Asceticism: A Spiritual Practice or a Way to Get What You Want?

OLOlya

I would like to talk about ascetic practice and understand what it actually is. It is presented as a method for, among other things, spiritual development. Generally, you give something up for a particular purpose, supposedly for the benefit of your spiritual development. To maintain that discipline of abstaining, though, you set yourself a reward: when the practice is over, you will get something you want. Usually people make a wish or something like that. Is there a way to understand whether this is part of spiritual development, or whether it is more a matter of marketing and social conventions that have nothing to do with spiritual development?

It came from somewhere originally. Perhaps it was once a pure tool for something and has now become distorted.

AVAlexander Volchek

All the terms and concepts people use today, such as ascetic practice, if they come from various ancient accounts, did not simply have a particular meaning that people may now have distorted. They were also created for people with a particular structure as spiritual beings, a particular kind of soul, particular energies. That is very important. Human beings are constantly developing, just as everything around them develops. Clearly, something that was useful four thousand years ago may now be not merely neutral, but harmful.

Even if we go back only fifteen hundred years rather than four thousand, it was a different time, with people structured differently. That matters. Today, though, let us examine ascetic practice without basing the discussion on the fact that everything done in the past was essentially intended for different people. Let us form a picture of what it is. Still, I strongly recommend giving that fundamental consideration your attention. It applies to a vast number of rituals, practices, actions, tasks, and teachings.

Do they really apply to today's world, today's time, and the current structure of the human spiritual being? It is so important to understand that. When I say the spiritual system is different now, I do not mean it is better or worse. Even when I say everything develops, the sense I want to convey here is that it changes. The human spiritual being has indeed been transformed many times, carrying experience and both positive and negative impressions of what has happened. So we will not assume that the current human spiritual system is better in any way. It is simply different.

When I first encountered the idea of ascetic practice, I immediately heard and understood that there were actions you were supposed to take, not for a social result or a result you simply wanted, but for the sake of truth. Fundamentally, from the spiritual perspective, I think an ascetic practice is some action you take in which, for example, you give something up or make an effort. For now, let us focus on giving something up. What does it mean to give something up for the sake of truth?

For the sake of truth means that your personality, your ego motives, and your personal goals are absent. There is no bargain: "In general, I'm doing it for truth, but I actually get something out of it." There is only a true feeling, a true perception that this is right, that this is how it must be and no other way. But let us read the simplest definition of ascetic practice. First, it comes from a word meaning "exercise": a method of achieving spiritual goals through exercises in self-discipline, self-restraint, and self-renunciation, through prayer and the fulfillment of difficult vows, sometimes including self-torment and mortification of the flesh.

That certainly raises a big question. I think that part was added in Wikipedia. Then: asceticism is a way of life characterized by extreme simplicity, abstinence, and self-restraint, especially regarding pleasure and luxury. Naturally, ascetic practices occur in almost every world religion, although they differ. In some cases there is self-torment, in others a milder form of it, but at least some creation of problems for the physical body. The important part of the definition, though, is that this is a method of achieving spiritual goals through exercises. Then the restrictions appear. Asceticism becomes a form of restriction to which people attach a whole range of things.

What does restriction mean? Not eating sugar one day a week, or not eating it at all? Spending ten thousand dollars a month, or a hundred? Eating as little as possible—and what does that mean? A whole range of details begins to appear. Do you really have to stop buying high-quality, expensive food in order to develop spiritually? Is that really necessary? Is there really such a connection? Or does it mean buying from an appropriate impulse, understanding where dependency, ego motives, attachments, or the desire to influence others are operating, and where you are buying sincerely, simply to eat?

So what is it? How do you recognize it? Can it be described through particular exercises, or should it be something inside, a feeling? What kind of feeling should it be? How should it express itself, and what should it carry? That is what matters: what kind of feeling and energy it should be. When I first encountered asceticism, I understood that it involved actions taken for the sake of truth, but I could not grasp what that meant. There was some impulse in me, yet I was doing the exercises for a purpose. I was simply doing them to get something.

Even now, for many years I have avoided certain types of food several times a week. Basically, that is an ascetic practice. It was assigned to me as an exercise, and it has stayed with me—probably one of the very few exercises to remain so consistent in my life. Why am I still doing it? Does it come from a true perception, from something true, or is it simply a habit? Or have I simply decided to do it and do not want to go into it any further and generate dead thoughts around it? That is a big question. Does it mean I should give it up? Probably not. The easiest thing would be to examine it, see some wrong connections, and give it up.

You could give up many difficult things. Why not? Give it up, and all the restrictions and problems are gone. Every Wednesday and Saturday, you have to remember, and everyone around you has to remember, that you do not eat certain foods, for example. But could watching your speech be a person's most important ascetic practice? Rudolf Steiner has an exercise for each day of the week and one general exercise. They are called "seven plus one." One of them is to watch your speech. Every time you want to say something, consider whether it really needs to be said, or whether it is unnecessary nonsense. Is it actually right to say this now?

