by Lawrence Wilson, MD

WILLPOWER AND THE WILL TO LIVE

The development of the will is an extremely important human trait. It is also essential for what we call spiritual development, which is basically maturity, in simple terms.

Developing a strong, positive will is also important for healing. This article discusses the four steps to developing a strong, positive will.

The material is borrowed from a set of tapes called The Way Of Mastery series by Jeshua. It is offered by the Shanti Christo foundation. See our links page for more information about this important set of tapes or CDs.

Before discussing this, however, a concept that goes along with learning to have a strong will is taking responsibility for all one’s life.

TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY

One of the most damaging attitudes if one wants to heal is that of feeling like a victim. It is extremely disempowering. One may seem to be the victim of one's upbringing, or of germs or of a tumor. However, the spiritual reality is different. Our upbringing, schooling and many forces in society would prefer that we do not recognize our own power. Politicians love to identify victims so they can "help" them. Yet recognizing and reclaiming one's power is central to the path of healing.

Power implies responsibility or the ability to respond. The healing process requires above all taking full responsibility for everything in one's life. Taking full responsibility for whatever exists in one's life is very empowering. If you created a mess, you can un-create it.

Unfortunately, one has the power to give away one's power. Then one deludes oneself that someone or something "did it to you". This is what most people do most of the time.

One can also use one's power to create limitations of all sorts. For example, some people use their infinite power to judge that meat is bad, so they limit their diets and become ill.

If misunderstood, taking full responsibility can cause extreme guilt, remorse and self-blame. Much of this comes from old attitudes about a harsh, judgmental God or from other harsh authority figures that have become internalized. Guilt is always false because one does not ever know all the facts about a situation. Even if one person kills another, we do not know if it was set up to fulfill the needs of both people. This idea is very foreign to our legal system, but is part of the mystery of healing. One cannot draws conclusions about why one succeeds and another does not, why one is handicapped and another is not, and so forth. All such conclusions are speculative and not helpful or needed.

Responsibility, however, does not mean somberness and heaviness. Excessive seriousness always impairs the healing process. One can be committed without being overly serious. The phrase used in the bible is to be "in the world but not of it". Many suffer with the disease of ought-ism.

Taking responsibility also does not mean not accepting help. Far from it. We are here to help one another awaken, and thus to heal. Taking full responsibility means respecting the sovereignty of each individual and ability of each to make choices. Many do-gooders secretly do not trust the "masses" to make good choices, and therefore they feel they must "help" by imposing their vision of the good society on others. This just gets in the way of the healing process and always backfires..

Now let us discuss the four steps of developing the will that are from the so-called Jeshua material channeled by John Mark Hammer in the mid-1990s.

DESIRE

Desire is the motivating force for everything. A strong desire for healing, no matter how it is felt, for example, is absolutely necessary for healing to take place. The best treatment or doctor in the world will help nothing if the desire for healing is not present.

Fortunately, the human being has a natural desire for healing that is quite strong. However, at times this desire dims, especially as one ages or becomes toxic with certain poisons emitted by cancer and other diseases. This can cause a diminishing healing desire that will lead to death if it is not reversed.

Similarly, desire for development is important as well. This, too, decreases with age and illness as the body prepares for death.

Desire is far more complex than one may believe. All of life depends on desire. To put it bluntly, if you had not desired to be alive, you would not be here today reading these words.

Examining one’s deepest desires is quite important. Otherwise, unintentional desires can take over and cause illness or even death. Sometimes this phenomenon is called a “death wish”. This is just an unconscious desire to die that one is not aware of.

People do not realize it, but at a certain point one can decide they would rather die than keep living as they are. This is actually played out in one’s life, causing untold suffering, illness, “bad decisions”, ill fortune and similar issues. Thus it is very worthwhile to examine your deepest desires.

Changing your desires. Desire can be changed easily if you get in touch with what you want. If you want healing, then you must let go of all desire to give up, for example. When thoughts of giving up arise in the mind, one must disown them.

This is done usually by just observing them and even by talking with them. Remind them that those are old thoughts that are no longer your deepest desire. In this way, you will slowly learn about many desires that most people harbor that are not healing at all.

For example, many people just want problems to go away, even if that means dying to make this happen. This is one way, of course, to deal with issues that are unpleasant. It is called dying to them, literally. However, this is not a healing desire but just a desire to run away into death.

Other problems in desire. Exactly what you desire is important because you will get it, along with everything htat comes with your desire. For example, if a woman desires a partner, she will get one. However, he may be an alcoholic, wife-beater or child-molester if she is not careful in how she frames her desire.

Many women can relate to this one, am I right? So asking for exactly what you want is of utmost importance. This is a task that takes great wisdom, in fact. The reason why is that what you think you want or even need may actually not be in your best interest.

