Life is Miserable Without the Work

Thoughts on Sticking it Out...

Motivation seems to be something many practitioners struggle with. I often chat about it with readers here and notice it elsewhere. Things are often left half done, half-baked, or forgotten entirely. Certainly, I have been through periods where I struggled.

In Buddhism, sloth and torpor are known as the “third hindrance”. Certainly, when it comes to these kinds of practices or yogas, sloth is nothing new.

I have a few thoughts about this issue that I’d like to share. I only really know one thing for sure - there is no way to force yourself to “be more motivated”.

As an aside, all photos I post here are taken by me - files are available for prints, free to get in contact.

There are many reasons for sloth. Life circumstances or difficult-to-resolve cognitive traps (we discussed last week), for instance. Perhaps arrogance. Certainly, divided attention resulting from novel hyper-stimulation is another, particularly these days. Executive functions are severely impaired in such people, so work that is literally the opposite becomes very difficult. Attention is a very precious thing and easily scattered.

Other impediments may include notions of what I’ve referred to before as the “Esoteric marvel superhero” mindset. The so-called “Superman syndrome” is quite common and gives people all manner of ludicrous and childish expectations regarding these kinds of practices that will always remain unfulfilled. We could also add a dash of “Exotic grinning monkey-faced guru” fantasy mindsets, also, which are so common to those in pain.

Many of these fantasies give rise to a debilitating drive to keep jumping from system to system, or from theory to theory, trying to find the “new thing” that will finally "be it…The sexier and more underground, the better, of course. The more power a product promises simply by being imagined or purchased, the better also.

There is also a fundamental lack of interest in what I now understand to be the most crucial elements of deep work. The non-negotiable first and last steps - that is, personal cognitive work. It’s just not sexy. It should be, I think it is…but it is indeed the last thing people want to do. We all love to hate psychology. Granted, it is largely deserved. Much of it is rubbish, and I’ve been scathing of much of it here on multiple occasions.

But like it or not, hidden in that haystack lie some of the most powerful tools. It is what it is. The best methods therein are, in my view, far superior to almost anything ancient that I’ve come across for targeted, effective fixes. Superior in terms of what we’re up to, anyway.

Despite all this, as a species, we tend to want the climax before we’ve even bothered to unzip our fundamental characters, so we will go for the silliest possible thing before laying our foundations.

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PATIENCE

I think it was about 2 years ago when I decided to redo another intensive cycle of the bio-energetic work. I’ve barely missed a beat in that time. Despite having done the full process, head to tail, once before, along with intensive Zazen and many other types of work for a very long time now, I’ve noticed that it still takes a little time to reach proper critical mass where you really start to get it - this can be hard to deal with, and instinctively unmotivating.

You might have some bursts of progress. Often followed by reversions. Even worse, you have long periods of nothing much at all. You might start to wonder if you’ve been hoodwinked. Anyone who follows financial markets understands these are the worst times. The periods when nothing ever happens. Many people will pretend that something is happening, even though nothing actually is, because nothing happening is so detestable to us. So we all tend to get badly frustrated when “nothing ever happens” - that’s for sure. Anyone who’s been to a meditation trip can confirm that.

This is definitely an issue and leads to giving up. I get it - do you even trust the guys whose techniques you’re using? Is it all an absurd fantasy? I mean, it’s a lot of time you’re dedicating, right? I get it…We all want quick results.

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DOING IT FOR YOURSELF

Another core issue, particularly for young people, is that this is a deeply personal undertaking. Hear me out - I think this is important to understand.

You can’t really, and probably shouldn’t, blabber on about this kind of stuff to your mates. Certainly not work colleagues - don’t do that.

We all know the old occultists always advised keeping things secret. To keep silent. Without a doubt, some power is lost when you blather on. Many nebulous reasons were traditionally given for this - for me, however, the reason to resist this is a deeply psychological one, rather than of a supernatural origin.

For me, it comes down to this: we’re so deeply acculturated to act in performative ways that, at a fundamental level, we can barely comprehend doing something truly for ourselves. As a result, we become psychically and functionally little more than unconscious extensions of others - lived for them, shaped by them.

There are lives that begin and end entirely in performance. Nothing in them was ever truly their own.

The individual is never considered the primal unit in our civilisation, or most of them, regardless of all the talk of atomised individuality or whatever nonsense people rant about.

In a way, this work is squarely aimed at overcoming this.

When most people head to something like Bali for a yoga retreat, it can still be an elaborate form of performance. Retreats, whatever, it’s always there. A painful, elaborate performance piece.

We’re often like roller-skating comedy chimpanzees in tuxedos, handing out canapés for the applause of a condescending crowd. Our whole lives are acts for an audience.

The psycho-physiological work is, in no uncertain terms, demanding that we take off the tux and skates, even if just for a moment, to give ourselves a chance to get over ourselves. To drop the nonsense. To build something for ourselves, of ourselves.

To make matters worse, we often hold a deep aggression toward those we’re unconsciously compelled to perform for; we don’t even like them. Very often, we might realise that we hate them. Yet, there we are, skating around.

