The Four Principles

The third principle is: the more one wills, the more one loses of inner life. The will kills the life. As much as one wills, so much inner life dies away, so that everything we want is at the same time an obstacle to our inner life, to our spiritual development. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the attitude of limiting oneself in one's will to what the world demands of us; not to will out of inner urge. In occult life, one advances when one's volition is limited to the most necessary things. You will have more of nothing than when you consciously suppress the volition, for no other reason than because you can suppress the volition. But we must learn not to shirk our duties when we suppress a volition.