Soul balk is the condition where you tell yourself to do something and your self simply refuses to do it.

Soul balk is not exhaustion. Exhaustion is where you’ve used yourself up. Soul balk is a self’s refusal to be used for something it cannot recognize as its proper purpose.

Soul balk might be a lack of self-discipline. It might. But it also might be a lack of internalization of other-discipline — other-discipline that is paying insufficient attention to what the self needs to connect with its own resources and live a self-sustaining life.

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Soul balk is not a state where the self knows its purpose, and sees a mismatch between this purpose and what is required of it. There is no “yes” against which a “no” is visible, and the absence of a positive is felt as a painful dullness that undermines pursuit of anything except moving away from what occupies it, loads it down and dulls it further.

It might be best to see soul balk as a sort of negative faith that conserves and preserves one’s soul for when its purpose is finally encountered.