At this point with all the necessary elements in place willpower naturally arises as a potent energy that drives effort. Our awareness is effortlessly concentrated on implementation of the plan and the deep seated inspiration that drives willpower is always there even when facing challenges. Willpower relishes effort and it is able to draw from the spiritual intelligence of ones soul to come up with creative solutions and ingenuity. In a sense when willpower arises for a particular project, it will most definitely materialize unless one unravels the original processes of desire and determination deliberately. This means if one decides not to want the goal anymore or decide not to follow the plan as set, willpower will vanish as mysteriously as it emerged.

Willpower is a crucial element in any of life's undertakings, whether it is for short term or long term goals, spiritual or materialistic. It is logical to surmise that the more willpower we have the better. However willpower is a potent energy, and when we are working towards a goal there is the possibility of being consumed by effort to the point that we can neglect other areas of life. In this concern discipline limits willpower by time. (This is The Time Limit)

When we master the ability of stimulating willpower as and when we need it we must also be careful of not taking too much on. Willpower is limitless, it is not inhibited by our personal capabilities, the more we want, the more we have to use. However being human, we do have varying biological and ablilty limitations. From this point of view discipline will limit willpower according to personal resources. (This is The Resource Limit)

These are limitations on willpower which we will look at in detail as the seminar progresses. Apart from these, effort for a project also needs brakes (or time-outs) every so often, especially when working with long term goals. This is part of project management, which involves planning to take into consideration changes that may occur in the course of an endeavour. If we do not have these periodic brakes in effort willpower can lead us blindly on a rigidly planned path that may no longer be valid, thus wasting effort. (This is Project Management)

This is why discipline is the pace setter. This concept of discipline is most likely different from what you might have expected from this seminar. Again I stress the point that we are not concerned with cultivating discipline. Discipline in the context of willpower is about managing life itself. The spiritual goal of managing life is about achieving harmony with all aspects of our life. While we are working on heartfelt goals, we want to be sure all the other areas of our life are neither neglected nor do they digress because all our time and resource has been diverted into one goal. If we neglect this balance, from a spiritual point of view our effort would be equal to taking one step forward and a few steps back. Thus managing willpower is about being careful and responsible with this potent force within us.

The time limit is based on the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, and within this time limit we need to incorporate life's chores that cannot be ignored such as eating and sleeping. This limit also dictates that we must spend time in other areas of life such as recreation and time with loved ones to maintain balance in life.

The resource limit is more flexible in that it has to do with our ability. The time it takes to accomplish a task is based on our abilities. For instance if a task demands that we remain concentrated for a certain amount of time a day to keep to our plan, than our ability to remain concentrated, which differs from one person to another, will be a limit. This limit can of course be improved, though it will require training.

It is very important to consider these limits carefully when planning a project. Otherwise over-ambition will be a stumbling block. Honesty in assessing oneself and others within a group (in a group project) in determining their skill set or ability is required for this. In this way time can also be incorporated within a project to acquire skills or improve personal resource based skills. Some examples of resource limits that can be improved are concentration, memory, language, communication and pratical skills.

There are resource limits however that cannot or should not be tempered with. These are mainly biological limits. For instance one of the most common example of trying to tamper with biological limits is reducing sleep to gain more time. Have you ever sacrificed sleep to study or do work late into the night despite having had a full day of activity? At times, due to circumstances, these situations are unavoidable and to some extent our body can cope with it. However if we make a habit of this and do it day in and day out, holding on to the perspective that we will do what we must do despite the cost to ourselves, certainly if we have willpower we can push very hard, to the point that we can even manage sleep deprivation, but then we will eventually hit our biological resource limit. We will reach the point where the mind may be willing, but the body is not. At this point we will usually fall ill, which if seen from an overview may be more detrimental to a project in the long run. This is an example of taking one step forward, but unfortunately because of mismanagement of the time or resource limits one can end up taking few steps back, erasing much of the hard work already put in.

This is why it is important to make a good plan and use discipline to stick to it by making sure we do not go overboard with our effort. If we go overboard with effort and continually break the time and resource limit, we will eventually have to pay back, usually harshly, for the neglected parts of our life. Symptoms of these range from family tensions to falling ill. Chronic long term illness can also result from continually breaking these limits. Thus care must be taken when considering these limits and they must not be underestimated nor taken lightly. Enough sleep, maintaining healthy eating habits, exercising, having recreation and time with loved ones are part of life that should not be neglected as a rule. Though only rarely and under unusual circumstances there may be a need to push close to these limits, but after that, time to recoup one's resources must be incorporated.