For example, one may desire a large, beautiful home. Actually, one might be far better off in a small house that is much cheaper to heat and cool and doesn’t require cleaning so much or other chores like repairs.

For this reason, it is wiser to ask for guidance about getting a house, partner, job or other desire. This is sometimes called asked for “thy will be done” rather than asking for a specific item or type of person. This is far safer, though it will bring a few surprises along the way.

For example, one may ask for a partner and becomes pregnant out of wedlock. One may ask for work and be confined to bed with “healing work”. However, asking for thy will to be done is actually far wiser in the long run.

Other similar methods are to ask for divine guidance in all your affairs, or asking for great wisdom, as King Solomon did. One might also ask for improved awareness of a situation, rather than ask for a specific outcome that only seems to be in your favor. This will take you much further on your journey of healing.

To help with fine tuning your desires, I heartily recommend the meditation-observation exercise described in a separate article on this site. It will help you identify hidden desires to escape and die, for instance. It will also help you see how you allow your desires to be colored by your past traumas as they are released.

The powerful and simple exercise I learned from Mr. Roy Masters. We have it available on a compact disc and he offers it, too, on www.fhu.com. This is the Foundation of Human Understanding.

INTENTION

This is quite similar to desire on a longer-term basis. It is also a very important quality of anyone who intends to be well. Intention is about maintaining your desires in a consistent way, no matter what happens, over an extended period of time. It may also be called persistence or stick-to-itiveness.

For example, many people desire healing or perhaps money, but won’t learn about healing or money. This could be called a lack of serious intention. If one is serious about healing or about money, one must continually learn and grow with the desire so that it comes to pass.

Consistent desires maintained by intention lead to consistent results. Inconsistent intentions or desires lead nowhere, usually, because circumstances are always changing. One must be able to keep the goal in mind, in other words, no matter where you are and no matter what others may say or do.

This quality is one of the hardest for many people. They want what is right, but they are swayed by their friends, by what is on the news or by the cravings and desires of they physical body.

Once again, I strongly recommend the Meditation-observation exercise and other disciplines to help develop the quality of intention or perseverance. This is discussed more in the section below.

Discipline. Healing often involves developing discipline. The word discipline is derived from the same root as the word disciple. Discipline is not so much a harsh striving to achieve a goal, as it is the honing of one's skill in an area.

For healing to occur, forces that controlled the body and emotions have to be brought under conscious control. Regimens that retrain the body and brain have to be pursued. One may indeed choose illness to learn discipline.

Discipline can be as simple as following a diet and doing some exercise. However, it may also involve years of working through emotional traumas, following the threads of intuition to their sources deep within the psyche.

The discipline may be simply learning to follow one's intuition, instead of being distracted or caught up in ideologies and concepts. However, it may also be learning to discard one’s so-called intuition.

This is harder for many new-age type of people. They must learn, instead, to listen to the wise advice of someone who has been there before you or is older or wiser in some way. I mention this because it is such a stumbling block for many people today who are so used to depending on their wits, for example, instead of reading directions carefully and making sure they follow them exactly.

Healing often requires this kind of discipline. It is about retraining the body, mind and emotions in more healthful ways. One must overcome the tendency to be lax about discipline, in other words, in order for the new training to take hold.

This is not unlike the need for absolute discipline if one is training a dog, for example. If you give confusing signals, the animal will never get it right. The same is true, at times, though not quite as severely so, of the body, mind and emotions.

This is often necessary, since if your intuition were so excellent, you would not need articles such as this one.

Learning discipline is an important skill to master. It is particularly hard for those who had a liberal or lax upbringing. This means that you were not forced to learn discipline as a child.

In these cases, it can seem very demeaning or childish even to learn simple discipline. This is unfortunate. It is also the reason why parents never do their children a disservice by insisting on clean rooms, clean bodies, nice clothing and other simple disciplines for children.

This does not mean punishing a child for disobedience harshly. It is about teaching the child that discipline is a great thing to learn when you are young, so you don’t have to suffer as much later in life. This way one will not feel constrained or “put down” to always have to follow special instructions, for example, for living or eating.

Learning to be a disciple of the high self, or of an excellent guide or guru or teacher or even friend, is a wonderful experience. It sublimates the ego mind and makes room for real personal development. In fact, it it the only way to make real progress in a spiritual way. This is why the role of the teacher, priest, rabbi, master or guru, as it is called in Sanskrit, has been accorded such a high place in many spiritual teachings.

Much more could be said about discipline. Once again, any practice such as meditation, tai chi, yoga, chi kung or even a sport or musical discipline such as practicing the piano every day is useful to help develop discipline. Like intention, it has to do with overcoming resistance of the lower mind and body to certain tasks or activities.

