The Right Use of Will
March 7, 2019
By Steve Beckow
The recent health challenge that I went through was extremely painful when it was happening. Let me stop there. TMI, TMI. (1)
It had numerous effects on me.
Don’t forget I had pain from my chest area already and then additional pain from my abdomen. And somehow pain drains the energy away. For whatever reason, I only had energy to stagger around the apartment.
It drove me to seek comfort from the Mother. There was no one else to turn to in my condition. That connection was made and I feel it even as we speak.
Just as they say, pain can be a road to God. And often is, I imagine.
That’s one positive benefit.
Pain was also an amazing clarifier.
Distractions and unimportant matters dropped away in the face of it. Amazing how the head clears and the attention focuses. I wish I could be that way without the pain.
But in fact I am. And that’s one thing I realized from this experience. We tend to leave out of the conversation the thing which missing, undoes all our efforts: the will.
I don’t clear my head and focus in because I don’t choose to. I don’t have the will to do it. I’m “willing” something else – whatever it was I did. That’s the basic truth of the matter.
And if I do have the will and do choose, my commitment can be weak. I make the effort and then stop. I’m therefore willing to stop.
We speak about “taking personal responsibility,” which is an important aspect of will. But do we increase the magnification further and look at the choice to exert the will or not to?
If we agree so far, then how we create our own world becomes clearer. We act on certain matters and don’t on others and little by little we create a world of own choosing from it. Our outer world mirrors our inner reality.
Just as ceratin sea creatures build a wall out of individual grains of sand, so we build our walls one act at a time.
Let’s leave aside the outer world for a moment. Let’s look at the inner world of our thoughts and feelings. At present, we allow our thoughts and feelings to lead us, and overlook the will. Or pretend we do. But in the end it’s the will that decides the matter.
That’s the secret, I think, of the discipline of self-command. It’s what the Buddha was pointing at when he talked of “the right use of will.”
The truth is so amazingly simple. I think that we tend at times to refuse to see it. Or the blazing rush of our lives makes our attention a mite shallow, too shallow to see the truth. Well, it was that way for me anyways.
I make the world out of the acts I do every day. I act in ways that I will myself to act. The world that results is the creation of all of my acts. If I’m not happy with the world I created, talk to management.
Footnotes
(1) Too much information.
Source: Golden Age of Gaia
March 7, 2019
By Steve Beckow
The recent health challenge that I went through was extremely painful when it was happening. Let me stop there. TMI, TMI. (1)
It had numerous effects on me.
Don’t forget I had pain from my chest area already and then additional pain from my abdomen. And somehow pain drains the energy away. For whatever reason, I only had energy to stagger around the apartment.
It drove me to seek comfort from the Mother. There was no one else to turn to in my condition. That connection was made and I feel it even as we speak.
Just as they say, pain can be a road to God. And often is, I imagine.
That’s one positive benefit.
Pain was also an amazing clarifier.
Distractions and unimportant matters dropped away in the face of it. Amazing how the head clears and the attention focuses. I wish I could be that way without the pain.
But in fact I am. And that’s one thing I realized from this experience. We tend to leave out of the conversation the thing which missing, undoes all our efforts: the will.
I don’t clear my head and focus in because I don’t choose to. I don’t have the will to do it. I’m “willing” something else – whatever it was I did. That’s the basic truth of the matter.
And if I do have the will and do choose, my commitment can be weak. I make the effort and then stop. I’m therefore willing to stop.
We speak about “taking personal responsibility,” which is an important aspect of will. But do we increase the magnification further and look at the choice to exert the will or not to?
If we agree so far, then how we create our own world becomes clearer. We act on certain matters and don’t on others and little by little we create a world of own choosing from it. Our outer world mirrors our inner reality.
Just as ceratin sea creatures build a wall out of individual grains of sand, so we build our walls one act at a time.
Let’s leave aside the outer world for a moment. Let’s look at the inner world of our thoughts and feelings. At present, we allow our thoughts and feelings to lead us, and overlook the will. Or pretend we do. But in the end it’s the will that decides the matter.
That’s the secret, I think, of the discipline of self-command. It’s what the Buddha was pointing at when he talked of “the right use of will.”
The truth is so amazingly simple. I think that we tend at times to refuse to see it. Or the blazing rush of our lives makes our attention a mite shallow, too shallow to see the truth. Well, it was that way for me anyways.
I make the world out of the acts I do every day. I act in ways that I will myself to act. The world that results is the creation of all of my acts. If I’m not happy with the world I created, talk to management.
Footnotes
(1) Too much information.
Source: Golden Age of Gaia
The Right Use of Will | Steve Beckow
![The Right Use of Will | Steve Beckow]()
Reviewed by TerraZetzz
on
3/07/2019 11:41:00 AM
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