by Joop van Dam
The second exercise - Controlling the will
The aim of the second exercise is that we learn to manage the impulses of our own will. Putting it in a different way, the purpose of this exercise is to strengthen our striving towards taking the initiative ourselves in what we do. Just as our thinking can be strongly directed from the outside by things we happen to hear or see, or by memories which spontaneously surface, to a large extent our actions form an automatic response to inner or outer stimuli.
Often you can be very busy dealing with questions you have been asked by others, by events you became involved in and to which you must respond, by your diary which rules your way through the day and the week, just to mention a few. So many things we do without these originating from our initiative. A lot of our actions are reactions and not actions we have undertaken ourselves. There are situations where it calls for willpower to exercise restraint, consciously to decide against doing something. Having finished reading the newspaper we could for instance decide very consciously against watching the television news. Conversely it can take a lot of effort to decide to actually do something for which we have to overcome some resistance, like going to a difficult meeting. In both cases we have been consciously working to control and guide our will from the inside.
There is an exercise which (like the previous one set out in Rudolf Steiner’s own words at the end) requires that you decide at the start of the day or the previous evening to do something at a given time. What type of action can this be? Rudolf Steiner talks here of an ‘insignificant’ action. What he means by this is that the less the reason for taking the action comes from the outside, the harder it is to get into motion. It concerns an action that originates from your own initiative. There is no need for the action to have an external effect, but that does not mean that the action must be meaningless – a misunderstanding that often comes with this exercise. On the contrary, because of the thoughts you have when performing the action, the action can become exceptionally meaningful. For instance, you can have the intention to cross your arms at ten past three – in itself a meaningless action – inspired by the thought that such a crossing motion causes you to be wide awake. In a lecture Rudolf Steiner offered the example of somebody who at a given time each day took seven steps forward and seven steps back again, thereby imagining evolution and involution. Also here it is the thought that gives meaning to the action.
In practice it shows that many people have difficulty in finding a suitable insignificant action. Rudolf Steiner once gave the following example of this exercise: watering the plants at a given time of the day. Soon after this, when he visited a house where several anthroposophists lived, he saw people actively involved in watering plants at given times. He was disappointed that his example had been carried out to the exactly as he had given it and that people had not been able to come up with their own action. With this exercise it is important that you find your own way as it has to do with using your own initiative.
You can take the word action in a strict way; something you carry out by using your hands. The point is that you must do something where you will need your limbs to be able to carry out the action. Also if you were to plan on reading three lines from a certain book at a given time, we are talking about an action, because you have to take up the book and open it to be able to read the lines you have chosen. By means of the action you take, you deliberately have your sense of self penetrate your body, thus having it carry out a personal command and that has an ‘incarnating’ effect. (The other exercises are also aimed at your doing something earthy. When doing the thinking exercises you take basic utensils as your starting point. Also the third, fourth and fifth exercise are woven into daily life. Life itself offers the material that enables you to carry out these exercises).
What then is the meaning of fixing a particular point in time for doing the exercise? The significance of this is exercising restraint. You have to hold back from carrying out the action until the time is there. Holding off makes our consciousness grow stronger, like water held back by a door in a lock is ever climbing to a higher level. Generally speaking, when we carry out an action in the course of the process of the will, there is a drop in our level of consciousness. You submerge if it were, in the life of the will. The will is ’dormant’ as Rudolf Steiner expresses. Only after having completed an action can you judge whether what you did was good.). By setting a point in time for this exercise when you have to carry out the action, you have to keep the light of your consciousness burning until the moment the action is there. Having to wait is of crucial importance in the exercise to control the will. When the time is there, in full consciousness you can be present and proceed with all your dedication in the execution of the action. It is as if you make an ’act ‘of it. This also helps overcome the resistance our ordinary consciousness may show because on the face of it, it concerns insignificant actions.
