Bondage and Discipline

Getting good at nearly anything requires a certain amount of discipline. At the very least, you need the discipline to practice it on a regular basis. You’d expect this for learning violin or karate, but you might not think you’d need it in order to have a peaceful and positive mind.

And perhaps you don’t. But if it’s a struggle for you to maintain a clear, lighthearted, optimistic outlook – if you find yourself often in bondage to a negative mind that has taken the driver’s seat – I would bet that your mind could use some discipline.

Around age 18, I discovered Carlos Castaneda’s books. In case you’re unfamiliar, Castaneda was a doctoral student at UCLA in the 1960s and 70s who studied the use of magical practices and psychedelic herbs by the Yaqui Indians of northern Mexico. After some detective work, and a few meetings with charlatans, he managed to track down the real deal: a secretive shaman named don Juan Matus. Castaneda was bumbling and boastful, and he tried to impress the shaman with his minimal knowledge of these practices.

Don Juan wasn’t fooled, but he kept Castaneda around because he saw in him the makings of a shaman or nagual. In a relationship similar to that of Daniel and Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid (but much stranger), don Juan put Carlos through rigorous trainings of body and mind, and fed him a variety of powerful hallucinogenic plants.

All of this was fascinating and mind-opening for me at the time, but there was one element of the training that, while less bizarre, was actually more poignant. Don Juan was intent on teaching Carlos to discipline his mind, and whenever Carlos became anxious or depressed, the shaman would admonish him to stop indulging in his mind’s melodrama. As my teenage self read the word indulge, it really cut through me. My late teens had been full of plenty of melodrama, and I couldn’t help wondering if don Juan would have considered it indulgence. It certainly hadn’t felt like I had any choice in the matter, but what if I did?

Thus began a lifetime’s journey to understand the difference between ME and my mind. To discover my power . . . and lose sight of it . . . and rediscover it . . . and lose sight of it . . . and rediscover it. And because I decided to go into medicine, I’ve had the opportunity to witness and assist many others through the same exploration. Central to the process is the recognition of choice. As it pertains to discipline, this means being disciplined to remember you have a choice and being disciplined to repeatedly exercise this power.

When you suggest to someone in the throes of anxiety or depression that there is an element of choice in their psychological experience, it’s not uncommon for them to feel guilty, offended, and defensive. Because the implication, of course, is that they’ve been making things bad for themselves – that it’s their fault.

But the notion of fault can only serve to degrade the process. While the recognition of choice – AKA free will – is empowering, fault is disempowering. It leads us to think things like, “Why would I do this to myself? Why can’t I stop it?” The answer to those questions is, respectively, confusion and habit. Responding to feelings of fault (blame) with forgiveness and compassion for oneself will neutralize it, and this, too, requires discipline.

Throughout, the overarching practice of discipline is to pay attention to where your mind is going, and to not let it get away with taking you to dark or fearful places. And Mr. Miyagi, don Juan, and any Zen monk would probably add, practice the discipline of being deliberate about everything you do.

The life of a Zen monk, if fact, can teach us a lot about discipline. Discipline is not necessarily army boot camp or the One-Grape-a-Day Diet. It doesn’t imply restriction or deprivation as much as a continuous application of attention. (Our attention is more scattered than ever, due to the many things with screens in our lives.) Zen monks are, by and large, carefree and light of heart. And this results from prioritizing what is here and now, what is real, what is precious, over the moody demands of a wayward mind. Such a practice actually works best when guided by love – when you simply care too much about yourself to let your consciousness be degraded by mental bondage.

Be well,

Dr. Peter Borten

21 thoughts on “Bondage and Discipline

  1. Thank you so much for this article. It was so helpful to me. It came at time when I needed to read these words. It reminded me for what I had read and learned in DBT.

    1. You’re welcome, Elizabeth!

  2. Dear Dr. Borten,

    Wow, this really spoke to me. It made me think of a few things along my own journey of “choice.” I was hoping you could respond here, or anywhere, about a few things that stirred within me as a result of reading your words.

    1. Do you think there is any virtue in indulging in one’s melodrama? (And, do you ever indulge in your own now? Or is this something we should try to rid ourselves of completely?)

    2. What exactly does it mean to have “forgiveness and compassion for oneself”? I mean, what does it feel like? What are the thought processes or actions that help someone feel as though they are forgiving themselves and/or showing themselves compassion? I could be even more specific: the next time I am disappointed with myself, what kind of new habit(s) should I take on -or, at the very least, practice- to relieve those on-the-verge-of dark feelings and forgive myself and show myself compassion?

