![]() ![]() Discipline is taking responsibility, then training and directing one's energies through positive Spiritual Principles. Indeed, discipline goes against our instinctual side, which mostly wants to be fed well, taken care of, waited on, and provided with pleasure, comfort, and gratification. We may feel like discipline will take something from us or cheat us out of something. Our self-centeredness can make us distrustful of discipline. Hell, I don't even know if I like them." That admission was his first step in slowing down enough to start to recover from chaos.ĭiscipline enables us to create and stay within a structure, to direct our energies toward specific goals, and to stay connected to positive Spiritual Principles. I love them, but if I stop and think about it, I know nothing of who they are-what their favorite colors are, what brings them joy, or even if they like me. I can't tell you one person I'm really close to, including my wife and three children. When a client who had lived a life of chaos first came to me, he said, "For over fifty years, I've been getting up early each day, running off, and chasing things just for the sake of chasing them. ![]() Eventually, our energies run down, the whirling slows, and the fears, pains, and hollowness we have been trying to avoid are right in front of us. Keeping busy can become a goal in itself, rather than a way to harness our energies in service of others and positive Spiritual Principles.īut a life of chaos cannot be sustained indefinitely. The noise of chaos often drowns out our internal voices of meaning and connection. People who fear responsibility sometimes use a lifestyle of chaos to help them avoid responsibility-and to block out their fear of it. We can use its ongoing sense of urgency-the strong desire to run after and acquire the next thing-to avoid the responsibilities of finding meaning and putting together a life. But chaos makes it hard to put a coherent life together, for our energies never coalesce to push us in a purposeful, disciplined direction.Ĭhaos can be very seductive. In a life ruled by chaos, busy-ness means everything. In everyday life, however, chaos is that groundless, rudderless state that results from endlessly (and mindlessly) chasing after things-sensations, thrills, experiences, objects, people, prestige, power, or even comfort. In Greek mythology, Chaos was the dark abyss from which everything came-a beginning point, not a place of refuge. In this excerpt, we explore the tension between chaos and discipline. In Finding Your Moral Compass: Transformative Principles to Guide You in Recovery and Life, Nakken offers tools we can use to both discover our options and make moral choices. Finding our way in each situation we encounter requires knowing where we are in relation to these poles and choosing where to invest our energy. While right and wrong are sometimes clearly defined, much of the time we must wrestle with different perspectives and pressures in order to do the next right thing. Episode 43 - AugBetween Chaos and Discipline: A Path to SerenityĬraig Nakken knows that we live day-to-day in the tension between opposing impulses or poles, which he calls Spiritual Principles. ![]()
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