ALLOWING

The process known as allowing is also critical for healing. For instance, it is often necessary to allow symptoms as healing crises to play out as part of healing. It is also necessary to allow emotions to surface, or to allow oneself to undergo unusual or uncomfortable experiences or therapies.

Allowing also has to do with permitting a process of healing to occur, when the mind is looking for healing to be simply an event.

Hints for successful allowing. These are many, in fact. A few of the most important are:

1. Slow down so you have the time to process events, feelings, illnesses and more. This often means do not program your entire day and evening so that you are on the run all the time.

In other words, allow time and space in your life for rest, relaxation and recreation of a gentle, non-intense variety such as watching a TV show or listening to music or just reading a good book. This is an aspect of allowing that is not well understood in our productivity-oriented and goal-seeking society.

2. Relax so that the healing process will not upset you too much. If you are relaxed and have the time, the process will move along much faster and usually much more easily. Fighting it will do no good except to extend it and make it more severe.

It could also stop it entirely, as happens when one undergoes drug therapy often. The body is so debilitated by the effects of the medication that true healing is not possible.

This is helpful, of course, if the person cannot move through the allowing stage. At times, it could save one’s life, for which reasons drugs have a role in the world. However, in general it is not helpful in the long run, for which reason we don’t recommend drug therapy except as a last resort in some cases.

3. Rest more. This will allow processing to proceed much faster, or possibly at all. In other words, sleep 11 hours a night if needed and take naps and rests throughout the day.

This alone is allowing in a powerful way. Relinquish the idea that you must “keep on plugging” when your issues or illnesses are up for review or healing is in motion.

4. Set up a strong support system in advance and use it a lot. This will help you pass through a trial or an emotional time with much less trauma or fear. This means first you must have and know your support people. Call them at once if you feel the need.

Also, and equally important, do not call people who will put down your path and what you are going through or minimize it.

Also, call your support people as often as needed. In other words, use your support system correctly, not just in some dire emergency.

A support system is more than just people. It means have around you books, tapes, CDs, movies, videos, objects and anything else that gives you peace and solace. Keep a list of special things you can do as well, such as deep breathing, a yoga routine, a warm bath with Epsom salts, a short walk in the forest nearby or just getting in the shower, if that is all you have handy. All this is your support system, a vital link in the allowing process.

SURRENDER

This is the most mysterious of the four steps. In a way, it is the outcome of allowing. In other ways, it is a very active process. In part, it is saying that I am not sure what the outcome will be, even though I have faith.

It is admitting that one cannot know all the facts on this earth plane of existence. God or the higher self may have plans for me of which I know nothing. Therefore, I surrender, in the end, to the will of the high self or God.

Surrender requires digging deeply into oneself. Here lie great power, strength and mystery. The ego, with which most people identify most of the time, is but a small part of who one is. Peak experiences or enlightenment are when one transcends the ego part of oneself.

Near-death experiences often touch this vast and mysterious part of oneself. People returning from these experiences are often transformed. Their lives change dramatically and their illnesses and neuroses often vanish. Excellent books about these experiences include those by Raymond Moody, MD, Damian Brinkley and others.

Writers from biblical times to the present have described vast realms and dimensions inhabited by incredible beings, places one visitd while asleep, and so forth. Most people do not give themselves credit for the beings they are. While symptoms may be addressed along the way, the challenge is to remain aware of the complexity and mysteriousness of human life.

Steps to surrendering. At first one usually surrenders the desired outcome of your desiring process. After all, maybe one is mistaken about the goal or desire.

Next, one can surrender all traces of desire itself, realizing that even desire is an ego-based idea, which it is in a way. Next, one can even surrender fear and the fear about desire not being of God or the high self.

Finally, one can surrender all will. This is a very deep stage of surrender. “Not my will, but thine be done”. This is a biblical admonition that is indeed difficult to fathom. What does it mean? Simply put, it means that I don’t know anything, really. I just think I do because I think.

This idea is that eventually, one surrenders it all - fears, feelings of smallness, symptoms and even the ego's feelings of despair. Then, and only then, is one absolutely free to go or come, heal or die and one can be at peace.

This is the ultimate goal of surrender and is an advanced state called by some “nirvana” or “bliss” or other words that are used in spiritual texts. It is a realm of freedom that, if reached for just a moment or two during an experience such as meditation or other, is truly a happy place to live and dream about forever after. This is really the goal of all spiritual development, as it is the highest achievement of the human being, believe it or not.

That is, giving it all up is higher, actually, than “having it all”. It is just that to get to the giving up stage one must essentially have it all. This is a paradox, but not really so.

If one does not have it all, how can one truly give it all up? So it takes courage and discipline to have strong desires, intentions and allowing in order to finally be able to surrender all to the high self or God.

Christian’s call the process transfiguration or being born again. Every religion has a name for the process of transcending the ego mind completely, and with it the will of the lower self.

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