Ahktu, hi. When reading your post I kept getting the message "MENTAL DISCIPLINE" repeating in my head. I did a LOO search for 'mental discipline' and found a passage that might be helpful. I personally have been working on self discipline for the past 10 years or so, I kind of got addicted to being a bit of an ascetic.. vegan, straightedge, later turned into quite a hermit.. all this after being a bit too indulgent throughout my life. I realize that this was all part of balancing my experiences here on Earth. The sweet spot seems to come after you've experienced both extremes. So my advice, in response to "I feel this lifestyle quirk would be a very hard one to get rid of if I decide it is unhealthy in my quest to serve others. I feel like the efforts involved could only increase the difficulties I am experiencing for a good while, so in your opinion, is it worth giving up?" is YES it is worth giving up, by practicing mental discipline, if these are thoughts that would be very hard to get rid of.
Anyways, here is Ra on Mental Discipline:
Anyways, here is Ra on Mental Discipline:
Quote:To begin to master the concept of mental disciplines it is necessary to examine the self. The polarity of your dimension must be internalized. Where you find patience within your mind you must consciously find the corresponding impatience and vice versa. Each thought a being has, has in its turn an antithesis. The disciplines of the mind involve, first of all, identifying both those things of which you approve and those things of which you disapprove within yourself, and then balancing each and every positive and negative charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore, you must discover this completeness within yourself.
The second mental discipline is acceptance of the completeness within your consciousness. It is not for a being of polarity in the physical consciousness to pick and choose among attributes, thus building the roles that cause blockages and confusions in the already distorted mind complex. Each acceptance smoothes part of the many distortions that the faculty you call judgment engenders.
The third discipline of the mind is a repetition of the first but with the gaze outward toward the fellow entities that it meets. In each entity there exists completeness. Thus, the ability to understand each balance is necessary. When you view patience, you are responsible for mirroring in your mental understandings, patience/impatience. When you view impatience, it is necessary for your mental configuration of understanding to be impatience/patience. We use this as a simple example. Most configurations of mind have many facets, and understanding of either self polarities, or what you would call other-self polarities, can and must be understood as subtle work.
The next step is the acceptance of the other-self polarities, which mirrors the second step. These are the first four steps of learning mental disciplines. The fifth step involves observing the geographical and geometrical relationships and ratios of the mind, the other mind, the mass mind, and the infinite mind.