Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at The Art of Manliness. The full post may be read here.
“It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men
are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like
a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young
man. For what purpose? you may say. Why that you may become an Olympic
conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat. In my opinion no
man has had a more profitable difficulty than you have had, if you
choose to make use of it as an athlete would deal with a young
antagonist.” —Epictetus
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one
gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who
competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a
crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last
forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not
fight like a boxer beating the air.” —Corinthians 9:24-26
The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus and the apostle Paul — though
their worldviews differed — both used the metaphor of athletic contests
to explain the way a man was to struggle against weakness, erroneous
beliefs, and all lower impulses, in order to win the prize of higher
virtue.
They weren’t unique in deploying this analogy. Many early sages and
saints also likened man’s attempt to conquer himself to physical
exercise and the games of the sporting arena. They called their readers
to become Stoic athletes, Christian athletes — spiritual athletes.
These philosophers and prophets understood that it was important not only to train the body, but also to
train the soul.
The Greek word for training used by both Epictetus and St. Paul —
áskēsis
— was orginally associated with the physical training of athletes and
soldiers, but later came to be used to describe any rigorous, discplined
program of training, including the spiritual struggle for virtue.
This paradigm, in which practicing virtue is exercise; confronting
personal weakness is contest, has not entirely disappeared from modern
culture, but has become fainter and somewhat lost to us. It is partly
for this reason that virtue and the spiritual life have come to be seen
as “soft” and effeminate pursuits, despite the fact that the Latin word
from which virtue derives —
vir — actually means “manliness.”
Today, drawing on both the Christian and Stoic traditions (although
adherence to either is not required to find usefulness in the underlying
principles) we issue a wholehearted call to revive the idea of training
the soul, and embrace it for the very meaningful, very “muscular”
contest it is.
How Training the Soul Is Like Training the Body
“let the man who is rich in a worldly sense adopt in his
own case the same considerations as apply to athletes. For
the athlete who has given up the hope of being able to conquer, and to
obtain the garlands, does not even give in his name for the contest;
while the one who has conceived this hope in his mind, but does not
submit to the fitting labors and diet and exercises, continues
ungarlanded, and fails to gain what he hoped for.
In the same way let not a man who is clothed in this earthly
covering withdraw his name altogether from the Savior’s contests, if at
least he is faithful, and perceives the greatness of God’s kindness to
man; and again, if he refuses exercise and contest, let him not hope to
share in the garlands of incorruption without the dust and sweat of the
arena; but let him at once submit himself to the word as trainer, and to
Christ as judge of the contests; let his food and his apportioned drink
be the new covenant of the Lord, let his exercises be the commandments,
let his gracefulness and adornment be good dispositions, love, faith,
hope, knowledge of truth, gentleness, goodness of heart, dignity; so
that, when the last trumpet sounds for the race and the departure
hence, passing out of this life as out of a race-course, he may stand
with a good conscience before the president, acknowledged to be worthy
of the heavenly home, into which he passes up with garlands and
proclamations of angelic heralds.” —Clement of Alexandria
Philosophers and theologians have debated and expounded on the nature
of the soul for thousands of years, and we can’t hope to provide a
definitive definition of it here. But for the purposes of this article,
let’s call the soul that part of a man’s make-up that desires higher
order aims over lower order impulses. It’s the thing that seeks that
which is life-giving, rather than life-deadening. It’s your moral
compass, your attraction to doing noble deeds and choosing the right.
It’s the capacity to reach beyond the self in order to serve others.
Your soul is your spiritual center, and, traditionally, your eternal
essence. However, a belief in the immortality of the soul isn’t
necessary for a belief in the possibility of actively training it; even
if one sees it simply as the part of the psyche that’s more human and
advanced, and less primitive and reptilian, the protocols for exercising
it still very much apply.
No matter how exactly you view the soul, it lends itself to being
seen as having a spiritual “physique” just as real and readily shapeable
as your tangible one. The spirit, like the body, has muscles that must
be regularly exercised in order to maintain good health, perform
optimally in everyday tasks, and come out the victor in the occasional
high-stakes contest. In both cases, you are given these physiques in a
raw, impressionable form; you can either let them be molded by external
forces, or intentionally sculpt them into the shape you desire.
Let us delve deeper into the parallels that exist between training the body and training the soul:
Physical and Spiritual Strength Atrophy Without Use
All matter — physical and spiritual alike — tends towards the path of
least resistance. Without intentional effort to move and exercise our
fleshy bodies, we become encased in layers of fat, get winded from light
activity, and cannot pick up heavy objects. Muscles get tight; joints
get creaky. Should an emergency befall us, we’re unable to flee or fight
the danger. If forced to compete in a race or game, we would face
embarrassing failure.
