self-control

• emotional maturity essential for

52:6.64. Po­lit­i­cal wis­dom. Emo­tional ma­tu­rity is es­sen­tial to self-con­trol. Only emo­tional ma­tu­rity will in­sure the sub­sti­tu­tion of in­ter­na­tional tech­niques of civ­i­lized ad­ju­di­ca­tion for the bar­barous ar­bitra­ment of war. Wise states­men will some­time work for the wel­fare of hu­man­ity even while they strive to pro­mote the in­ter­est of their na­tional or racial groups. Self­ish po­lit­i­cal sagac­ity is ul­ti­mately sui­ci­dal—de­struc­tive of all those en­dur­ing qual­i­ties which in­sure plan­e­tary group sur­vival.

• augment life’s fraction by lowering denominator of personal demands

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

• augment life’s fraction by lowering denominator of personal demands

89:3.3Pov­erty was just a part of the rit­ual of the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh which, un­for­tu­nately, be­came in­cor­po­rated into the writ­ings and teach­ings of many re­li­gions, no­tably Chris­tian­ity. Pen­ance is the neg­a­tive form of this oft­times fool­ish rit­ual of re­nun­ci­a­tion. But all this taught the sav­age self-con­trol, and that was a worth-while ad­vance­ment in so­cial evo­lu­tion. Self-de­nial and self-con­trol were two of the great­est so­cial gains from early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Self-con­trol gave man a new phi­los­o­phy of life; it taught him the art of aug­ment­ing life’s frac­tion by low­er­ing the de­nom­i­na­tor of per­sonal de­mands in­stead of al­ways at­tempt­ing to in­crease the nu­mer­a­tor of self­ish grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• restraint in all things is good

131:3.6“The fool has said in his heart, ‘Evil shall not over­take me’; but safety is found only when the soul craves re­proof and the mind seeks wis­dom. The wise man is a no­ble soul who is friendly in the midst of his en­e­mies, tran­quil among the tur­bu­lent, and gen­er­ous among the grasp­ing. Love of self is like weeds in a goodly field. Self­ish­ness leads to grief; per­pet­ual care kills. The tamed mind yields hap­pi­ness. He is the great­est of war­riors who over­comes and sub­dues him­self. Re­straint in all things is good. He alone is a su­pe­rior per­son who es­teems virtue and is ob­ser­vant of his duty. Let not anger and hate mas­ter you. Speak harshly of no one. Con­tent­ment is the great­est wealth. What is given wisely is well saved. Do not to oth­ers those things you would not wish done to you. Pay good for evil; over­come evil with the good.

143:2.1The Mas­ter was a per­fected spec­i­men of hu­man self-con­trol. When he was re­viled, he re­viled not; when he suf­fered, he ut­tered no threats against his tor­men­tors; when he was de­nounced by his en­e­mies, he sim­ply com­mit­ted him­self to the righ­teous judg­ment of the Fa­ther in heaven.

143:2.2At one of the evening con­fer­ences, An­drew asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, are we to prac­tice self-de­nial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-con­trol of your teach­ing? Wherein does your teach­ing dif­fer from that of John?” Je­sus an­swered: “John in­deed taught you the way of righ­teous­ness in ac­cor­dance with the light and laws of his fa­thers, and that was the re­li­gion of self-ex­am­i­na­tion and self-de­nial. But I come with a new mes­sage of self-for­get­ful­ness and self-con­trol. I show to you the way of life as re­vealed to me by my Fa­ther in heaven.

143:2.3“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who cap­tures a city. Self-mas­tery is the mea­sure of man’s moral na­ture and the in­di­ca­tor of his spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In the old or­der you fasted and prayed; as the new crea­ture of the re­birth of the spirit, you are taught to be­lieve and re­joice. In the Fa­ther’s king­dom you are to be­come new crea­tures; old things are to pass away; be­hold I show you how all things are to be­come new. And by your love for one an­other you are to con­vince the world that you have passed from bond­age to lib­erty, from death into life ev­er­last­ing.

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!

143:2.6“Sal­va­tion is by the re­gen­er­a­tion of the spirit and not by the self-righ­teous deeds of the flesh. You are jus­ti­fied by faith and fel­low­shipped by grace, not by fear and the self-de­nial of the flesh, al­beit the Fa­ther’s chil­dren who have been born of the spirit are ever and al­ways mas­ters of the self and all that per­tains to the de­sires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who fol­low in the way of this heav­enly peace are des­tined to be sanc­ti­fied to the eter­nal ser­vice of the ever-ad­vanc­ing sons of the eter­nal God. Hence­forth, it is not a duty but rather your ex­alted priv­i­lege to cleanse your­selves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for per­fec­tion in the love of God.

