Self-control is the ability to rein in on your thoughts, words, and actions. Should you be able to keep your thoughts from running wild, there is a strong possibility you will be able to regulate your words, and of course, keep yourself from acting wrongly. These are offshoots of the awareness of oneself, an area that many, if not the majority are either ignorant of or live in denial of.
This is my admonition to you: Be strong enough to control yourself. Self-control is a personal power many of us underrate. Many are not even aware of its potency. If you can achieve self-control, you earn a rare superpower. Can you be strong enough to control yourself?
Self-control is your control over your negative emotions and temperament: your anger, your inordinate desires, your negative thoughts, and imaginations. If you find out that your temperament is negative and works against the outcomes you envisage, you do need to do something about it. However, if you do not see anything wrong, you are equally in order.
It is a conscience thing. You do need to be conscientious. You do need to watch out that you are not guilty of searing your conscience, in which case you are past feeling, and can possibly hurt others without a thought. This makes you misanthropic. How can you be human but hate fellow humans? Isn’t that self-hate?
Now, perception they say, is everything. If you are able to control how you see things, then you have earned yourself a status beyond the regular mind and thinking. Your ability to control the way you see things is the work of shifting due to a long history of programming. It is not commonplace.
It is impossible for mankind to escape from its emotions because our emotions are an integral part of us. As humans we can never get to the point of separating totally from our emotions, however mature we become. We may cease from being sentimental but never from having emotions.
Emotions and man are one. What we can do is to be aware enough of our irrationalities and do something about them. We can choose to fix our anger, we can decide to manage it by ensuring we do not act wrongly when we get in the fit of anger. We can have our envy and bitter jealousy in check, and we can ensure that we do not act inordinately about our emotions. We must be conscious enough of our pride and keep it under wraps. We can earn self-control.
What do we really mean? Where am I really going? The power of self-control is the power of self-regulation, and it comes from the place of being aware of oneself. We cannot regulate what we are not conscious of. We cannot regulate what we do not know. We can do nothing about what we do not accept.
Paul, the great Apostle, admonished us to mortify our members. What does it mean to mortify our members? What is mortification? What are our members? To the first question of what mortification means, the online lexicon, Dictionary.com states: The practice of asceticism by penitential discipline to overcome desire for sin and to strengthen the will. It goes further to provide synonyms like condescension, abasement, put-down, dishonour, shame, and more.
Paul in the same writing clearly lists what he refers to as our members: 'Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.' What does this mean? Does it mean that we can fight against these natures in us? Does it mean that we can bring them under our control?
Yes, it does mean so, definitely. If it says that we put them down, then it means they can be put down because all things are possible to the one who believes and who can conceive possibilities. All things, indeed. We can have them in check even if it means to abase them or bring them to dishonour. Yes, we can. The possibility is subject to the degree of our faith.
The admonition to bridle the tongue is a call to control our words. We cannot heed this call to bridle or control our tongue or words unless we first bridle or control our thoughts. Again, we cannot bridle a thought we are not aware of. Being aware of our thoughts means that we must know the meditations and imaginations of our mind. A man who is unable to put a rein on his thoughts is not able to put a rein on his tongue. We can control our spirit.
For Daniel to be able to refuse the king's food in Babylon, he was first able to control his desire. He first had to temper his taste buds before he could make a routine of abstaining from eating the dainty meats of the king.
‘When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.’ When divine wisdom uttered those words in Solomon, it did not state the impossible. It expressly stated what is possible for a person who is able to bring himself or herself under subjection.
This was the power of self-control that Daniel exercised. He put a rein on his desire before he could check his mouth. Great thinkers and minds of yesterday have used the power of self-control to win personal battles and to sustain same victory. It was a life of consistent victories. It became a lifestyle earned through much sacrifice.
A man's self-control is often tried and tested before he is promoted. Nothing better exemplifies this position like the story of Joseph in the house of Potiphar. In that position Joseph was already a lord working under a lord in Egypt, but he had greater lordship awaiting him. He had been destined for higher greatness than that, but to have him earn that promise, his power of self-control had to be put to the test.
Every one of us is tested this way too, but not many of us are aware. When we are at home, at work, or in any situation whatsoever, our self-control is put to the test. It is a must. And how we perform determines how we are rated afterwards, whether lower, higher, or fixed.
Can you imagine how much self-control one must wield to be able to get that done? When wisdom spoke in the proverbs to not eat the bread of him that has an evil eye, wisdom spoke to the power of self-control which can be made possible through the activation of self-restraint. The evil eye of an evil man is inspired by his evil thoughts. Look closely at the scripture again:
Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.
Let me reiterate again that we can enforce anything that we accept from within our heart and spirit. Man is that powerful. Man often forgets that he was made in the image and likeness of God, the Maker, and when God made man, God actually reproduced a lower version of Himself with the same properties as He had. Man was natured and patterned after his Maker.
Unfortunately, men choose to dwell in the fallen state despite redemption. When man comes to the place of awakening, he will do what the majority think impossible or are not even aware of in the first place, let alone, accept. We live in the space of possibilities.
When men seek to find power outside of themselves, they seek that which cannot endure. They actually seek to roll with their kind. While this is not bad in itself because it is the power of interdependence, man is made of more but this makeup lays buried deep within him. When man lives by the resolve to be, he activates the power of being, more than to have.
This is the will to walk in the subduing of the carnal in order for the spiritual to manifest and take the driver seat. But it begins with awareness. You have to know. Man has to know because man does not know, and man can only know if he seeks. He who seeks finds. Unfortunately, these words are, though known, not activated. How does the word live then?
Think on these words: But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.
These words uttered from the lips of Job thousands of years ago, speak to the present as it was not only for the day in which Job lived. It stays relevant today. Man seeks power in all the wrong places. Men, while seeking power from fellow men, do things that are uncomely. Men seek promotion from men and so they do not spend time to seek the unseen, wherein lies enduring power. It is not on earth. It is as it is heaven.
Self-control is wisdom. It is uncommon to men though men can gain access if they are able to draw close to the Source of Ultimate power. A man of understanding is one who is not given to many words or one who does not utter just what comes. This is the truly powerful man.
This man uses restrain in all ways and at all times, saying and doing only the things that edify and uplift. This man knows what to say, when to say it, and how it should be said. To this man, self-control is a practice and a lifestyle earned through acceptance of the possibility.
The price of wisdom is not found in the land of the sensual and that is why wisdom had to come from the place of eternity. That was why no one was able to take the book and open the seals. The price is not of human conception or configuration. The price is of divine and highest form of Life expressed in humility. Though of the most sublime and principal, it condescended to be the lowest.
This land where men live recklessly is the land of the dead. A man who is not able to control his spirit is not worthy of the seat of honour. Such men are not able to control their desires and when they find opportunity, they use it only as a bull in a China shop would.
It is possible for man to walk the path and high ground of divinity if it is revealed to him. It is the place of patience, the wisdom to mortify the members that lead to offence and damnation. Man is definitely able to use self-control, if he so desires to, and if the deep is in him to respond to the deep that shows him favour from above. This is the man who succeeds.
