At some time in our life we’ve all been told, “If you just had more will power, you would be able to …” (fill in the blank) -- meaning you’d be able to overcome some challenge in your life or limitation in yourself. American society as a whole is famous for urging people to “push on through”, or “tough it out,” epitomized in the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” This attitude is highlighted by the fact that the U.S. has no legally mandated vacation days per year, while many European countries have two to four weeks of vacation per year nationally enshrined by law.

   But is this “push on through” attitude a true understanding of personal will? And what are we using our wills for? How many of us are using our will to fulfill a purpose that we know comes from within us, and brings us a sense of joy to be working on every day? What does it feel like to be aligned with a higher or deeper purpose as a central focus in our life?

   To answer these questions we need to clarify what the will is, and look at it from a spiritual (or energetic) point of view. We could say that the spiritual will is a gentle, guiding stream of energy within us that ever remains in aligned connection with our ultimate purpose. And this purpose is forever a strand of the greater purpose of the universal whole. It is the central, life-giving thread to which each of us can always return and connect with for further insight and inspiration about our unfolding path of development. There is no human being without this purpose, whether the purpose is simply to obtain food to survive or to attain enlightenment.

   Each of us has this will or drive to fulfill our inner purpose, whatever it may be. So if you need to make a living to support your family, then that is your purpose, and you use your will to do what is necessary to generate the resources to take care of your loved ones. This connection of your personal will to a clear purpose is what gives you the “get up and go” each morning to do whatever is necessary to achieve it.

   This connection also brings joy and enthusiasm to whatever you may be doing, if you hold in your mind the link between the seemingly mundane tasks you may be required to do, and the purpose that work is ultimately serving. This is true whether you are thinking about the good of your family while doing routine tasks in an office to support them, or thinking about the people who will be helped by your ideas while writing a book.

    Connecting to a clear purpose is also your connection to your own life force, which in turn connects you to the universal life force of the greater whole. And the more you expand your purpose into greater dimensions of contribution, the greater will be the life force you will have available. The life force flowing through you, as a true contribution to others, creates a state of joy. This is why people who work on complex, difficult projects that are intended to help large numbers of people (often under very challenging or even dangerous conditions) can often work tirelessly and optimistically without ever seeming to run out of energy. The more energy you share in true, compassionate giving, the more flows into you. You could say, “the universe helps those who help the universe.” Of course, you also need to learn how to keep yourself in balance and allow time for rest and recreation to give your body and mind time to regenerate.

    How does the will energy actually work? There is no state of consciousness or experience which does not have its connection to the thread of purpose. Your will is what maintains your connection to the purpose. A useful exercise here can be to examine any situation or state of consciousness you might be in and ask yourself, what is the purpose of this? What am I intended to learn or understand or contribute to this situation or state of consciousness I am in? There is a wonderful truth in The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment which states that we cannot complete or move out from any experience, state of being or consciousness until we have contributed to making it a better place, which is often the purpose of our being there at all.

     Then how does your will and purpose engage with your mind? Your will uses your mind to conceptualize a plan for the fulfillment of the purpose, which means you have to have a strategy and plan for how the purpose will be carried out. This is a function that many people are very skilled at, but sometimes the purposes they are seeking to fulfill are not the highest purposes of their souls, or the universal whole. At times people may need to receive complex and even severe feedback from the universal whole so that they come to recognize that the quality of their purpose needs an upgrade. In business this is called “discovery driven planning,” which means a readiness to adapt and change a purpose and/or a strategy when it has proven unworkable or counterproductive. 

   To be truly successful, the key qualifier of any purpose or strategy must be love. When your mind is infused and influenced by love, it can implement through love a line of action on multiple dimensions which will best fulfill a higher purpose. Love is a vision of the highest potential of every being you are in relationship with, and love provides the energy to help you support the unfolding of that potential in all you contact. It is the harmonizer of relationships, the magnetizer of appropriate resources, and the flowing energy which brings together the purpose, the need it is intended to meet, and the resources to meet that need. If your purpose is to form a group such as a healing or educational group, love is what will bring together the people, resources and ideas needed for the group to be a success.

   Thus the will is a strand and type of energy that passes through and works on multiple dimensions, and has an inherently synthesizing influence and effect. It moves energy from the spiritual dimension of inspiring vision to the mental plane where a strategy is formulated, to the plane of desire for its fulfillment, and then onto the physical plane of action. Because it moves energy from one dimension or plane to another, it is naturally dynamic and can have explosive and propulsive effects. Old forms in a person’s life that no longer serve them may be exploded by the new life that pours in when there is an inflow of will expressing higher purpose. 

   The will also brings the ability to focus on that which will achieve its purpose and exclude that which will not. A person who is using their will to fulfill their higher purpose will dynamically move out of their life all that interferes with that purpose, because working on it brings so much joy. The symbol of this is the magician drawing the magic circle around him/herself, knowing that this is the focused realm within which s/he must work. Such a person will also be propelled forward in their life by the sheer potency and dynamism of that purpose joyfully expressing through them.

   Once your purpose is known, your will can gently guide your mind to orient itself towards those ideas and lines of thought which will lead to the fulfillment of that purpose. It also guides emotion and action to its completion. When this is fully realized, the flow of energy from the higher purpose becomes self-sustaining, leading to greater capacity to fulfill itself.

   In the process of applying your will to fulfilling a perceived purpose at any level, your unfoldment as an individual naturally occurs. The will is present and applied at each stage of unfoldment, however seed-like may be its strength. Once the will is capable of perceiving and applying itself to the higher purpose of your soul directly, the potency and dynamism of your will is greatly enhanced. This results in your shining forth as another powerful server of the human race. 
 

Gordon Davidson is co-author of Spiritual Politics and co-founder of The Center for Visionary Leadership. He is a Fellow of the World Business Academy and the Findhorn Foundation and was formerly the Executive Director of the Social Investment Forum. He can be reached at gordond2@eathlink.net; www.visionarylead.org.