    3. I am with you on choice. I’m also really relieved that you acknowledge when suggesting to someone that they have choice, they might shut down. While I know this to be true for myself (I used to shut down and I worked on stopping that), I am finding in the process of my own “growth” that I am losing patience with some people close to me who do not take actions to believe they choice. These people ARE important to me, and I do NOT want to lose patience with them. What do you recommend when I feel this way? I’m not out to change anyone – it’s not my role or desire, but sometimes I feel plagued as a loving friend/family member hearing these same cyclical thoughts/feelings and witnessing the actions. Truthfully, sometimes, I just lose patience.

  3. 👌🏼🙂

    1. Dear Peter,

      I really want to thank you for taking the time to respond here. I have been thinking about your response over the course of the week and I have been trying to form new ways of thinking and feeling – I guess we could call those habits.

      I do find value, as you say, in experiencing pain more for its purpose. I think pain can produce great art (so can happiness, though), insight, empathy for other people, and change. As a writer, I use these experiences to connect with other people. Engaging in pain just for just melodramatic purposes is sapping, and I think sapping for other people, too. At least, this is true for me… I take on other people’s pain quite easily and it will leave me exhausted. I can see why it’s important to veer someone away from their own melodrama.

      As for the other comments, yes, I am getting to that sense of relief. Sometimes I notice I experience the relief more when I am distracted and busy, but I don’t want to create the habit of avoidance. I want to have that relief and peace with myself in quiet moments, too. Or during meditative moments, down times, etc. I am working more on that and will sit, as you say, with where the discomfort is within my body.

      Finally, I appreciate your affirmations and suggestions on how to help others I love. I always check myself before I make suggestions because those often fall on deaf ears. And you’re right, I don’t want to resist their plight and I don’t want to encourage that. I am turning more toward love, patience, and forgiveness, but also boundaries. As I mentioned above, hearing someone go through all of their anguish, sometimes on repeat, can be taxing for me, so I have to prepare for some of these interactions, or at least curb them. Who knows, perhaps in time I will be stronger and more able to not take on the negativity within my own body and mind.

      I definitely plan to check out your book and the other products on your site. I love reading these blogs, too.

      Thank you!

      1. Thanks, Heidi, for your insights and your willingness to go deep and explore bravely & honestly.

  4. Hi Heidi.
    To answer your questions…

    1. Sure, though I might say “value” rather than “virtue.” I can think of at least three such occasions.

    The first case is indulging in human drama as a conscious choice for the purpose of just reveling in the intensity of its unique humannness – while maintaining awareness that you’re playing a role. Like, “Oh, life is SO hard and overwhelming! Maybe I should stab myself in the heart!” What I’m proposing is not as common as the average drama queen/king might wish to believe. Simply knowing you’re being melodramatic isn’t quite the same as experiencing that you’re Awareness itself taking form as this dramatic human. The latter experience involves a lot more freedom than the former.

    The second case is one of deliberately using the intensity of such an experience to shift or expand one’s consciousness – a unique opportunity presented by pain. Again, this isn’t common.

    The third case is deliberately “diving in” to the fullest expression of such feelings for the purpose of healing / letting go. This is more common, and is a practice employed in a number of different healing modalities.

    2. It feels like relief. It feels like the resolution of a certain tension or conflict or pain – the resolution of a state of resistance or nonacceptance. Such states are so, so common that we may not even register the particular constriction that they cause, because it’s such a deeply familiar experience. But it can be best experienced in your body.

    When you experience something you don’t like about yourself, holding that idea in your mind, tune into your body and see how you feel inside. There is a tightness or discomfort somewhere that is a physical expression of this resistance. Feel whatever you feel with total willingness. Invite it to be here and to be experienced with your whole self. Then forgive yourself. Accept yourself EVEN THOUGH you have this thing going on. Accept your WHOLE self, this part included. Imagine your love, which has been excluded from this part of you, entering this place and saturating it, enveloping it, healing it, understanding it.

    Then choose to commit to forgive yourself for this forever. That means having the discipline to recognize whenever you’ve picked that resentment up again and letting it go. And not scolding yourself for it. Just forgiving again and again and again.

    3. They are prone to confusion, as we all are. They have mostly the same childlike mind as they’ve had all along; they’re just in adult-looking bodies. They simply can’t see what’s really good for them. And it can be hard to see people suffer, because you know it doesn’t have to be that way. You know what’s possible for them instead of pain. But your job is only to forgive them. Over and over and over. Your resistance of their plight doesn’t help. In fact, and I hesitate to say this, it may even help perpetuate it. But if you can just accept them. Just love them. Just hold them in light. Just be one facet of their world that doesn’t seem to be attacking them, but is showing them the truth, this is the greatest gift.

