The spirit sits below the mind, which sits below the body. Body, Mind, Spirit(BMS). When you are pursuing mastery in body or mind for a long duration in a session, you may begin to experience diminished returns pertaining to your drive to progress down the path.
Usually, when you begin to experience diminished returns you should rest, or pivot to a different domain.
If you’ve spent four hours in a mental pursuit and you are losing focus, you should train the body to rest the mind. However, we must be diligent to fight against the urge to stop or quit so we can continue to train and build resilience against defeat to keep us on the path for longer, as we know the path is where we find fulfillment through attainment(FTA) and a wanderer should spend as much time as he can on the path.
With that said, a 20-minute walk could refresh your mind to squeeze out an extra couple of hours of productivity. Some may need to fully pivot to a different domain, and others may need a full workout to exhaust the body completely in order to continue pursuing progress in the domain of mind.
One obvious sign of burnout in a particular domain is when you make mistakes you normally would not make.
In a perfect world of discipline, health, and focus, we could wake up and spend 12 hours on the path pursuing our masteries with unwavering focus, but we often don’t have the ability to do this even with a dedication to discipline.
Using your spirit domain to “oil” the blades of body and mind can extend the training you can perform in the domains of body and mind, but at some point more oil will not work and you need to rest the domain you are pursuing.
If mind or body domains are struggling to perform, that usually implies that the body or mind needs rest, or the spirit has been drained, but not always.
Spirit work
Spirit work, pursuits of mastery in spirit whether that come from meditation, religion, breathwork, friendship, love, family time, affirmations, parties, walking, surfing, etc. increase your drive for pursuing attainment on the path.
Remember that many masteries are inherent. You do not need to designate “friendship” or “husband” as a spirit mastery, like you do not need to designate “posture” for a body mastery, it is an inherent mastery.
Spirit work is like adding drops of oil to the ‘swords’ of body and mind. If you are trying to study for long periods, doing breathwork or meditation in small increments, like for 2 minutes in an hour, is like adding a little bit of oil to your mind to make it better. The same goes with body.
Spirit oil should be infused with work in the domains of body and mind by adding drops of spirit oil along the way to breaking your blades down to make them more durable during your pursuits. This can be as easy as thinking about something that heats the spirit up while taking a rest from basketball, or school work like–why are we doing what we are doing?
Because I want to or because I love it are always excellent responses.
Visualizing what you desire from your pursuits of mastery is spirit oil.
You need to increase spirit while resting the domain that is being used. This is a precarious balance between stoking your spirit enough to get back on the path, but not enough where it takes you off the path.
Resting off the path
The idea is to use your mind and body blades so thoroughly that by the end of your week, your rest is earned because your tools are damaged and the rest repairs your tools. This cycle is The Way.
Pleasure is not meant to be pursued because it cannot be mastered so it is impossible to provide fulfillment. This is why we prescribe allowing yourself pleasures off the path for rest and relaxation, which makes your pleasures feel even greater because they are earned rewards, instead of pursuits that have no destination or ability to develop the individual through the pursuit of mastery and the path.
When you are off the path, you must ensure that your rest does not sabotage your pathwork done previously, or the pathwork ahead of you.
If you are an alcoholic, you should not drink off the path because it will result in the destruction of your ability to progress down the path.
The siren calls the wanderer off the path and into the rocks. You mustn’t listen.
The siren calls you away from the path while the muse calls you toward it.
Some cake could be a reward for training hard throughout the week, but if it leads to two eating the whole cake while binging movies AND candy, you have lost because you turned your back on the path.
Whenever we step off the path we must keep the path in mind and get back to it quickly.
Spirit Oil Drops
When focus or drive(desire for progress to mastery) decline in the domains of body or mind, you can “sharpen” the domains of body and mind by adding spirit oil to the process happening in either domain. This is predicated on having a strong spirit.
If you have a weak body, mind, and spirit, you must rest. Target exhaustion in the domains of Body and Mind before you step off that path. You don’t target spirit exhaustion, it’s something that happens.
Be wary of continuing your pursuits if your spirit is exhausted as you lose effectiveness in adding spirit oil to your other pursuits.
Understand that you also build your spirit via the pursuit of your masteries.
Carry your oil and use it.
The way of the samurai:
