The Will
Hi I'm Carolyn and in my second year in the psychosynthesis course I was in, in Dunedin I ended up by giving a one-hour talk on the Will. Why? Because what we teach is what we most need to learn. And I needed to learn a lot on how I had used my Will. So the reason why I'm writing this article is because I'd like to share with you what I have learnt about our Will, so you too can learn what its really for and what actually happens to it as were growing up.
I didn't have a Will of my own, well I had one but it was a very weak one and after looking back over my life I could see I had lived my life through what other people or society had set up for me.
Our Will is the part of us that helps us to put our choices into action like getting up in the morning and walking in the direction that we want to walk in.
Every choice or decision we make is an act of Will. Our Will is what is connected to all our body functions and our true selves. It's like our motor that drives all our bodily functions. It is our tool to help us direct and express our own personality. It's not something we can see but a process inside ourselves. It's the part of us that wants us to take action in our lives, but action for ourselves, not others.
Its like a seed that we plant in the ground if we don't water it, it doesn't grow and our Wills are the same, if its not nurtured for the purpose it was meant for it slowly starts to die. But we need to feed them with what our purpose is in life, not someone else's.
Now we all have our own unique purpose or path if you like, in life, and our Will is there for us to use it for that unique purpose.
But so often we end up by hooking our Will onto the many beliefs we have grown up with from our childhood from our parents mostly, but we also get beliefs from our brothers, sisters, other family members, teachers, friends and society as well.
We can have positive or negative beliefs that our Will has become hooked onto.
A belief is something we begin to see is the only way of doing or being something in our life weather it works or not.
Finding our Will is like finding out who we are and taking that out into the world, not what we think we are, like being a sister or a mother or a teacher, these are only roles we play in our lives, they are not who we are.
From the time we are born till around the age of 7 is when our beliefs are set in us. Not just in our minds but on a cellular level which goes into the very core of our being and then gets set up in us on our Body/Mind and Emotions level and sometimes our spirit, which you might like to call our sole. And when a belief is set up in us on our Mind/Body and Emotions e.g. 3D level (inside our psyche) we will then begin to use our Will to act out what this belief is telling us about our selves, even if its not OK for us. We become unbalanced within ourselves with these beliefs on a M/B/E level.
So a belief then takes on an energy of its own and that energy attracts to us from the outside world what we believe about ourselves internally. And then as we get older we begin to wonder why things in our lives stop working for us e.g. like the type of people we attract in our lives or the types of situations we keep getting into.
Here is an example of when we are and aren't conscious of how we are using our Wills.
So often we do things in our life and where not even conscious of ourselves doing the thing we are doing.
An example of this is when were driving a car, we just get in, turn the key on and drive to where we want to go and at times we might say to ourselves "Oh I can't remember how I got to where I was going, but I'm here". Can you remember saying that to your self, I'm sure you can? Well this is when you weren't conscious of how you were using your Will.
Now can you remember when you first started to learn how to drive and how conscious you were with every thing you did in the car? Getting in, putting the key in, putting your foot on the clutch, then the accelerator, turning the key and each time being so conscious of what you did. Well when you did that you were conscious of how you were using your Will. But as time has gone on can you see that you don't have to do that any more because as we become more and more familiar with it, it just becomes so natural to us.
And that is what has happened to our Wills as we were growing up as well. Because we have lived in curtain conditions we begin to shape and mold our Will to that way of life weather it was OK for us or not. We begin to believe that this is the only way of living our life and so we have become unconscious of how we are using our Wills.
So once we become conscious on how we are using our Wills we can then look back on the choices we have made in our life and learn from them and begin to change them if there not working for us any more. If were not conscious of our Wills - how do we know if we are using them for ourselves or for someone else - through our "feelings". (Our Emotions.)
Lets look at first what has happened to our Wills as we were growing up.
For us to understand about our Wills and how they are working for us in our lives today, we need to journey back to our past to see if the choices we are making now are what we choose or are from our childhood.