A lesser, though sustainable effort always proves more rewarding and less painful than occasional big bursts of intense effort. The "slow and steady wins the race" is a good example to this concept. Though I would add, slow and steady wins the race and can enjoy the winning better than the exhausted fast and intense.

Project management may sound more like a cooperate topic that is better suited for a board room meeting more than spiritual settings, but again here you will see the influence of my guru. My guru used to say that if people behaved in their home like how they behaved in their workplace, that is, professionally following a code of ethics, there would be less family problems. He used to say in a workplace it is considered wrong and rude to shout at colleagues even if you are angry. There are consequences for such behaviour, sometimes resulting in job termination. However at home the same professional is free to do whatever they want to their loved ones, even be rude and shout.

This is my guru, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. He instilled in his disciples there there should be professionalism in all departments of life, not just in ones profession. He went to the extent of teaching us to plan for spiritual enlightenment. He even created a whole new language for meditation that aided in this planning. The language, called shum, allowed us to create systematic meditative goals to achieve, a way to chart our progress and plan for the future.

Making a project out of life and spiritual goals might seem that it would make life rather rigid or regimental, but on the contrary I found that it actually makes life more enjoyable, secure and interestingly enough more spontaneous and flexible. After all my guru also often said "life must be lived joyously". Everything he taught us revolved revolved around this central concept.

Gurudeva, my guru, would say all creative process starts with an impulse, then there is a pulse, which is a steady beat and finally you end up with the manifestation. Before he became a spiritual guru, Gurudeva used to be a dancer. When he taught us dancing he would use this impulse, pulse, creation philosophy to teach us. To break our shyness of dancing, he would tell us that there was no right or wrong in dancing. All you have to do is to concentrate on the music, wait for the impulse to move, which was the desire to dance, but don't dance yet, he would instruct. Catch the pulse of the music, meaning get with its beat. Once the beat is steady in the mind, then move, he would instruct. He said if we followed this method, then our dance which is the creation (or manifestation) would be beautiful to behold as it was in harmony with the music.

My guru also applied this same principle to projects. He taught that all projects started with an impulse, that is the desire. From the impulse will result action to obtain the object of desire. There are two ways to go about action, one is confused and haphazard, that is without planning or forethought. The other is to create a pulse out of the impulse. This is to create a steady beat of action, set in time. This is called planning. With a beat in place, creation or final manifestation is guaranteed. Not only that, the process of creation will be beautiful to behold, just as dancing, it would be in harmony with the rest of our life. In Hindu cosmoslogy the process of creation that issues forth from God is also described as having three phases which are impulse, pulse and creation.

Impulse, pulse and creation is also related to the evolution of willpower. Impulse results in inspiration from desire. The the desires has to be set into a plan, this is where determination comes in. Then the plan has to be set in motion and to a constant beat according to the plan. This is where discipline comes in. Discipline maintains the beat, until we obtain our object of desire, which is the blossoming of creation.

Sadhana is a key tradition in the practice of yoga. When aspirants go to a guru for help with their spiritual goals, the guru will usually give a sadhana to perform. This sadhana can be anything from doing hatha yoga to japa yoga or meditation techniques. The guru will also advise on the beat of the sadhana, which is the regularity of the practice, whether daily, every three days, weekly, monthly, whatever he sees most suitable for the disciple. He will also advise on the time to spend during each practice session. If the disciple follows the instructions, it is more than likely that their goals will be achieved.

In our endeavour to build a temple in his ashram in Hawaii, my guru would encourage us often by reminding us that, "every brick laid in a temple made of bricks, brings the temple ever closer to completion." The temple project Gurudeva started was large in its scale and complexity. Gurudeva wanted the temple carved entirely in India and shipped to his ashram in the US and assembled there. He wanted a foundation that should be guaranteed to last at least 1,000 years. A guarantee construction engineers were generally apprehensive to give, many said that such a foundation was impossible to build. We, his monks, worked on the logistics, fund raising and working with all the necessary people to move the project along. To see the temple construction to completion Gurudeva set very practical goals. He did not set time deadlines, but accomplishment deadlines. He set a beat by putting out a publication every month on the progress of the temple and everyday we met we did affirmations which included visions of the completed temple and how it would benefit the whole world. This is how Gurudeva used the same concept of sadhana for all projects, whether it is to help his disicples in their spiritual quest or to move projects, such as building a temple. As the temple building effort progressed, we did find an engineer who knew how to build a  foundation out of concrete that would last for 1,000 years. Today even after my guru's passing, this project continues unabated following the original beat that my guru had set, and now the temple stands almost finished.

