en lose the
tendency to let our thoughts drift about aimlessly.

And as in the world of thought, so in the realm of the will, the soul must
become the ruler. In the physical sense-world it is life that rules. It
urges upon man this or that as a necessity, and the will feels itself
constrained to satisfy these same wants. In following higher training, man
must accustom himself to obey his own commands strictly, and those who
acquire this habit will feel less and less inclined to desire what is of
no moment. All that is unsatisfying and unstable in the life of the will
comes from the desire for things of the possession of which we have formed
no distinct concept. Discontent such as this may, when the higher ego is
desirous of emerging from the soul, throw that person's whole inner life
into disorder; and it is a good exercise to give oneself for the space of
several months some command to be carried out at a specified time of day:
"To-day, at this or that particular hour, you will do this or that thing."
Thus we gradually become able to command the time at which a thing is to
be done and the manner in which it is to be performed, so as to admit of
its being accomplished with utmost exactitude. Thus we lift ourselves
above the bad habit of saying, "I should like this," and "I want the
other," while exercising no thought of the possibility of its
accomplishment.

In the second part of _Faust_, Goethe puts the following words into the
mouth of a seeress: "Him I love who craves the impossible," and Goethe
himself, in his "Prose Proverbs," says: "To live in the idea means
treating the impossible as though 't were possible."

Such sentiments must not be put forward as objections against what has
here been stated, for the demands made by Goethe and his seeress (Manto)
can be fulfilled only by those who have first educated themselves through
desire for that which is possible, and have in so doing, arrived at being
able, by means of their strong "will," to treat the "impossible" in such a
manner that through their willing it becomes transformed into the
possible.

A certain equanimity should pervade the soul of the occult student
concerning the world of feeling. And to attain this result, it is
necessary that the soul should have mastery over the expressions of joy
and sorrow, pleasure and pain. But it is just concerning the acquisition
of this faculty that some prejudice might arise: one might be afraid of
becoming dull and i