You Acquire Energy, as Well as Ambition, by Exercising the Will

Sage: I will give you a few exercises for developing the will, and from these you can fashion others to suit your own requirements. In the first place, it is important to realize that any tendency to strain will be detrimental and must be avoided. Such exercises are not only interesting, but stimulating, and if persistently practiced will keep your ambitions from lagging. They will give you new impulses, renewed energy, and determination to be and to something better and greater than anything in the past. Once you are fully conscious of the place and power of your will, in the mental realm, to keep the creative energy at work in formulating your desires, you will realize that it is very susceptible to training, and you will never again be content to live without its constant use, for it would be like living only half a life.

Pupil: May I ask a question tight here? I am a fairly good pianist but dislike to begin my practice, and, although I enjoy it once I have begun, to start is always a struggle. If I were to compel myself to practice on the piano at a certain time every day, would that develop and strengthen my will?

Sage: It would help, but the greatest benefit would be in the direction of making you a better musician. The best way to strengthen your will is to practice exercises for the sole purpose of strengthening the will, always remembering, while taking them, that your effort is for self-training and self- control, to the end that you many realize yourself as a part of the great universal whole. In this way you gain a peaceful centralization, which, though maintained by a conscious act of the will, is the very essence of rest. With a well-developed, trained will, your thoughts will never wanted from the consciousness that "all is life, and all is good, and nature, from her clearly visible surface to her most arcane depths, is a storehouse for good." You have the key to her great treasures, and whatever appeals to you most at any particular time and place, is that mode of the universal Living Spirit with which you are at that moment most in touch. Realizing this, you draw from out the universe streams of vital energy, which make the very act of living a joy, which radiate from you vibrations that can turn aside all injurious suggestions. This is surely a good and sufficient reason for developing the will.