• self-mastery bound up with faith in indwelling spirit

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

143:2.8“If, then, my chil­dren, you are born of the spirit, you are for­ever de­liv­ered from the self-con­scious bond­age of a life of self-de­nial and watch­care over the de­sires of the flesh, and you are trans­lated into the joy­ous king­dom of the spirit, whence you spon­ta­neously show forth the fruits of the spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the high­est type of en­joy­able and en­nobling self-con­trol, even the heights of ter­res­trial mor­tal at­tain­ment—true self-mas­tery.”

83:6.6Mo­nog­amy al­ways has been, now is, and for­ever will be the ide­al­is­tic goal of hu­man sex evo­lu­tion. This ideal of true pair mar­riage en­tails self-de­nial, and there­fore does it so of­ten fail just be­cause one or both of the con­tract­ing par­ties are de­fi­cient in that acme of all hu­man virtues, rugged self-con­trol.

89:3.7Some­day man should learn how to en­joy lib­erty with­out li­cense, nour­ish­ment with­out glut­tony, and plea­sure with­out de­bauch­ery. Self-con­trol is a bet­ter hu­man pol­icy of be­hav­ior reg­u­la­tion than is ex­treme self-de­nial. Nor did Je­sus ever teach these un­rea­son­able views to his fol­low­ers.

118:8.6The slow­ness of evo­lu­tion, of hu­man cul­tural prog­ress, tes­ti­fies to the ef­fec­tive­ness of that brake—ma­te­rial in­er­tia—which so ef­fi­ciently op­er­ates to re­tard dan­ger­ous ve­loc­i­ties of prog­ress. Thus does time it­self cush­ion and dis­tribute the oth­er­wise lethal re­sults of pre­ma­ture es­cape from the next-en­com­pass­ing bar­ri­ers to hu­man ac­tion. For when cul­ture ad­vances over­fast, when ma­te­rial achieve­ment out­runs the evo­lu­tion of wor­ship-wis­dom, then does civ­i­liza­tion con­tain within it­self the seeds of ret­ro­gres­sion; and un­less but­tressed by the swift aug­men­ta­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom, such hu­man so­ci­eties will re­cede from high but pre­ma­ture lev­els of at­tain­ment, and the “dark ages” of the in­ter­reg­num of wis­dom will bear wit­ness to the in­ex­orable restora­tion of the im­bal­ance be­tween self-lib­erty and self-con­trol.

82:1.10No hu­man emo­tion or im­pulse, when un­bri­dled and over­in­dulged, can pro­duce so much harm and sor­row as this pow­er­ful sex urge. In­tel­li­gent sub­mis­sion of this im­pulse to the reg­u­la­tions of so­ci­ety is the su­preme test of the ac­tu­al­ity of any civ­i­liza­tion. Self-con­trol, more and more self-con­trol, is the ever-in­creas­ing de­mand of ad­vanc­ing man­kind. Se­crecy, in­sin­cer­ity, and hypocrisy may ob­scure sex prob­lems, but they do not pro­vide so­lu­tions, nor do they ad­vance ethics.

• food hoarding developed

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

• food hoarding developed

69:5.1Cap­i­tal is la­bor ap­plied as a re­nun­ci­a­tion of the pres­ent in fa­vor of the fu­ture. Sav­ings rep­re­sent a form of main­te­nance and sur­vival in­sur­ance. Food hoard­ing de­vel­oped self-con­trol and cre­ated the first prob­lems of cap­i­tal and la­bor. The man who had food, pro­vided he could pro­tect it from rob­bers, had a dis­tinct ad­van­tage over the man who had no food.

• restraint was attempt to deceive envious spirits

87:5.7The method adopted to pre­vent the spir­its from be­com­ing jeal­ous of hu­man pros­per­ity was to heap vi­tu­per­a­tion upon some lucky or much loved thing or per­son. The cus­tom of de­pre­ci­at­ing com­pli­men­tary re­marks re­gard­ing one­self or fam­ily had its ori­gin in this way, and it even­tu­ally evolved into civ­i­lized mod­esty, re­straint, and cour­tesy. In keep­ing with the same mo­tive, it be­came the fash­ion to look ugly. Beauty aroused the envy of spir­its; it be­to­kened sin­ful hu­man pride. The sav­age sought for an ugly name. This fea­ture of the cult was a great hand­i­cap to the ad­vance­ment of art, and it long kept the world somber and ugly.

