Brian Johnson (Heroic +1) presents a concise meditation on self-mastery and habit control. Using a quoted passage from Yogananda's How to Be a Success as the anchor, he argues that everyday habits, not passing thoughts or ideas, determine freedom; mastery of will is the path to true (even eternal) freedom. He draws parallels to Stoicism (Epictetus via A.A. Long), Buddhism (a Dhammapada couplet), and a modern metaphor from Alan Cohen to emphasize gradual moral formation and the iterative nature of purification. The piece closes with a practical exhortation: practice self-command moment-to-moment to cultivate freedom.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Not too long ago we spent a decent amount of time hanging out with Yogananda. Check out our collection of plus ones and notes on all of his goodness. They're linked in this plus one. Today I want to go back to some wisdom from his great little book, how to Be a Success, where Yogananda tells us about the fact that we need to control our habits if we want to be free. Here's how he puts it, and I quote, until you are a master of yourself, able to command yourself to do the things that you should do but may not want to do, you are not a free soul. This freedom is not a small thing to acquire. In that freedom lies the germ of eternal freedom. He continues by saying, it is not your passing thoughts or brilliant ideas, but your everyday habits that control your life. Habits of thought are mental magnets. They draw to themselves specific objects relative to the quality of their magnetism. Material habits attract material things. And he says bad habits are temporary misery making grafts upon the soul. The law of nature is that if you are a little less evil than good, your evil will be taken away by the greater power of good. And if you have a little less good than evil, your goodness will gradually be absorbed by other greater numbers of evil tendencies. Now that's another one of those passages so densely packed with wisdom, we could spend a weekend unpacking it and still just be getting started. But alas, my job is to deliver more wisdom in less time. So let's quickly connect that wisdom from a Yogi to to Stoicism and Buddhism and modern self help, then send you on your way to practice first the Stoics. As you know, if you've been following along, Stoicism is my preferred flavor of ancient wisdom. We now have notes on dozens of my favorite books on the subject. We can pretty much go to any of them to make the parallel wisdom point. But let's go with A.A. long's great book on Epictetus wisdom called how to Be Free. Here's what Long has to say about freedom, and I quote, the chief constraint on personal freedom in ancient Greece and Rome was what Epictetus knew firsthand, the social practice and indignity of slavery. It was slavery, the condition of being literally owned and made to serve at another's behest, that gave ancient freedom its intensely positive value. Emotional charge. Slaves bodily movements during their waking lives were strictly constrained by their master's wishes and by the menial functions they were required to perform. But slaves like everyone else had, minds, and minds as well as bodies, are subject to freedom and constraint. You can be externally free and internally a slave, controlled by psychological masters in the form of disabling desires and passions and cravings. Conversely, you could be outwardly obstructed or even in literal bondage, but internally free from frustration and disharmony. So free, in fact, that you found yourself in charge of your own well being, lacking little or nothing, that you could not provide for yourself. The latter, in essence, is the freedom that Epictetus, the ancient Stoic philosopher, made the central theme of his teaching true Freedom. It does a heroic Stoic yogi's mind, body and soul good. Now for the parallel Buddhist wisdom in the Dhammapada Buddha echoes the second part of this wisdom when he tells us, little by little a person becomes evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water, and little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water. And by the way, Epictetus echoes that wisdom as well when he tells us, no great thing is created suddenly any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Now let's have fun with a modern metaphor from Alan Cohen's Spirit Means Business. He tells us, and I quote, if you open a lid of a washing machine during the agitation cycle, you find gray, smelly water full of the dirt and residue from the clothing you are washing. If you didn't understand how the washing machine works, you would think something had gone terribly wrong. The process is supposed to clean the clothes and make them look and smell nicer, and now they appear worse. But if you know that the agitation process is part of the greater picture and the clothes will be cleaner when the dirt is washed away in the next cycle, you can relax and know that everything is working out as it should. Likewise, when people or events show up that agitate you, reframe the situation such that the grimy stuff has been drawn to the surface solely for the purpose of purging what has been undermining you, and the entire process will ultimately improve your situation. End quote. Little by little we become good, just as a water pot becomes filled with water and a washer machine cleans our clothes, but only if we exercise our power of will to create true freedom moment to moment to moment. Let's master ourselves, create true freedom, and get a little purer. Today.
