Mental Discipline
By art
The story of my mental discipline is the story of my deepening practice within ADF. When I began the Dedicant’s Path, five months of mental discipline seemed like a long time to me – so it was one of the requirements I focused on first. I journaled regularly for about 10 months, and continued the devotionals afterwards. Nearly eight months of journaling, complete with typos, can be found in the Appendix (not included here). Afterward, I will discuss my time since then.
I chose two aspects to begin my mental discipline practices: counted breathing and daily devotionals. I chose these aspects because the former seemed to be the original ADF standard, while the latter allowed me to engage with ADF ritual. I will start by discussing my experiences with counted breathing, then examine my use of daily devotionals. Afterward I will discuss notable items since. Though these items inter-relate, in that I would frequently begin with counted breathing before a daily devotional, their effects tended to be in different domains.
Due to my freshness to the Dedicant Path, I did not understand from the manual that the counted breathing was intended to produce a “no-mind” state in which the count would fade away. Therefore, whenever I slipped into such a state I forced myself to keep counting.
Still, I found that extended counted breathing brought me to a much deeper focus for ritual. My experience was that about ten minutes of counted breathing (with counts ranging from 55 to 80 breaths) was where the effects tended to plateau. After such a quieting exercise I found it much easier to sense the Kindreds and remain in ritual space. I also found the counting useful when attempting to sleep on airplanes, something that has been hard for me even on intercontinent flights. Over time, even shorter amounts (5 minutes and less) have brought me increased focus. I do find the minimal 9 sets of counted breath does not leave me as deeply focused as a bit more – if I am going by count rather than by a timer, I prefer 27 breaths.
The other item I pursued was the Simple Devotional. The Simple Devotional roughly follows the standard ADF ritual order, though some of the steps are not obvious unless all of the versions within the manual are correlated. During the five months of the journal, and afterward, I did the Simple Devotional with an offering almost (I say almost because there were a very small number of evenings where I did not) every evening.
The effects of performing the Simple Devotional regularly were very different from those of the counted breathing, yet vital to my continued practice within ADF. Perhaps the most important, initially, was the clearer understanding of ADF ritual structure I gained. The Simple Devotional forced me to understand the difference between the Well and an Offering Bowl when doing a rite at my Home Shrine. While offerings can be made to the Well, in many cases it is not ideal to place a grain offering into it – indeed, such offerings are most commonly made directly to the Earth next to the Tree out-of-doors.
Secondly, the Simple Devotional led very directly to more religious involvement on my part. Via regular ritual practice and the giving of offerings I found the attention of the Powers, and gained contact with them. By re-enacting the cosmology in this simplified format it became more deeply ingrained into my perspective. While I believe that “ritual technologies” such as meditation and trance are useful to sensing the effects of practice, without internalizing our cosmology they will lead nowhere.
Since my initial five month journaling, there have been some additional innovations. One particularly useful item was a self-hypnosis technique Barbara Wright taught at Summerland 2006. This technique gave me a faster and more reliable way for me to quickly attain and deepen trance states. Additionally, it helped me get a better sense for when I had reached a state conducive to practice.
One other major change since was the creation of a short, regular prayer to Freyja. This prayer has become a cornerstone of my regular practice, for it is easy to say and do when one feels more overt religious practices would not be appropriate (for example, relative to hospitality when staying with those of a more exclusive religious viewpoint). The prayer itself, written around my personal understanding of Freyja, outlines my own desire for guidance each day. I usually repeat it three times in a row each day, and find this it brings me a lighter sense of Freyja in my life. Additionally, this repeated use has made it very effective as a personal invocation during ritual.
At the same time, my practice since has been less focused at times. I have realized that the journaling requirement, which caused me to record my devotional experiences onto index cards and the transcribe them, forced a regular focus and review of these practices. I have resumed recording the effects of these practices and anticipate this will serve me well even if it is not a requirement of any further study programs I choose to pursue.