So lets go back to that time when we were born, you see when we were born we can't do much for ourselves so we needed to rely on others to take care of us. And as our parents were usually the only role models we have of what life is about we look to our parents to provide us with the love and care and support we need for us to grow into responsible and independent adults. And as baby's our parents are the center of our universe and so we love them 100%, we believe everything they say and do. And as we grow and watch them, we watch what they say and we watch what they do and how they relate to us and so our Will gets hooked on to their way of being or what they have taught us to believe about ourselves.
We start to believe that this is how life is and we begin to set up inside ourselves a pattern of how our lives are going to be shaped and this is how we then start to express our own lives. But we are not living our own lives; we are living our lives through our parents, through how they have taught us.
We don't know if what they are teaching us is OK or not, we are only children looking to the only people we know that are taking care of us. So as we grow our parents teach us their way of living life which might not be OK for us because we are not them. And as we grow as children we get wounded emotionally and physically which sets up all sorts of beliefs on our Will which then we act out of, so how can we know who we really are unless we take the time to consciously do work on ourselves.
These are all unconscious beliefs, we are not aware of them, but they are the start of how we end up using our Will to live our lives later on in life.
E.g.- Mum and Dad stayed in a relationship that wasn't OK and we end up by doing the same. Or we grew up not feeling good about ourselves so we attract people that make us feel no good about ourselves. Or maybe your parents wanted you to go to varsity because they didn't and that's where you find your self later in life only to start questioning your self is this what I wanted or am I only doing this because that's what my parents wanted? (There are many)
Lets look at now what has happened to our feelings (our emotions) which then stops us from using our Wills to make the choices we need to live our own lives.
Now when we were born we didn't think, we only felt, we felt hungry so our emotions got us to communicate this in the most natural way we knew how through us crying until we got someone's attention and we got feed. Then as we grew into little toddlers every emotion we felt we communicated to our parents.
E.g. If we were having fun we were loud, if we got hurt we cried and cried and when we got angry we let every one know about it. But over time our parents started to indicate to us that these emotions weren't OK, they started to tell us what was appropriate behavior and what wasn't, ‘they' were choosing for us how to be. And you began to get the message that when you expressed what you felt wasn't OK. They were showing and choosing for us how to express ourselves. We began to get the message that when we voice what we need is not OK. This is the beginning of us shutting down our emotions.
It's the start of us not listening to our own needs that our emotions are trying to tell us about. As a result of this we then stop using our Wills for ourselves because we have hooked them onto someone else's way of living.
Our emotions send us messages for what we need but because we have shut them down we then stop using our Wills to make the conscious choices that we need for ourselves.
How do we know it we have shut down our emotions, we find it hard to make choices in our life's.
Can you look back recently in your life and see if you can find a time when you found it hard to choose something, I'm sure you can! It can be anything even something small. (Like what jam to buy in the supermarket) What was the out come of that, did you end up asking someone else what they felt or did you get them to choose for you! Often we look to others for our answers but when we do we end up by hooking our Will onto theirs and letting them choose for us. We fear the consequences of our actions and so we let other's direct our lives but when we do we end up by living their idea of life and not our own. We need to accept the consequences of our actions and learn from them. (We end up with the jam that we didn't want! What else can you relate this to in your life!)
Through our up bringing shapes us into the people we are today. We either end up like our parents or living the way they lived their life, give or take a few differences, or we rebel and go totally the opposite. Either way we are not living our life for us but as a by-product of our childhood. Because our parents were choosing for us how to be when we were growing up, we grow up not knowing who we are and as a result of this we look to others for guidance rather than knowing that we have it inside ourselves.
Some of our beliefs we have got from our parents are OK but there are ones that we keep living out of that are inappropriate for us, our lives aren't working for us because we are not our parents, we need to unhook our Wills from them.
What actually happens is because we have been brought up in a particular way we get used to that way of being and so we start to make unconscious choices in our life because of our past. Our emotions have got so used to the beliefs we have been taught that our Will has hooked onto them and we keep picking the same sort of people and situations to reinforce these beliefs.