The difficulties that present themselves while doing the various exercises are related to people’s constitution. Some people have a remarkable talent for the will exercise. For others this means a hard task. Whatever they do, they do not manage to think of their planned action at the right moment. When that happens to you, do not make it too hard for yourself and particularly in the beginning use a shortcut. Doing inner exercises is just like physical training. When you overextend yourself the first day, you thereby put yourself out of action for quite a while because you have to recover from the muscle damage you have inflicted. It is the same with the inner will. By setting an objective that is too ambitious, your will gets frustrated or even becomes lame. For starters you can better choose something that is not too hard whereby you give yourself a fair chance that you will succeed. Many people who fail to do the exercise in the afternoon succeed when they set a time in the morning. What you can also do is to choose a time which coincides with a transitional moment, like the beginning or the end of a break, prior to or after dinner, getting on the train on the way home, things like that. Only when that works can you begin to choose points in time that go without external aids to alert you, for instance in the middle of a lesson, or while you are in a meeting. In such a situation it is helpful if you imagine the specific point in time ahead of time and in what type of a situation that could be. Moreover, think of making some pre-arrangements to facilitate carrying out the action. Like making sure the booklet in which you want to write something is within hand reach.
Experience shows that succeeding in the exercise is something enjoyable. At the same time our physical vitality gets stronger. If the exercise does not succeed and you forget the time you have set time and time again, the will may get paralyzed. In that case it is recommended that you carry out the action anyway, even though it is after the fact, thus using your will anyway. As time goes on, you will see that you will get ever closer to the point in time you want. Moreover, you finish what you have planned to do and finishing something is energy giving. Joop den Uyl was once asked where he found the strength to do everything that went with the office he held. “My energy comes to me from the things I finish”, he replied.
The will exercise is an appointment you make with yourself. In general it is much easier to keep appointments with others. As much as you keep appointments with others out of respect for them, you can find the motivation to keep your appointment with yourself by experiencing that your will can work independently from the outside world. When that starts to happen, the will has started to become autonomous.
The second exercise - Controlling the will
The aim of the second exercise is that we learn to manage the impulses of our own will. Putting it in a different way, the purpose of this exercise is to strengthen our striving towards taking the initiative ourselves in what we do. Just as our thinking can be strongly directed from the outside by things we happen to hear or see, or by memories which spontaneously surface, to a large extent our actions form an automatic response to inner or outer stimuli.
Often you can be very busy dealing with questions you have been asked by others, by events you became involved in and to which you must respond, by your diary which rules your way through the day and the week, just to mention a few. So many things we do without these originating from our initiative. A lot of our actions are reactions and not actions we have undertaken ourselves. There are situations where it calls for willpower to exercise restraint, consciously to decide against doing something. Having finished reading the newspaper we could for instance decide very consciously against watching the television news. Conversely it can take a lot of effort to decide to actually do something for which we have to overcome some resistance, like going to a difficult meeting. In both cases we have been consciously working to control and guide our will from the inside.
There is an exercise which (like the previous one set out in Rudolf Steiner’s own words at the end) requires that you decide at the start of the day or the previous evening to do something at a given time. What type of action can this be? Rudolf Steiner talks here of an ‘insignificant’ action. What he means by this is that the less the reason for taking the action comes from the outside, the harder it is to get into motion. It concerns an action that originates from your own initiative. There is no need for the action to have an external effect, but that does not mean that the action must be meaningless – a misunderstanding that often comes with this exercise. On the contrary, because of the thoughts you have when performing the action, the action can become exceptionally meaningful. For instance, you can have the intention to cross your arms at ten past three – in itself a meaningless action – inspired by the thought that such a crossing motion causes you to be wide awake. In a lecture Rudolf Steiner offered the example of somebody who at a given time each day took seven steps forward and seven steps back again, thereby imagining evolution and involution. Also here it is the thought that gives meaning to the action.