    If these kinds of ideas resonate with you, you might like the book my wife and I just wrote, called Rituals for Transformation. http://ritualsfortransformation.com/ Our previous book, The Well Life, is a bit more “explanatory” while this one is more experiential.

    Hope this helps.

  5. I have to admit I was wondering how you were making kink inspiring/motivational when I read that title…. (Not because it can or cannot be, but because I don’t expect to see people talk about it outside of kink websites!) The article was not at all what I expected from the title.

    1. 😉

  6. I am from On^yote’a:ka – People of the Standing Stone, which is one of the Nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. More commonly known in English as Oneida of the Iroquois Confederacy. I can’t say I have know any “shaman” or even heard of them. Maybe it’s a southern tribal thing, but I have many Indigenous friends all over the country, the world for that matter. Always be careful of anyone putting themselves out there as, “Shaman” especially if they are charging money. I feel term has been overused and romanticized. However, we do have healers and people with knowledge of medicines (when I say we, I am referring to only the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois). Our use of medicines or herbs can be ceremonial, therefore spiritual, but also practical. We also don’t believe or use any medicines/herbs that are “mind changers”, which means we don’t use any hallucinogens. This practice using the hallucinogenic peyote flower is common in southern tribes. However, I cannot speak too much of that because it is not my tradition and my knowledge is lacking. I just wanted to say that much on the Shaman story.

    A lot of our teachings have to do with the mind. When we pray or give thanks, we give thanks for all our surroundings for everything that sustains us, starting from the bugs, plants and animals on the ground to the stars, moon and sun in the sky. We thank each element individually and end with, “So be it our minds are as one.” One of our main teachings is to have a good mind. We’ve been taught his and we pray about this, but sometimes it’s hard to practice our teachings in a world with so many distractions and negativity. I appreciate you and your wife’s lessons that pertain to the modern day world we live in. 🙂

  7. Thanks, Margaret.
    When I’m writing to a big, general audience like this, I often have to sacrifice some accuracy for the sake of achieving a connection with a wider range of people. And “shaman” is one of those cases. It’s more a white academic word to generalize a broad group of people and practices that are often poorly understood by outsiders. So, I apologize. The words Castaneda and don Juan used were usually “curandero” – which might be best translated as “healer” – and “nagual,” which I believe usually means a person who can take the form of an animal or call on the energies or characteristics of an animal.

    And yes, in my very limited understanding of Native American customs, I believe you’re correct that the use of psychedelic plants is/was a relatively uncommon practice. As I recollect, don Juan wasn’t just a Yaqui, he was something of a “sorceror,” and these practices went outside the realm of traditional Yaqui spirituality.

    Thanks for sharing about your own tribe’s practices. Those sound very much in line with my own sensibilities.

    Be well,
    Peter

  8. I am almost speechless that this article appeared at the time thar I most needed to see it (…the teacher appears when the student is ready.) Definitely brought tears and a broken heart to the surface for me to open my eyes and admit this has slowly been happening over the past few years. Deep inside I’ve known this is not a norm as I’m normally an easy going, non judgemental, optimistic individual. But if we (I) allow it to do so, the mind can shadow or darken our daily life. The ability to not let lifes hurtful experiences dominate your mind in negativity and mental self destructiveness can be a real battle nowadays. It’s time now to start changing how I see things. Heidi’s questions and your answers are equally as helpful! Thank you so much for your deeply informative, and mindful article.

    1. You’re so welcome, Lorie. You’ll find your way back to the real You.

  9. I don’t seem to understand your article. Does it mean that when we feel anger and rage, we have a choice to give in to it or “walk away from it”? When I feel rage coming or spontaneously happening, and if I don’t let it happen, I feel MORE rage, frustration and pain. If I do give into it, it is a physical relief. I say things to people, in my rage, that I really think about them in my mind, but should not say to them out loud. I have CFS, and it is even more tiring trying to keep the anger from coming out of my mouth. I am grieving over the suicide of my beloved son and am very confused. I feel hate, anger and blame for myself and everyone else.

    1. Hi Jo.
      Yes, you have choices around what to do with negative thoughts and emotions.
      I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “walk away,” but from your explanation of what happens when you don’t let your rage out, it sounds like you mean to suppress, deny, or resist what you’re feeling. That’s not the discipline I’m suggesting, and I’m not surprised that the outcome is unpleasant. The negative energy isn’t resolved by ignoring or denying it. In fact, it often becomes locked inside you. Compartmentalized within a part of you that you probably try to avoid visiting.
      When you give in – expressing your negative emotions outwardly and directing them at other people – you feel relief. But what’s the cost? Damaged relationships? Pollution of the environment you live in? I don’t know the manner in which you express your negative emotions, but it sounds like it’s probably not happening in an altogether responsible way. (That would entail not attacking with your negative emotions, but owning them, recognizing your role in what you’re experiencing, and aiming for reconciliation.)
      The discipline I’m talking about involves a willingness to know yourself, to “turn toward” what you’re experiencing, and to not let your thoughts and emotions run the show. I don’t mean “stuffing” anything or running away; I mean feeling what’s coming up, willingly, without resistance. So you’re not reacting to it and it’s not sapping your energy. Only when you’ve established this level of truth with yourself will you know when it’s possible and appropriate to just smack down redundant negative emotions and tell yourself, “I’m not going to indulge in that garbage,” without it being an act of resistance. Indeed, it’s an act of love – of adherence to the truth – to be able to say, “Nope” to thoughts that would obscure your authentic nature. But you have to have a clear connection to that Nature in order to navigate your inner terrain healthily.
      I can’t imagine the challenge of CFS, much less the pain of the loss of a child. You’re hurting. And I’m not condemning you; nor do I want you to feel worse about yourself because of how you’ve been managing your mind – or letting it run you.
      I just want to help you see there’s a way out of this. You have deep healing ahead of you, but it can only happen when you REALLY want to heal, even more than you want to be right about what you’re angry about. It can only happen when you want to heal more than you want to be right about the all the lies you’ve been telling yourself about yourself.
      Here’s the truth – you’re wrong about yourself. You don’t deserve this illness and tragedy. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just confused. You just lost sight of your Light. You’re innocent. You’re loved. You absolutely are worthy of your own forgiveness, your own acceptance, and your own love.
      Stop attacking yourself, stop attacking others. Relinquish your addiction to conflict. Then grace will come. I promise.

  10. My faith background is Christian. And the parts in the New testament about forgiveness seemed like a mystery to be solved. Should we forgive 7 times…no 7x 70 per Jesus. I have gotten books on this, listened to Joan Borysenko PhD. tapes on the subject of 7×70, I have knitted prayer shawls with a 7×70 pattern…and duh. Your article has solved this for me. Forgiveness is a discipline…and the forgiveness muscles do not become stronger after only 7 workouts. It is continuous. Thank You.

  11. Yes, Amy! You’re welcome. And thanks for sharing. I think your prayer shawls were still a worthy project.
    Forgiveness is the means to salvation. There’s SO much written about it in A Course in Miracles, which might resonate with you. And an article I wrote some years ago (click HERE) goes into it some more – as does the one I link to in the first sentence.
    Be well.

  12. Beautiful!

  13. wonderful article. it is exactly what I needed to read today.
    Thank you

  14. I agree very much with the idea promoted in this post- that self-indulgence is the enemy of discipline, and that discipline is essential to success, and also, that discipline requires practice. However, I was very sad to see the novels of Carlos Castaneda presented uncritically. I’ve honestly been thinking about this since I read this post in January, and wondering if, and how, I should say something.

    Carlos Castaneda’s work has been thoroughly debunked by anthropologists who study the Yaqui people, as well as by non-academic Native Americans. When Castaneda was writing, the Yaqui culture was largely unknown outside of their communities, but since then, anthropologists have discovered that nothing in Castaneda’s books describes Yaqui culture or Yaqui spiritual practices. No Yaqui words appear in the books.

    Castaneda’s work is essentially founded in racism. He used the “magic Indian” trope and the fact that most anthropologists in his time were not interested in poor, Mexican Indians. In the process, he profited from misappropriation of Native spirituaity. He was what we call a “plastic shaman”. Some (non-Native) people say that it doesn’t matter that Castaneda lied, because his books have been helpful or interesting to them. But it matters because cultural misappropriation is racist and racism hurts communities of color. It matters because lies hurt people. It matters because Castaneda used his privilege to misrepresent the Yaqui people, robbing them of the opportunity to represent themselves.

    I hope you understand, Peter, that this isn’t a criticism of you or your work- I’ve taken your Dreaming and Planning course and just signed up for Well Life Coaching certification. I admire you and your work. That’s why I eventually decided to speak up about this, because I don’t believe that you are pro-racism, but only misled as so many other have been.

