A disciplined body will offer you freedom of movement  A disciplined mind will offer you freedom from fallacy.  A disciplined spirit will offer you freedom from craving.  

It is discipline, ironically, and not indulgence, that allows you the freedom to truly enjoy life.

There are the poor few among us whose addictions interfere with their day-to-day lives.  Then there are those who mask their addictions enough to go to jobs, go to school, then relapse as soon as they’re home.  And then there are those who have CONQUERED their addictions; this doesn’t mean that they HAVE no addictions, it means that they exercise enough discipline to taste day-to-day fulfillment and that they fully enjoy the indulgences they partake in.

THAT is a rarefied place to be.

Entropy hunts us; day by day, second by second, injecting all our efforts/failures with inevitable transience.  And if we desire to be happy while accomplishing our goals, then we in turn must become hunters; we must use the weapons of time and resource to leave a shining trail of treasures in our wake…

Laughing in joy as they turn to dust.

Many think themselves free of addiction, thinking that the only detrimental addictions are the illegal ones.  They qualify this by touting that they can still work at a job, go to school, or “at least” they are better off than their peers.  Is this enough, though?  In my mind it is not.  While addiction need not be conquered to the point where I’m engaging in ego-stroking feats of endurance, it DOES need to be conquered to the point where I can engage in deep, soul-fulfilling activities every single day.  It needs to be conquered to the point where at the end of each day, I can look at myself in the mirror and say, “Good job.  Let’s shoot for the moon tomorrow as well.”  

THAT’s what I’m aiming for.  

If you are unwilling to revise/change your beliefs, then the truth will pass you by.  

For the truth is that things are always changing.

Guilt is never EVER enough.  It is not redemption, it is not absolution, and it certainly doesn’t make up for past failures.  It can be useful if it spurs one to constructive action, but unless that is the case, it is worse than useless.

IMHO, if you simply condemn those you disagree with, if you simply stay within the confines of a self-affirming tribe—never striving to see that if for a different set of circumstances, you may very well have become that person you condemn—then you condemn yourself to a life that runs in endless circles.  

Evolution may SEEM to be taking place, but more likely than not, you’ll just find yourself running that same, tired old pattern.

Here’s the irony:  To enjoy the indulgences of life, it is necessary to exercise discipline.  Life’s rarefied pleasures are only available to those who can dive fully into them, and also abstain from them at a moment’s notice.

At a certain point, the teachers worth their salt will tell you to figure it out for yourself.  And there’s irony for you:  Because we as students…we want to have everything figured out for us by that one teacher.

The last true lesson, however, isn’t that there’s only one teacher, but an infinity of them.

Supposedly, adversity builds character.  But I’ve seen many people that have gone through harsh times and actually DE-volved.  My theory is that adversity gives us the CHOICE to build character by encouraging us to look at/revise our operating systems.  

So in that sense, adversity is like everything else:  a gift which we can use to build our spirit…or indulge our cravings.