E.g. Because we have taken on these beliefs about ourselves from our parents we haven't separated from our parent's so what they do to us we believe we need to do to us too. And as Adults we then look for someone else to meet our needs, because we couldn't, because our parents didn't show us how too. But this doesn't work, because our parents were usually the only role model we had, we end up by picking a partner that has the same characteristics as our parents so they reinforce the beliefs we have about our selves.
We keep playing out of these beliefs (or roles) and doing the same things that our parents did and so the cycle continues until we have a crisis if we have enough of them. Which hopefully will eventually teach us that the only one who can take care of us is ourselves so we can then begin to make conscious choices in our lives so we can become who we truly are, not what our parents taught us about ourselves.
Only by getting in touch with our Wills can we begin to make good decisions and choices in our lives.
We have choice in every thing we do. Once we have hooked our Will onto someone else we stop choosing for ourselves and meeting our own needs.
Our feelings are the key to all this they tell us if our Wills are being pulled in the direction that is nurturing for us or destructive for us and if we keep getting the same messages then we know if we need to change our direction in life.
Our Emotions tell us how we feel and when we listen to our feelings then we will be able to make conscious choices for ourselves. How can we consciously choose what we need to do in our lives if we don't listen to our emotions?
Every time we don't meet a need of our own we stop choosing and growing and our emotions then get suppressed in our bodies and over time we get bored and tired with our life.
Every time we do something that is against our Will that is not our choice we start to turn our emotions in on ourselves more and more. We start to use our Wills against ourselves. And over time our bodies start to shut down, our bodies start sending us messages. Some of these are having headaches, getting colds, sadness, lack of energy and then over time if we are still not listening to these messages our bodies send us louder messages like depression, nervous disorders, heart disease, cancer and more, both mental and physical disorders.
How do you know if you are using your Will to choose for you in your life?
You can start by asking your self do I choose to be doing the thing that I am doing.
Do you ask your self-every day do I want to be doing the thing that I am doing or are you only doing it out of duty and obligation?
An example of this is, is where I have heard many people say at Christmas time "I'm having Xmas dinner with my parents but I don't want to go, I'd rather be doing my own thing". They have still got there Will hooked onto their parents and doing what they think they have to do, they are still letting their parents direct their lives. They have not become the independent adults they need to be to live their own lives and so are still being the children they were brought up to be by not being able to voice what they need to do instead.
The more we don't listen to our emotions the more we start to think instead of feel. Every time you say to your self "I think I should be doing this" are you listening to your feelings?
Our emotions are there for a reason they are like sense receptors giving us information, signals for what we need to do in our life so we can go in the direction of our life's purpose not someone else's.
Are you using your Will to direct your life or is someone else pulling it in the direction that they want you to go in. Are you only using it to keep others happy? When we do this we end up by living someone else's idea of life and not our own.
We need to look at where we are in our lives, is it working for us or do we need to change something, are we going in the direction we want to go in and if not, how do we get to go in another direction.
What is stopping you from making the choices you need to make to get you going in the direction that feels right for you. What do you need to do to get you there?
We all have to be Willing if we want to change something in our lives.
Our Will is the closest tool we have to find out who we are. Every time we do something out of fear, guilt or obligation we are not living our lives, we are letting someone else direct ours.
Every time we don't do what our feelings are telling us we stop choosing and using our Wills to take the action for what we need to do in our lives.
Our Will want's us to use them in the direction that will help us to grow and keep us healthy and happy and only through making our own conscious choices can we begin to live our own lives and become who we truly are!
I hope I have been able to shed a little light and understanding of the purpose of our Will today. Thank you for taking the time to read my article on the Will it was one of the subjects I most enjoyed learning about. I hope it will be of value to you like it was to me.
It was something that I needed to learn for myself so that I could start to listen to what my feelings were telling me so that then I could start to use my Will to change the things that weren't working for me in my life. I have learnt that if something is not OK in my life then I need to change it and learn from that. And that this is something I need to keep doing through out my life because life is always moving forward but that some of the beliefs we have stop us from moving forward through fear of the outcome. But when we don't change, our life becomes boring and has diverse effects on our health.
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