    1. Hi Priscilla,

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I agree that we’re in a new era of combating racism, and that it’s time to address subtler forms of racism (which isn’t to say that more glaring forms have been conquered).

      I’m wondering if you’ve read Castaneda’s books. Because I think this case looks different from the outside than it does from the inside. I can see why/how someone might find elements of his work racist, though I think it’s important to consider intent in assessing racism.

      The prevailing definitions of racism are something like this one I just looked up: “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” I don’t think that any of those qualities were present in Castaneda’s feelings about indigenous people of Latin America. He was a fairly dark-skinned Peruvian man, meaning he likely had plenty of indigenous blood. That’s not to say people can’t be prejudiced against their own cultures of origin, but there’s just no sense of it in his writings. He writes about tribal people with a tone of respect and awe, while usually characterizing himself as clueless and bumbling.

      Clearly there are inaccuracies in his works. Names, dates, and other details are just wrong. He doesn’t include Yaqui terminology. But I don’t think it’s possible to read these books with a truly open mind and believe that it’s all fabricated.

      Coincidentally (or not), I read your comment while I was in Mexico and I spent time with some Huichol men who specialize in peyote ceremony and art, so I asked them if they had heard of Castaneda & what they thought of him. Yes, they knew of him and his work. And they said, to them, there was no question about it – it was true. The one man I spoke with the most said, “Anthropologists are looking at it from the outside; from the inside, I can tell you, this is not made up.”

      So, I’ve known about the debate almost since the time I first encountered these books, and I don’t believe that it’s been thoroughly debunked. But I agree that it does not accurately represent Yaqui culture. The subtitle of his first book was “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.” Was don Juan (or whatever his actual name was) not really a Yaqui? Was he of Yaqui descent, but not a good representative of Yaquis? Did Castaneda intend to mislead the public about Yaqui culture through his use of the name Yaqui on his book? Was Castaneda himself misled by the shamans he worked with? No one will ever know the answer to these questions.

      Is it cultural appropriation to write books about cultures that one isn’t a part of? That’s a very grey area. This is just one of thousands of books about tribal cultures that have fascinated Americans. Is the bestseller “Born to Run” a case of cultural appropriation because it tells the Tarahumara secret to long distance running? If anything, it’s a less respectful depiction of a tribe than Castaneda’s, and it more clearly aims to sell readers something from a culture that is foreign to the author.

      My understanding of cultural appropriation is that it involves someone from a dominant culture taking elements from a minority culture, especially for their own pleasure or profit, and especially in a way that doesn’t respect its origins. The content of the books, to my recollection, isn’t disrespectful to Yaqui or other indigenous cultures in the least. Was Castaneda a member of the dominant culture, profiting off a minority culture? Kind of, maybe. But he was brown, he was Peruvian, he immersed himself in the world he wrote about (whether or not it was Yaqui) and his ashes were sent to Mexico when he died. He was a Latino more than an American. In the end, he wrote many books, all but the first having no mention of “Yaqui” in the title, and in the end, he probably made a lot of money, but that first book was written as his doctoral thesis, presumably before he had a sense of the profits involved.

      Anyway, the emerging stance on racism is that impact matters more than intent. We can’t know Castaneda’s intent. So, we can only try to measure impact (if we feel that’s a worthwhile exercise), and that’s a hard thing to quantify here. How have the Yaqui people been harmed by this? How have they been robbed of the opportunity to represent themselves? Aren’t most adults who are capable of reading material at this level capable of understanding that a story about one “Yaqui” man doesn’t equate to an assessment of an entire culture?

      I’d love to have an open conversation about this, because healing racism matters to me. But I have recently seen a lot of cases of white people accusing other well-meaning, benevolent white people of racism, and I don’t think it helps the cause. I’m not saying you’re doing this to me, but I think it’s important that we recognize this trend (include how we use the word “racism”) and the impact it has on those we’re trying to reach. It’s gotten to a point where I’ve met several people who’ve always thought of themselves as lovers of foreign cultures who are now worried that if they express this interest in the wrong way they will be labeled as racists. If we alienate these people, how can we expect to make progress with those who are less open-minded?

      Thanks again for the thoughtful discussion. I will try to set aside time in the future to amend the article to explain that Juan Matus may not have been a Yaqui and that, like all stories, this should not be taken to mean that all Yaquis, or perhaps any Yaquis, are like don Juan.

      Be well,
      Peter

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