The battle within the self is between apathy and purpose. Apathy kills purpose. Purpose kills apathy. Apathy is a terrible and poor companion for life, business or romance.
Why anyone would choose it deliberately is ludicrous. It is only when we seek to avoid effort that we find reasons to justify apathy’s apparent control over us. It is mediocre at making excuses, but even less satisfactory at creating inspiration or meaning. There is not much going for it really. Its only power lies in the fact that we would deceive ourselves into believing it has power at all. In actual fact purpose and discipline have nothing to do with the existence of apathy at all. Real discipline, purpose and drive moves forward regardless of obstacles.
Walking the easy path is not in itself disempowering. It is the reason for the choice that decides whether we have power or not. If we are choosing the easy path because we cannot face the feeling of putting in the effort, then we are playing a self-perpetuating game of running from effort and seeking ease. This patterning will take us from putting in whatever it takes to find meaning and purpose and replace it with the game of always seeking what requires the least effort.
A mind that gives in to its fear of expending effort will not move, stretch or expand. All movement, stretching and expansion takes too much effort for it, and quite frankly the apathetic mind is quite all right where it is thank you very much. What results is a mind that is clouded, confused and slow to make connections. Trying to work with an apathetic mind is futile. What needs to be installed is a new managing director. One of those hotshot upstarts that knows all the lingo and has productivity as number one. The mind of the director is about results – period. If straight out firing the apathetic mind doesn’t work, if cajoling and begging it to get in line fails, then the director consciousness must look to see what will work.
The fact is, in creating a managing director mind in spite of the apathetic mind, consciousness as a whole has already expanded. It’s a sneaky trick to play on the apathetic mind, but before it knows it energy has already been funneled into creating the director. Where before it seemed like there was only one mind to make choices, now there are at least two. By choosing the managing director every time, the apathetic mind doesn’t get a chance to run the show. This actually suits it just fine because it has no energy to run shows anyhow.
Apathy destroys all purpose except that of apathy itself. We need to avoid influences that would try to sell apathy to us, for in doing so we sell our own mastery and self-control. It may seem laughable that anyone would willingly choose apathy over mastery, but reality has and is illustrating this very fact. Our civilization has embraced a fast food “everything is too much effort” culture and this attitude is literally destroying our ability to connect to purpose and meaning. This is a fact. Without the ability to move our mind, to exert effort and discipline for creating clarity and control, we have no means to communicate or explore deeper meaning. We need to enter the battle, summon our resources and destroy the form that is apathy. Its control is destroyed when we no longer allow its presence to dictate our actions. Its form is destroyed when we move from a mind that chooses self-discipline and control. We need to remember that if we do not choose self-discipline and control over ourselves, then something else will.
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