learn how to follow as opposed to lead.
But a word of warning.
Finding someone to trust enough to do this is not at all easy, this is a dangerous technique for that reason. What if they are not what they seem or dishonest or devious? Great care is needed here. It is often better to simply give in to those you love, like your dog or the goldfish. People who have a vested interest in your safety and well-being and who sink with your ship if they let you down.
It is an act against our desires, because it replaces what we want to do by what they want to do. But it is principally an act against the ego and by being an act against the ego it helps in defeating it so that the composer can get a look in.
It is a complementary technique to that of Reducing desires, because although we may have taken great pains to pare our objectives down, so that we are only left with a few, these may become obsessions and their strength alone may then act as a block. This technique helps in keeping them at the level of a background possibility rather than an obsessive want.
It is worth adding that occasionally in those with high egos, the reduction in the number of desires merely serves to strengthen the ones that are left, so this technique then becomes an essential step.
This technique is one frequently found in the armoury of gurus and masters as well as religious institutions.
It is there in the I Ching as SUI.
In the Lord's prayer there is a sentence 'Thy will be done'. Subjugation of the will requires there to be exactly the same level of obedience – the guru's or master’s will is also always done, as he acts as a sort of in-between, teaching the person how to be submissive.
For example:
The Chasm of Fire – Irina Tweedie
'Give me humility and your blessing and I will go anywhere'
'Why ask for humility? Why do you want to limit yourself? It is an obstacle between us.
If the Beloved would ask you 'become naked before me' and you were to say 'yes but only for an hour,
then it is a limitation, is it not?
You put conditions.
No such ideas should remain in your mind'
The Chasm of Fire – Irina Tweedie
If you obey implicitly, respect absolutely, are faithful, you are bound to succeed. That is why you will have to go.
Who remains with me all the time does not progress; not those who are put on the Path you have to take.
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Observations
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- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 07
- Sangomas, Shamans and New Age healing in South Africa - 04 Agnieszka Podolecka - The training and the initiation of a sangoma
- Tarot - 05 Minor Arcana - 05s Adversity [purification]
- Tarot - 06 Minor Arcana - 04s Power and Desire [Intellect]
- The Means of achieving spiritual experience - Shaivism – 07 The methods of the ‘Bhakta’