• taboo essential step in developing

89:1.7There would, how­ever, be no civ­i­lized so­ci­ety to sit in crit­i­cism upon prim­i­tive man ex­cept for these far-flung and mul­ti­far­i­ous taboos, and the taboo would never have en­dured but for the up­hold­ing sanc­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Many of the es­sen­tial fac­tors in man’s evo­lu­tion have been highly ex­pen­sive, have cost vast trea­sure in ef­fort, sac­ri­fice, and self-de­nial, but these achieve­ments of self-con­trol were the real rungs on which man climbed civ­i­liza­tion’s as­cend­ing lad­der.

• olden ideas embraced flogging, physical torture

89:3.4These olden ideas of self-dis­ci­pline em­braced flog­ging and all sorts of phys­i­cal tor­ture. The priests of the mother cult were es­pe­cially ac­tive in teach­ing the virtue of phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, set­ting the ex­am­ple by sub­mit­ting them­selves to cas­tra­tion. The He­brews, Hin­dus, and Bud­dhists were earnest devo­tees of this doc­trine of phys­i­cal hu­mil­i­a­tion.

• evolutionary religion provided

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

• impossible for primitive man to appear with much

118:8.5The whole prin­ci­ple of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion makes it im­pos­si­ble for prim­i­tive man to ap­pear on the in­hab­ited worlds with any large en­dow­ment of self-re­straint. There­fore does the same cre­ative de­sign which pur­posed evo­lu­tion like­wise pro­vide those ex­ter­nal re­straints of time and space, hunger and fear, which ef­fec­tively cir­cum­scribe the sub­spir­i­tual choice range of such un­cul­tured crea­tures. As man’s mind suc­cess­fully over­strides in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult bar­ri­ers, this same cre­ative de­sign has also pro­vided for the slow ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the racial her­itage of painfully gar­nered ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom—in other words, for the main­te­nance of a bal­ance be­tween the di­min­ish­ing ex­ter­nal re­straints and the aug­ment­ing in­ter­nal re­straints.

54:1.6True lib­erty is the as­so­ciate of gen­uine self-re­spect; false lib­erty is the con­sort of self-ad­mi­ra­tion. True lib­erty is the fruit of self-con­trol; false lib­erty, the as­sump­tion of self-as­ser­tion. Self-con­trol leads to al­tru­is­tic ser­vice; self-ad­mi­ra­tion tends to­wards the ex­ploita­tion of oth­ers for the self­ish ag­gran­dize­ment of such a mis­taken in­di­vid­ual as is will­ing to sac­ri­fice righ­teous at­tain­ment for the sake of pos­sess­ing un­just power over his fel­low be­ings.

118:8.10As man shakes off the shack­les of fear, as he bridges con­ti­nents and oceans with his ma­chines, gen­er­a­tions and cen­turies with his rec­ords, he must sub­sti­tute for each tran­scended re­straint a new and vol­un­tar­ily as­sumed re­straint in ac­cor­dance with the moral dic­tates of ex­pand­ing hu­man wis­dom. These self-im­posed re­straints are at once the most pow­er­ful and the most ten­u­ous of all the fac­tors of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion—con­cepts of jus­tice and ide­als of broth­er­hood. Man even qual­i­fies him­self for the re­strain­ing gar­ments of mercy when he dares to love his fel­low men, while he achieves the be­gin­nings of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood when he elects to mete out to them that treat­ment which he him­self would be ac­corded, even that treat­ment which he con­ceives that God would ac­cord them.

28:6.206 and 7. The Se­cret of Great­ness and the Soul of Good­ness. The as­cend­ing pil­grims hav­ing awak­ened to the im­port of time, the way is pre­pared for the re­al­iza­tion of the solem­nity of trust and for the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the sanc­tity of ser­vice. While these are the moral el­e­ments of great­ness, there are also se­crets of great­ness. When the spir­i­tual tests of great­ness are ap­plied, the moral el­e­ments are not dis­re­garded, but the qual­ity of un­selfish­ness re­vealed in dis­in­ter­ested la­bor for the wel­fare of one’s earthly fel­lows, par­tic­u­larly wor­thy be­ings in need and in dis­tress, that is the real mea­sure of plan­e­tary great­ness. And the man­i­fes­ta­tion of great­ness on a world like Uran­tia is the ex­hi­bi­tion of self-con­trol. The great man is not he who “takes a city” or “over­throws a na­tion,” but rather “he who sub­dues his own tongue.”

