The quality of our senses is everything. Look to the cities and their infrastructure, particularly from the level of the modes of transportation. Observe the streets and highways as people and their vehicles travel to and fro from one place to the next, and imagine this as the quality of the city’s bloodstream. With the right infrastructure the blood is healthy and, as a result, so is the city. Yet the roads must be kept clean and adjusted to circumstances, just as we must work to keep our thoughts, emotions and senses unburdened by congestion and the cracks of inefficiency. We are led to believe we are what we are and lack the realization that all of these functions of our psyche are muscles that can atrophy like any other.

We need to keep ourselves in check as we fall into idleness and loitering. The gym for the body needs to be balanced with a paralleled commitment to tone and tune the rest of our functions. We must work to heighten our hearing, seeing, thinking, feeling, moving and any other point of connection to this world. We are a weaved machine filled with little tools and instruments, all of which together comprise this totality which we name and consider to be one individual. The unity must be split out into multiplicity and a man must treat each part with a special care which suits it best. Sometimes one diet develops one part but not another, and this neglected part holds back the rest for reasons which aren’t always clear to us. Consider the parable of the flock and how it only moves as fast as the slowest sheep amongst them.

There is no need to be negative when we tread closer to the reality of the situation. It’s called sobriety, for a man must convince himself to be content when we find he finds his weaknesses and is granted a perspective which allows him to look on himself as a machine which needs to be repaired, fixed and made active. If one develops the whole, with the heart accessing an ever higher range of emotions; the thoughts thinking through a wide lens and spectrum; the body moving in fluid and elastic ways; and the nerves discharged and relaxed; then we are in a better position to trust what we are perceiving in this world. Everything has to be made to work at its highest level, and so to have this discipline as an active practice which presides over all other ambitions is the only approach which will lead us closer to harmony.

One must understand that there are multiple parts in him and all of equal importance to his general health. Neither one nor the other has a higher purpose which supersedes the needs of the rest. It is in this need to develop everything, all at the same time, that we come to self-development as an artistic pursuit. Every situation and circumstance will present opportunities to test and develop our desire to work on every part of ourselves at the same time. We can always observe which part wants to respond first and dominate, at the expense of the others. There is a possibility, however remote at first, that we can curb our initial reactions and work to bring in the rest of our functions into the game. There is nothing more important than having your entire presence, everything you are, brought to bear together in order to see this world from the widest, fullest, deepest perspective possible.