… is bringing clarity and consciousness in all parts of our willpower:
- bringer hidden will-currents into conscious awareness,
- discovering the deeper inner will,
- discerning the difference between the outer ego will, and the deeper will of the Core Being,
- reconcile opposite will-currents,
- allowing negative will-currents to transform into positive will-currents,
- letting immature will-currents grow into maturity,
- harmonizing will-currents with the rational mind and emotions,
- surrendering the superficial ego will-current to the deeper inner will-current.
One tool for bringing clarity in our will current is offered to humanity by Frans Veldman, the founder of haptonomy. It can be of practical use for decision making when we need to gain more self-awareness of what we want. However, it does not systematically sort out all of the above-mentioned aspects.
To sort out our will-power on all levels, one needs to practice IP meditations and do deep personal process work. Qualified IP practitioners can help you with that.
Several Pathwork lectures (No. 16, 18, 29, 43, 64, 103, 104, 165, and 186) offer a precise as well as a profound perspective to clear out our will currents. Here below you find som some paragraphs from lecture No. 103.
Now let us turn to the subject of will. We have discussed it in the past from many different points of view: self‑will, the outer and the inner will, various manifestations of healthy and unhealthy will power. In order to recapitulate and give you a little more clarity on the subject, let us now see some of the negative manifestations and the reasons why the will does not function properly.
(1) When you are unaware of what you want, even if what you want is in itself healthy and productive, the very fact that you are unaware of it must produce a negative result. Why? not because of the wish itself but because for some reason you found it necessary to hide it, it causes a negative condition. Such unawareness that once was deliberate really amounts to self‑deception. You want something. Yet you feel what you want is wrong, so you try to believe that you do not want it. Outwardly you pretend to yourself and to the world that you do not want what inwardly you want. This then is pretense, self‑deception. And it is this that causes the destructive result, not the quality of the wish itself, whether or not the wish is morally acceptable or not. It is the broken awareness with all its connotations that is responsible. Thus you do not want what you want. And such are the disclosures that many of you have found. You are so unsure of yourself and of your own right that you suppress and ultimately repress your wish capacity, your will power. You may transform it so that it reappears in the form of a compromise solution, but this unclarity causes a thick haze in your psyche that is an unhealthy climate and that hinders expression in life for you. If it is an unhealthy wish, you cannot cope with it because you are no longer aware of its existence. But it may very well be that it is a very healthy wish which you do not allow into consciousness because you wish to comply with standards superimposed by your society, by public opinion ‑‑ or what you think they are. Thus you may force yourself into something that is by far inferior to your own will coming out of your real self. The reason for doing so is purely negative. It is the lack of courage to be yourself, the exaggerated need to please, or any number of other reasons that you know from past lectures and from your work. Therefore a productive wish proves to be unproductive or even destructive at times, if you are unaware of it.
(2) Another reason why will power or wish capacity becomes unproductive is that you are split in your direction. I do not have to go into this anymore. We have discussed it at length. If your will moves partly into one direction and partly into another, you will experience a very negative result. You will be stymied in your efforts and will experience failure and frustration. Often you may erroneously believe that this is due to moralistic reasons. But it is not so. Both directions may be morally adequate, but the fact that you are not at one with yourself produces what unconsciously you may consider as punishment.
(3) As I have already said in this lecture, if your will is too strong so that it does not consider the obstacles, nor respect other people’s inclinations; if it does not take into account the reality of the other person, whether or not this is welcomed and desired by you; if the strength of the wish is stronger than reality warrants, then you defeat your purpose.
(4) A fourth reason is too little will. If you are resigned and withdrawn, become apathetic and are too fearful to want to lead a meaningful life; if you do not dare to do what is necessary to produce such a meaningful life for yourself, but wait for some authority to give it to you, then you cripple your will power and wish capacity.
All four of these aspects prohibit a healthy, relaxed, steady flow of your will and therefore of your wish capacity. Here again is a topic that brings so much confusion because you always tend to regard something as right or wrong, good or bad. So many theories have come into existence ‑‑ spiritual, religious, philosophical, or psychological theories. There is the school of thought that says you must not go for results in order to have peace. You must not have any will power. You must let go. And there is the other school of thought that says without will there can be no life, no fulfillment. Do you not realize, my friends, that both of these apparently opposite views are correct. And both can be wrong. So many times, I have shown you such confusions where opposite points of view are both right and can also both be destructive and unproductive. If your will falls under any of those categories I mentioned, if it is strained, if it is governed by immature motives, if you are unaware of it, if it is split, if it is compulsive and too eager, then it is very true to say, let go, relax your self‑will. Find out the unifying forces that lie underneath the split of your will so that gradually it may grow together into one stream. But on the other hand, if your will does not function at all, or insufficiently, how can you grow? You do need the will to grow, to live, to love. And yet you do not, on another level. As I have said earlier, you cannot use direct will power to make yourself feel what you do not feel, even though you may want to. But you need your will to observe yourself in candor and without self‑deception, whereupon your capacity for loving and living grows automatically.
If you truly want good relationships, you have to want to have them, without strain and without an immediate result. You must not rush for a particular result, bound in time, limited in kind to your own choosing. A relationship includes others, and they too have to be considered, not only you. If such consideration is not given, then you nullify the relationship’s existence. Whether such consideration applies to outer and obvious manifestations or whether it concerns hidden, emotional tendencies and attitudes does not make the slightest difference. The latter is only much harder to determine. This then points to the proper combination of wanting and willing, while letting free. This means the self‑will is going out, while the good will remains. This good will has to be cultivated anew, over and over. In it, you let go of self‑will by giving tolerance to the how and when. In it, you cultivate awareness of your own disturbing currents, as also to the needs and will of the other, while remaining attuned to the fluctuations and changes. For, nothing that is alive remains static. Only a free spirit can be alert and relaxed enough to follow with the stream of eternally changing conditions emanating from others, from yourself, from life’s circumstances. In order to do so, your healthy will has to function. You cannot be will‑less, but you must be without the rigid confinements of self‑will that dictate the details. This then describes the difference between the outer and the inner will. The inner will comes from your real self, which is intrinsically free. If you allow its freedom, it will be without the confinement of self‑will.