Will or self-will?

When we hear the word will, we take it as will power.  We say if a person is determined and dogged in his pursuance of something he has a strong will.  A person may be a habitual smoker and suddenly he hits the brakesor even stops. We call this will.

Our will is a kind of self-will - aggressive, having our way, wanting our desires to be fulfilled. We do not realise that we have so many desires that they fragment our will. An experiment I practise is observing the play of desires in the small incidents of life. I decide to sit down to write a few notes. As I sit down, I switch on the TV and scan the channels. Some good serial is on so I say, I will write the notes later, let’s watch the serial. Watching the serial, I feel a little itch - maybe a drink with a packet of chips would be good, even though in the morning I had decided to go on a diet. Observing everything from afar one can only laugh at the comedy. Yes, we have a fragmented will.

To increase will, we can do small experiments. If we are feeling very hungry, then stay with the feeling of hunger for just half an hour. Similarly, we can practise this with so many of our likes and dislikes. Over a period of time, as our fragmented will starts uniting, we will have a new and powerful feeling of ourselves. Then every thought or desire that pops up in our minds will not seduce us.

What the guru teaches the disciple is spiritual will. That is, to rearrange a negative situation and connect it with a positive idea. If someone insults me, and I am feeling hurt - I now rearrange everything.  I say my aim is to be free of the ego. His insult is helping me do this, as the ego which was lying in the dark has suddenly appeared because of his insult. Now that we can see the ego, we can work with it. We rearrange the same situation positively.

The Bible says Real Will is the word of God, but we can only connect with it by dropping our personal self-will.