131:2.6“God has made man a lit­tle less than di­vine and has crowned him with love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righ­teous, but the way of the un­godly shall per­ish. The fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom; the knowl­edge of the Su­preme is un­der­stand­ing. Says the Al­mighty God: ‘Walk be­fore me and be per­fect.’ For­get not that pride goes be­fore de­struc­tion and a haughty spirit be­fore a fall. He who rules his own spirit is might­ier than he who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In re­turn­ing to your spir­i­tual rest shall you be saved; in quiet­ness and con­fi­dence shall be your strength.’ They who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings like ea­gles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness.’

14:6.26Ha­vona ex­hibits fi­nal­ity of spirit val­ues ex­ist­ing as liv­ing will crea­tures of su­preme and per­fect self-con­trol; mind ex­ist­ing as ul­ti­mately equiv­a­lent to spirit; re­al­ity and unity of in­tel­li­gence with an un­lim­ited po­ten­tial.

100:6.4The self has sur­ren­dered to the in­trigu­ing drive of an all-en­com­pass­ing mo­ti­va­tion which im­poses height­ened self-dis­ci­pline, lessens emo­tional con­flict, and makes mor­tal life truly worth liv­ing. The mor­bid rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions is changed to the nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of mor­tal short­com­ings, as­so­ci­ated with moral de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tion to at­tain the high­est uni­verse and super­uni­verse goals. And this in­tense striv­ing for the at­tain­ment of super­mor­tal ide­als is al­ways char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing pa­tience, for­bear­ance, for­ti­tude, and tol­er­ance.

55:5.4War has be­come a mat­ter of his­tory, and there are no more armies or po­lice forces. Gov­ern­ment is grad­u­ally dis­ap­pear­ing. Self-con­trol is slowly ren­der­ing laws of hu­man en­act­ment ob­so­lete. The ex­tent of civil gov­ern­ment and statu­tory reg­u­la­tion, in an in­ter­me­di­ate state of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, is in in­verse pro­por­tion to the moral­ity and spir­i­tu­al­ity of the cit­i­zen­ship.

132:3.10Uni­verse prog­ress is char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing per­son­al­ity free­dom be­cause it is as­so­ci­ated with the pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of self-un­der­stand­ing and con­se­quent vol­un­tary self-re­straint. The at­tain­ment of per­fec­tion of spir­i­tual self-re­straint equals com­plete­ness of uni­verse free­dom and per­sonal lib­erty. Faith fos­ters and main­tains man’s soul in the midst of the con­fu­sion of his early ori­en­ta­tion in such a vast uni­verse, whereas prayer be­comes the great uni­fier of the var­i­ous in­spi­ra­tions of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the faith urges of a soul try­ing to iden­tify it­self with the spirit ide­als of the in­dwelling and as­so­ci­ated di­vine pres­ence.

54:1.5Un­bri­dled self-will and un­reg­u­lated self-ex­pres­sion equal un­mit­i­gated self­ish­ness, the acme of un­god­li­ness. Lib­erty with­out the as­so­ci­ated and ever-in­creas­ing con­quest of self is a fig­ment of ego­is­tic mor­tal imag­i­na­tion. Self-mo­ti­vated lib­erty is a con­cep­tual il­lu­sion, a cruel de­cep­tion. Li­cense mas­querad­ing in the gar­ments of lib­erty is the fore­run­ner of ab­ject bond­age.

28:6.134. The Solem­nity of Trust. Trust is the cru­cial test of will crea­tures. Trust­wor­thi­ness is the true mea­sure of self-mas­tery, char­ac­ter. These se­con­a­phim ac­com­plish a dou­ble pur­pose in the econ­omy of the super­uni­verses: They por­tray to all will crea­tures the sense of the obli­ga­tion, sa­cred­ness, and solem­nity of trust. At the same time they unerringly re­flect to the gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties the ex­act trust­wor­thi­ness of any can­di­date for con­fi­dence or trust.