In practice it shows that many people have difficulty in finding a suitable insignificant action. Rudolf Steiner once gave the following example of this exercise: watering the plants at a given time of the day. Soon after this, when he visited a house where several anthroposophists lived, he saw people actively involved in watering plants at given times. He was disappointed that his example had been carried out to the exactly as he had given it and that people had not been able to come up with their own action. With this exercise it is important that you find your own way as it has to do with using your own initiative.
You can take the word action in a strict way; something you carry out by using your hands. The point is that you must do something where you will need your limbs to be able to carry out the action. Also if you were to plan on reading three lines from a certain book at a given time, we are talking about an action, because you have to take up the book and open it to be able to read the lines you have chosen. By means of the action you take, you deliberately have your sense of self penetrate your body, thus having it carry out a personal command and that has an ‘incarnating’ effect. (The other exercises are also aimed at your doing something earthy. When doing the thinking exercises you take basic utensils as your starting point. Also the third, fourth and fifth exercise are woven into daily life. Life itself offers the material that enables you to carry out these exercises).
What then is the meaning of fixing a particular point in time for doing the exercise? The significance of this is exercising restraint. You have to hold back from carrying out the action until the time is there. Holding off makes our consciousness grow stronger, like water held back by a door in a lock is ever climbing to a higher level. Generally speaking, when we carry out an action in the course of the process of the will, there is a drop in our level of consciousness. You submerge if it were, in the life of the will. The will is ’dormant’ as Rudolf Steiner expresses. Only after having completed an action can you judge whether what you did was good.). By setting a point in time for this exercise when you have to carry out the action, you have to keep the light of your consciousness burning until the moment the action is there. Having to wait is of crucial importance in the exercise to control the will. When the time is there, in full consciousness you can be present and proceed with all your dedication in the execution of the action. It is as if you make an ’act ‘of it. This also helps overcome the resistance our ordinary consciousness may show because on the face of it, it concerns insignificant actions.
The difficulties that present themselves while doing the various exercises are related to people’s constitution. Some people have a remarkable talent for the will exercise. For others this means a hard task. Whatever they do, they do not manage to think of their planned action at the right moment. When that happens to you, do not make it too hard for yourself and particularly in the beginning use a shortcut. Doing inner exercises is just like physical training. When you overextend yourself the first day, you thereby put yourself out of action for quite a while because you have to recover from the muscle damage you have inflicted. It is the same with the inner will. By setting an objective that is too ambitious, your will gets frustrated or even becomes lame. For starters you can better choose something that is not too hard whereby you give yourself a fair chance that you will succeed. Many people who fail to do the exercise in the afternoon succeed when they set a time in the morning. What you can also do is to choose a time which coincides with a transitional moment, like the beginning or the end of a break, prior to or after dinner, getting on the train on the way home, things like that. Only when that works can you begin to choose points in time that go without external aids to alert you, for instance in the middle of a lesson, or while you are in a meeting. In such a situation it is helpful if you imagine the specific point in time ahead of time and in what type of a situation that could be. Moreover, think of making some pre-arrangements to facilitate carrying out the action. Like making sure the booklet in which you want to write something is within hand reach.
Experience shows that succeeding in the exercise is something enjoyable. At the same time our physical vitality gets stronger. If the exercise does not succeed and you forget the time you have set time and time again, the will may get paralyzed. In that case it is recommended that you carry out the action anyway, even though it is after the fact, thus using your will anyway. As time goes on, you will see that you will get ever closer to the point in time you want. Moreover, you finish what you have planned to do and finishing something is energy giving. Joop den Uyl was once asked where he found the strength to do everything that went with the office he held. “My energy comes to me from the things I finish”, he replied.
The will exercise is an appointment you make with yourself. In general it is much easier to keep appointments with others. As much as you keep appointments with others out of respect for them, you can find the motivation to keep your appointment with yourself by experiencing that your will can work independently from the outside world. When that starts to happen, the will has started to become autonomous.
