Will

Here comes a couple of definitions of the will by Roberto Assagioli and how we can discover it. It is from the articles Educating the Will and Struggle Acceptance and Unification, see also his book The Act of Will for a comprehensive study of the will. The strong, good and skillful will, the personal, transpersonal, and universal will.

 DISCOVERING WILL

To successfully educate the will, one must first know what the will really is. The will is often confused with a strong passion, with obstinacy, with impulses, with external activity.

It is customary to consider and admire, as people of strong will, a businessman who has created a great fortune from nothing, or a rigid and authoritarian boss, or an explorer who faces hardship and danger.

However, all of these can be dominated simply by greed for money, ambition, or the lure of adventure. To know what the will really is, we must discover it in ourselves. It is an inner event that cannot be described and defined. It is one of those fundamental experiences of the human soul – together with aesthetic and religious experience – which are actually incommunicable, which must be experienced individually. Who can explain what beauty is, or how the sense of beauty was born in him? It was an intimate revelation that penetrated him while contemplating a bright sunset, an expanse of ice, the clear eyes of a little girl; or when in front of “Leonardo’s Last Supper” and “Michelangelo’s David”, reading the Divine Comedy, or listening to the harmonies of Parsifal.

Then, this first confused aesthetic sense was clarified and developed, refined by the repetition of artistic experiences, with the study of aesthetics and the history of art. But no study could have replaced the initial revelation.

On the other hand, if one cannot teach the aesthetic sense, one can, however, facilitate and even provoke its awakening by creating the most favorable circumstances, such as the contemplation of beautiful natural vistas and works of art, or abandonment to the charm of music.

It is the same for the will: at a given moment we have the vivid and certain inner experience of it. Faced with a danger – when our survival instinct would push us to flee, and fear would tend to paralyze us – an unexpected force arises from the mysterious depths of our being that makes us take the dangerous step on the abyss with a firm footing, and which makes us resolutely confront the aggressor. In the face of the impositions and threats of a superior or a turbulent mob, when every human and personal reason would press us to yield, this force makes us say resolutely: “No ! – I am reaffirming my conviction at any cost and I am carrying out my mission “. Before a sweet and insinuating seduction that is gradually captivating us, the same force erupts, shakes us and frees us.

In other cases, the experience of the will takes place differently, more calmly and subtly.

In the collected meditation, in the calm examination of motives, in the deliberate choices, there arises in us like a slight but distinct voice that impels us – something different from our usual motives and impulses – and that we feel to be the truest and most central part of us.

Or in the inner elevation, in the fervent aspiration of the soul we come to realize that the essential aspect of the spirit is the will, pure and overwhelming energy that wipes out every obstacle, which by affirming itself is implemented in an irresistible way.

But the most frequent and simplest way in which our volitional power is usually discovered is in action, in struggle. When we are making a physical and mental effort, when we are actively struggling against any obstacle, we feel a special power and energy within us, and we naturally experience the “sense of will”. In these cases, however, it is almost always confused and impure, since it is not only the will that drives us to action, but also a complex of desires, hopes, needs, interests and various impulses.

Therefore, to grasp the pure and genuine will in ourselves, we must perform an action that is not determined by other motives, a totally disinterested action, a “useless” action.

Such “useless actions”, whilst worthwhile in giving us the consciousness of willing, form the basis of the most direct method to develop the energy of will. But it is necessary first to fully realize the value and the scope of the “discovery of the will”.

However this happens, spontaneously or provoked, in the midst of a storm or in silence, it constitutes a very important and decisive event in our life. Will is the central power of our individuality, it is the intimate essence of our self; therefore, in a certain sense, the discovery of the will coincides with the discovery of ourselves, of our true self.

With the conscious awakening of the will we feel richer, more real. A trust arises in us, a new security, a sense of fervour, fullness and joy. We seem to wake up from a sleep, from a torpor, to begin only now to really live.

But this inner flame, if left on its own, pales and dies, or gives only intermittent flashes. It must be assiduously fed so that it glows bright and vivid. The awakened will is in fact easily overwhelmed and dispersed by a thousand ideas and images, diverted from desires, enslaved by the passions that stir in us. We need to protect it, cultivate it and exercise it. This is the basic method of self-education that we can call “the gymnastics of the will”.

One thus understands how a Polan thinker, Ciaskowski, reaffirmed the ideal priority of the will, contrasting the “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes, with his “I want, therefore I think and I am”.

STRUGGLE – ACCEPTANCE – UNIFICATION

By Roberto Assagioli, from the Assagioli Archive translated by Gordon Symons. Original title: Lotta – Accettazione – Unificazione

These three words are the motto of anyone who sincerely enters or aspires to the spiritual path; they summarize the work of the disciple and the aspirant and accompany the initiate to high goals. In the course of bitter initial struggles the flower of acceptance blooms. It is not passivity, but a courageous resolution not to flee situations and events as unpleasant, offensive or exhausting facts; to live them with awareness of their purifying value, and leaving aside the apparently negative considerations and balances of the human plan, to be able to glimpse the constructive work that they are operating in us.

The qualities of strength, resistance and firmness that are affirmed and consolidated in us, shape our being to reach the most daring goals. In this way it is essential to place our personality in absolute trustful abandonment to the soul. But this abandonment towards the superior aspect of ourselves is only one side of the coin; on the other, written in very hard steel, is written – Will.

 It is the Will that, armed with constancy, must support you at every step of the way, keeping your gaze fixed on the inner goal to be reached. It is the Will that will sustain you in the dangerous and dark steps, it is the Will that will raise you when you fall, and it is again the will that will not make you heal your wounds.

This will must always be your brow’s strongest girdle and your body’s shield – a focal center in continuous expansion and growing in strength.

However, we do not seek its development and the “strength of the Will”, if previously we have not sought and developed in ourselves the “force of Love”, because from being a belt and a shield it could become a dangerous blade. This Will full of Love will have to be your companion throughout the whole journey, with the precise aim of eliminating all the burdens of the past, all the elements of separation and obstruction, until it becomes possible to intuit and to gradually realize Divine Union.

Oh! In truth, divine moments in which we will gradually and more and more consciously, identify ourselves with the One Will.

Then, little gem of individual will, who have been precious, you will turn pure white, lost in such splendor of Strength and Will, and you will have found the Source and the Goal.

Unification with the Divine Will is a state so highly developed that it cannot at present be fully understood in its grandeur; however, it is not wrong to grasp the broad outlines of it right now. It is not essential now, because of the long road that separates us from it, to investigate in advance whether in the unification we will preserve or lose our individuality.

There is no previous spiritual stage in the progress that does not lead to more wonderful and wider aspects.

Who tends to unification with the Divine Will loves that Will and opens himself so that It flows in him more and more freely and completely.