In the same way, ignoring one’s soul leads to the accumulation of
spiritual flab. Our moral muscles atrophy, and we give in to sin and
weakness more easily. We cannot put off temporary pleasures to achieve
lasting goals. In wrestling with temptation or a heavy moral issue, we
fatigue easily, and make a choice of convenience rather than principle.
Or, we choose not to engage in the wrestle at all, defaulting to
whatever direction our fluctuating feelings take us, or referring to a
rote rule or bureaucratic expediency that may not be the best solution
to the particular problem at hand. We lose our
moral agility — our capacity to exercise
practical wisdom and do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.
Of course, the converse of the above is just as true regarding both
our physical and spiritual physiques. Muscles that get used, get
stronger. Get more agile. And allow you to do more and be more . . .
Physical and Spiritual Strength Widens Your Freedom and Field of Action
A flabby, atrophied physical physique circumscribes your choices.
This is true as a practical matter: You can’t play with your kids
because you’re too tired; you can’t climb a mountain with your friends
because you’re too weak; you can’t lift a certain weight, even if you
wanted to.
A flabby, atrophied spiritual physique limits your ability to
autonomously make choices at all. If you want to be faithful to your
girlfriend, but hook up with an old flame, your lust is in control, not
you. If you want to lose weight, but can’t stop overeating,
you’re taking your marching orders from your belly, rather than your higher aims.
If you want to be loving to your children, but keep losing your temper,
your anger is calling the shots, not your soul. If your moods and
reactions are determined by external events, then you’re being acted
upon, rather than acting. You are not a free moral agent.
In training the soul, you strengthen your self-control: you gain the
ability to harness your energies towards deliberately chosen ends, to
choose long-term ideals over short-term impulses, to decide how you will
act, regardless of the circumstances. You become master, rather than
slave. As a consequence, your options increase; your potential field of
action widens.
Or as former
Navy SEAL Jocko Willink succinctly puts it: “Discipline equals freedom.”
Physical and Spiritual Strength Require Weight and Opposition in Order to Grow
“Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of
them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of
their powers.” —Thomas Merton
“Good fortune comes to common men and even to those of inferior
talent; but only a great man is able to triumph over disasters and
terrors afflicting mortal life. It is true that to be always happy and
to pass through life without any mental distress is to lack knowledge of
one half of human nature. You are a great man: but on what do I base
this if Fortune denies you the opportunity to demonstrate your worth?
You have entered the lists at the Olympic Games, but you are the only
competitor: you win the crown, but the victory is not yours; I
congratulate you, but not as a brave man, rather as one who has gained
the office of consul or praetor: it is your personal standing that has
been enhanced. I can make the same point also to a good man, if no more
difficult circumstance has given him the chance to show his mental
strength: ‘You are unfortunate in my judgement, for you have never been
unfortunate. You have passed through life with no antagonist to face
you; no one will know what you are capable of, not even you yourself.’
For a man needs to be put to the test if he is to gain self-knowledge;
only by trying does he learn what his capacities are.” —Seneca
Physical training is essentially the act of intentionally breaking
down the body with stress in order that it can be rebuilt stronger and
better than before. Without this stress, no improvement can take place.
In weightlifting, the stressor is the weight to be lifted. A lifter
essentially pits himself against gravity as he tries to move a barbell
off the floor, or raise himself up when it’s sitting on his shoulders.
Gravity is the opponent to be overcome; the lifter must struggle to
resist its force — hence the name, “resistance training.”
Just as the body needs to confront an opposing force in order to
grow, so does the soul. In this case, the antagonists are internal: our
sins and weaknesses. It’s Soul vs. Lust. Soul vs. Selfishness. Soul vs.
Self-Pity. Soul vs. Envy. It’s a contest between the best parts of
ourselves and the worst.
Our souls also grapple with external combatants in the form of events
and circumstances beyond our control — hardships and difficulties we
are forced to face. The mere existence of these obstacles does not
necessarily strengthen the soul or incur automatic benefits, however.
Rather, the
attitude we take towards hardships matters, and determines their effect.
In his
Discourses,
Epictetus responds to a hypothetical student who wants to know if he is
making progress in following the Stoic way. The philosopher says that
if he were talking to an athlete who had the same question, he would ask
the athlete to show him his shoulders. If the athlete instead responded
by showing the weights he had been lifting, Epictetus says he would
reply that he didn’t ask to see the athlete’s weights, but his
shoulders. What’s
important is not that a man has access to gym equipment, but that he is
using it properly, and the proof of this is in the embodied pudding —
in the size and strength of his muscles.
In the same way, if you want to know if the soul is improving, you
cannot look to the mere presence of difficulties in your life, but how
you are facing them, using them. You can know if you’re making progress
by the ways you can flex your spiritual muscles, “how you exercise
pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose
and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not.”
What emerges from the struggle against inner and outer demons, from
the stress of pushing back against our flaws and frailties, is the
development of character. The more we resist the gravitational force of
our appetites, the stronger and more iron-clad our character becomes.