The details of the regular effort contained in sadhana is worked out during the planning stage. When willpower is in place, doing the sadhana should be effortless. Instead, it will take more effort to stick to the time limit and not go over it. Even if we feel a flow and believe we can get lots more done in the same day if we gave ourselves more time in that particular day, it is better to stick to the discipline of keeping to the set time. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly, continuity is more important than getting as much done as possible in a day and secondly, we do not want to lose focus on all the other priorities of life.

Maintaining priorities in life is obvious. We do not want a singular effort in our life, even if the cause is positive and noble, to overshadow all other responsibilities in life. It is very easy to neglect our heatlh, loved ones and other important work when willpower is stimulated for a project. The drive can consume us if we do not apply discipline to it to follow a pulse or beat of a project.

Life is more than just achieving our desires. We must also strive to achieve balance that is so crucial to spirituality. We need to juggle all our responsibilities and avoid neglect. This way we can assure the a state of equanimity in life is maintained. One must avoid being so engrossed in fulfilling desires as if it is the end-all of all desires.

After we achieve one desire, invariably another will come in its place. We will be constantly working to achieve various goals all through our life. Even after spiritual enlightenment, the enlightened have desires, though it is more for the welfare of others than personal gain. One must be disciplined to reign in the enthrallment of a particular desire and harmonize its fulfillment with the rest of our life instead of making its fulfillment life itself. Thus, discipline's role in an endeavour is to regulate effort to the measure of the pulse set in planning.

Even with spiritual goals such as God Realization, the best method is as the Lord Buddha put it, the middle path. In my guru's ashram too, he instilled the middle path, or the path of moderation. He would only rarely allow his disciples to perform severe austerities. Instead he filled our day with practical down to earth projects to accomplish but kept the goal of spiritual enlightenment at the top by maintaining regular group spiritual routines of worship and meditation. Daily, he impressed upon us that the purpose of life was God Realization, he even emphasized urgency in the effort, but urgency for him meant regular measured effort over a period of time. Urgency from my guru's point of view is expressed through the consistency in practice.

Gurudeva gave me a personal advise about achieving Self Realization (the ultimate goal of yoga) after I complained to him that I taught that I did not have much time to spend on my daily personal meditation. He told me, "rice cooks faster in a pot with a lid over it. If you do not put a lid on the pot, the rice will take longer to cook and will also require more water". He was teling me about the fact that it was not as important how much time in a day I spent on meditating for Self Realization. What was important was that when I meditated, even if only for a short time daily (between 15 to 30 minutes), that I was concentrated and regular with the practice. He told me that I would progress more and faster this way than if spent 2 hours sitting in meditation occasionally and fighting to maintain concentration for such a protracted period of time. Such an effort may be impressive but would not amount to much progress and will eventually frustrate and dissuade effort.

Goals in life can be set in time as short term, medium term and long term. Short term goals are desires we want to fulfill between a few weeks to a few months. Medium term goal may have deadlines between one to two years. Long term goals can entail effort that can span decades. Short term plans are the ones that we must carefully keep within the boundary of time set in plans, since their urgency can very easily make us neglect other areas of life. Medium and long term plans seldom have the tendency to overshadow the rest of life. Instead for such protracted effort have the opposite problem of being smothered by the rest of life's priorities.

To keep this situation from happening to our medium and long term goals, it is good to have sub-goals planned into the effort. These are rejuvenating breaks in effort, entirely devoted to assessing accomplishments thus far. These sub-goals can be set in the master plan after a measure of time, or when we hit a set accomplishment; for instance say we want to make $6000 a month through a business, a sub-goal can be being a able to maintain $1000 a month. These breaks are important for the following reasons:

1. They allow us to give ourselves a pat in the back for doing good work. This is not an ego building break, but it is just as important to acknowledge and be proud our personal achievements as we should of others. It inspires us when we reflect on our accomplishments and gives us the morale boost to maintain the effort, which is also rejuvenative for willpower.