I know people whose entire lives are elaborate, intense, and, on some level, hilariously dysfunctional performance art pieces. There’s more or less nothing else to them. And that’s ok, I think, if that’s what they, or you, really want. But it won’t work for this work.

The thing is, for depth work to actually work - really work - you have to do it for yourself. And when you do, you realise: you can’t really show off. And so a problem arises. If no one’s watching me and I’m here all on my Pat Malone, and I don’t know what results I’ll get or if I’ll get them, what is the point of even doing it? I can’t even get laid out of this. How can I find motivation in this?

Doing things reflexively only for others, whether for a parent, a teacher, or a crowd, is itself a kind of knot. A psychic and bio-physical hurdle. It blocks individuation at its root. You can see it bound up in people’s bodies and behaviours. It’s real, it’s there, and it’s almost always constricting.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Taking on an entire corpus of work, which is itself usually incomplete in important ways, is a significant undertaking requiring a lot of study, adjustment, and synthesis (I’m slowly trying to make that a bit easier for a lot of you here as I put the pieces together and test things).

Looking back, I realise all of it requires a type of steady maturity. Which is why, in my youth in particular, I consistently failed to stick to any such course of action. I eventually got over this, though some people I know never did.

If you lack a mature outlook (as I did), you really need someone who has been through it to guide you and keep you in line. I never had this, so I wasted tonnes of time at crucial points.

These days, there isn’t really anyone left. Maybe a few people here and there. I think even if there were more teachers left, no one is good at taking orders anymore anyway.

By all accounts, they weren’t before. Many teachers have told me that, as a rule, most people are not at all open to necessary criticism. This path requires quite harsh criticism. In an abstract way, it shouldn’t matter because you’re trying to get rid of the worst parts of the self.

Nevertheless, the animal as we are tends to be quite haughty and self-assured, even when seeking the advice of someone else for the specific purpose of dismantling the processes being run by the self. So very little progress is made.

Any real bio-energetic of bio-physical work exerts peculiar, even bizarre, psychic and psychological strains that some can handle better than others. It has a tendency to drive a certain kind of person to anxiety, or even a little bit nuts. We all lose it a bit, some quite badly.

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WHERE TO FIND MOTIVATION

It’s not all bad news, however…none of these things are deal breakers; they’re just worth keeping in mind. Because you’ll likely come up against them.

So in spite of the difficulties that might lead one to not consistently work, there is still the greatest motivator of all, one that cannot be denied:

The results of the work itself.

Such results are unmistakable. Once you have a taste of them, there’s really no going back to the rather paltry, cradle-to-grave, all-too-human mode of feeling, thinking and being.

I think anyone struggling to maintain a consistent, single-pointed practice focus should keep this in mind. The results are worth it, and the default way of living, i.e. how most humans exist by mere happenstance, becomes utterly intolerable.

This will become increasingly apparent as you continue to gain personal power. More insight and more experience. You will note things like how differently your body starts to feel, how silly obsessing over supplements was when its not a “molecular” matter - all these guys ranting on about “vitality” and Nietzsche’s “great health”, etc., as if it’s some concept, or going to the gym or taking a Ray Peat supplement regimen - take it from me, they have no fucking idea what it all really means. You could, however, if you just stick to it.

In this way, somewhere along the line, motivation will cease to be an issue. You’ll begin to understand what all these mystics and others were talking about - how the normal human mode of being is rubbish, and there’s only one way out.

Well, there are two…anyway…The skull smiles at the banquet.

Despite the quite clear directions we’ve received, we tend to still reflexively have trouble listening. We compulsively reach for everything outside ourselves to fix what’s broken within. “I’m a this” “I’m a that” “It’s this diet that’s the issue” - theories, reading, philosophies, politics - whatever it is. I’m more certain than ever that it’s not content, education, or theory that ails us.

As Niebuhr said, we’re not fully human; we’re stuck somewhere between ape and human being...

Although I did say you’re doing it for yourself, there’s something to the idea that you’re doing it for a greater purpose, also. A stream in which your own place is difficult to grasp. How that is, may not be obvious. This work might also be an attempt to place your own brick in that bridge between the two; it operates on a level that those other types of comprehending can’t begin to touch. Sometimes, in the midst of discomfort, it’s worth also giving a little bit of thought to this.

So, if you’re struggling to stay consistent, I can guarantee you that it gets inconceivably better. You won’t recognise yourself in two years’ time if you do it all right, with focus and attention to detail. That you drop the silly fantasies and practice-hopping, take something seriously and stick to hard facts about yourself as you are.

Next time you desire to chimp out, doom scroll, be deceptive to yourself or others for no reason, whatever else, run a session of whatever style you use and just keep in mind at the end that “this is the result”, as you notice that whatever was a problem before, has simply disappeared - this is you exerting control over your default, happenstance human state.

Then consider for a moment how the world can open up for you if you get good at it.

The Work is the motivation. There is no other way. I think you just keep going, prove it to yourself. Get a taste of what’s possible. Once you do, there’s no going back.