Are you really doing no harm to others by saying it? Are you speaking from a pure impulse of the word? Or are you just making conversation, trying to hurt someone, bolster your ego and sense of importance, or show that you are here, too? Watching your speech looks like an ascetic practice to me—a very serious one. It is abstinence from self-serving actions and beliefs, from one of the central problems of the modern human spiritual structure: the ego-computer. Abstinence from the ego.

Abstinence from a whole range of dependencies, including interaction with certain kinds of energy. Interaction with Lucifer, for example. Abstaining from that. I say, "I refrain from interacting with this, from touching it." Is that not an incredibly true ascetic practice? As I describe it now, I do not wonder why it should be done. It is a given that this is truth, that refraining from it is true. Could we then describe a person's development as a whole, their observation of their own life, their attention and effort to treat people with love and be attentive to them in the same way? Not just watching your speech: one of the exercises, for example, is to listen carefully to whoever is speaking, every time.

What about watching your thoughts and actions? Are not all these exercises in following truth what we call ascetic practice? The very word suggests a restriction, as though a person engaged in ascetic practice must suffer, rather than doing something natural, normal, and healthy. A person suffers not when they hold back their speech, but when they lash out at someone, are angry with them, want to harm them, or want to rob someone else of their own opinion and exert influence over them.

Is that not actually harmful to the person? There are so many distortions, followed by a kind of parasitism. In many religions, spiritual development is presented as difficulty rather than joy. That distinction matters: difficulty rather than joy. How is it communicated? Clearly, not everywhere, but in some places it is presented as something burdensome. Even the definition of ascetic practice we just read mentioned tormenting one's own flesh.

Is that really necessary? What is the connection between killing your physical body and developing spiritually? Given the present-day structure of the soul and spirit, the spiritual system, and the presence of the I, tormenting the physical body is a very strange thing to do. It is dependency, simply of a different kind. Perhaps ascetic practice means refraining from those actions, rather than doing them: not harming other people and not harming yourself, either. Yourself included. Otherwise, it is as though we say, "Let's not harm other people, but let's harm ourselves."

Where is the energy in that? Where is life, where are the spaces of life? Look at it meditatively, from a broader perspective. What kind of energy is it? Behind any exercise, different people will see different things: an ascetic practice, a task performed for personal gain, or an action for the sake of truth. Each person will have their own circumstances. People today like to embellish things: "Look, this person did this exercise for five hundred days. It's called an ascetic practice. And look, money appeared in their bank account." Or, "Look, their family life improved."

How is that an indicator of spiritual development? What is the connection between the action and the result? I have seen quite a few people who repeatedly claimed credit for someone else's results in advance, insisting that their exercises and ascetic practices were responsible. When they gave people particular things to do, they constantly wanted to show, "Look, we helped you get here. Our actions brought you here." Yet only a person can help themselves get somewhere. Then there is the whole range of causes and effects they live through. But if you approach any exercise as a means of attaining some state of bliss—that very idea of "bliss"—rather than watching your speech because that is the truthful thing to do and there is no need to debate it…

"But why?" Because it is true. It is entirely reasonable and clear to any sound-minded soul, to any pure perception. If you need explanations, live. No explanation can convey it. Only your inner call, your inner impulse, can move you to say, "This exercise really is interesting. I'll try to do it." The question is not whether you succeed. Being mindful of whether your words are right, all the time and with everyone, is a very difficult exercise. Very difficult.

Much more difficult than not eating something on a particular day or wearing clothes of a certain color. Much more difficult than spending six months, or some other period, in a cave. Fundamentally more difficult, because you have to do it your whole life. Your whole life—can you imagine? Not just once, but throughout your life. It never ends. Here is how you can test yourself in relation to different exercises: see whether you are willing to do it for the rest of your life. Everything immediately falls into place. It is not even a problem if you understand it as bringing positive development or some beneficial effect.

At least ask yourself whether you are willing to do it for the rest of your life. Even if you have a self-serving belief, are you still willing to do it for your whole life? If you are, that is already a very powerful step toward keeping it as a foundation, something you can rely on. Even if you shout at someone, scold them, express something wrong in your thoughts, or do something with words that you should not have done, what is your foundation? Are you really striving toward it? Sometimes people say, "This person is striving to act this way, but still constantly acts from an ego motive."

How can that be? Does it mean they are not trying hard enough? Each person has their own structure of energy and is influenced by different types of energy. So what is the problem if someone does something bad? People have generally lived for decades—twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, some for eighty—without watching their speech. Watching your speech means being constantly, truly aware of it. How many problems did a person cause in forty years without watching their speech, compared with the next forty years when they did watch it?

In the forty years when they were not watching, they caused phenomenally more. Their attention was not even directed toward it. They did not even have the impulse or desire to do it, to truly act and live out of love for other people.