2. This time of reflection allows us to sum up any lessons we can extract from our experiences thus far. These lessons are important to reflect upon as they can change the elements of our plans, making our future efforts more efficient and so we do not repeat mistakes of the past.

3. It allows us to reevaluate our plans based on changes that may have occured in other aspects of our life. We may need to reset the pulse if necessary, either increasing or decreasing time and/or effort. If we blindly follow our original plans without being flexible and having the time to ponder and consider other aspects, we can lose the spiritual balance in life we are striving to maintain.

4. This break is a time of reinspiring the ourselves of our goals. This time of inspiration charges willpower with energy. It therefore is important for maintaining willpower for the project.

These breaks can be in the form of a vacation, or just having a time-out from regular routines that will allow for time of reflection or pondering. If this is a group effort, it will be good for the group to have an outing for the express purpose of celebrating a sub-achievement or having completed sustained effort over a period of time. It should also include a meeting where those who need to be praised are praised and the plan ahead reevaluated.

In the monastery we used to have these types of breaks about once every two months. Monks in my guru's monastery worked in groups that were responsible for different departments of the monastery. I worked in the group called the Lambodara Kulam which we took care of the needs of the temple, monks and pets in the monastery. We trained monks to do temple ceremony, cooked, took care of monks and amimals (we had a dairy) health, raised funds for the temple and ran the novice monks education programme. Apart from these chores each of us in the group had various projects we were working on directly with Gurudeva. Every two months each group would take turns to go on a retreat with Gurudeva to a beach side condominium for a couple of nights. During this break we discussed about all the various projects progress and reassess the plans ahead. Even now, I will occasionally take breaks after I achieve a certain goal or sub-goal to reassess and reevaluate the direction ahead. Of course when the final destination is reached, the final fruition of the goal, it is a natural time for a party!

When we reach a state of harmony in life we feel wholesome. Gurudeva used to call this feeling, "the-nothing-is-happening" feeling. This is not a feeling of desperation, that would be "nothing is happening as it should", instead it is a state of mind in equilibrium. Where despite the effort that we are putting in our work, our mind is not stressed or holding tensions from it. The mind is settled that everything is moving along according to a plan and we are doing what we are supposed to be doing.

Gurudeva explained this spiritual feeling of wholesomeness by using the analogy of comparing someone flying to a destination to someone walking. He would say, if you are crossing a jungle in an aeroplane and looked down at the scene below, the relative perception is the you are moving slowly, with little effort. But if you are on foot, having to cross the jungle, you would be working a lot harder but relative to the aeroplane making far less progress. In the plane you can hold on to the consciousness of nothing-is-happening, but on the ground something is definitely happening and it is a struggle. This is the difference between working with willpower and without willpower.

When the 3Ds are in place, willpower is stimulated and effort becomes easy and measured according to a well thought up road map. With the 3Ds not in place, effort can be haphazard and results unpredictable. The goal of discipline in the 3Ds is eliminate stress by making sure all that needs to be done is done according to its specific timing.

This state of wholesomeness also comes about, because, no matter at what stage the project is in, even if it is at its initial stages, there is a satisfying feeling of completion each time we finish the effort according to the regularity as is set in the plan. The sense that the project is moving along well because we observe the sadhana of effort gives us a sense of completion. It is a boost of energy that maintains the feeling of freedom from stress that gives rise to the nothing-is-happening feeling.

If we are feeling rushed, or stressed in life, we can use the formulae of the 3D's; Desire, Determination and Disciplne; to figure out what we are missing. When formulae of the 3D's is applied to any undertaking, the result will be a spiritual life. The balanced feeling of peaceful harmony can be felt. This is living life joyously.

Having explored the intricacies of willpower we move to the next important element in yogic self-development that is love. Willpower and concentration by their nature are neutral to the positives and negatives of life. We could use both these powerful forces in the mind equally for creation or destruction. It is love that checks these two forces from going to the negative or selfish end of the spectrum.

From a mystical point of view, love is as potent a force as concentration and willpower. In its most spiritual aspect love is the power of forgiveness and acceptance; and the driving force behind the ultimate pursuit of yoga, which is the realization of our innate oneness with the Divine.