Chapter 15 - Will and Wills

Nothing before, nothing behind;
The Steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find
The Rock beneath.

-- Whittier

In a copy of an old magazine is an article entitled, “What New Thought Women Say of the Will, by an Old Thought Woman,” who fails to sign her name. This article is about as cross-eyed as anything I have read recently. It amuses me. And yet it touches a responsive chord of stored memories, and I sympathize.

That is, I am enabled for the moment to re-enter the same-pathy or condition this woman describes Every step she has passed through I, too, have experienced. But I have passed through it all and emerged upon the spiral above, where I am enabled to understand the phenomena of wills in relation to each other, and in relation to the whole.

Briefly stated, “The Old Thought Woman’s” idea is, “The will is a part of that delusive mortal mind. It is the executor of the world, the flesh and the Devil. ‘God's will’ is a fiction.” “Devil” with a capital D, mind you. Then she goes on to tell how willful she used to be; she dominated her relatives, friends and enemies alike, and even the cats and dogs. “There was scarcely no way in which will can dominate that I did not work to its limits,” she says; “I intended to marry without declaring my views, get the property and support, but refuse all sensuality,” because she was “adamant against childbearing.” Decidedly a disagreeable person, I should say. I don’t wonder that she was “cordially hated by those whom she hypnotized and outwitted”; I don’t wonder “pain, anguish, hatred, suffering, disappointment followed in the wake of every triumph.” Do you? Then she grew sick of it all and “gave up all will.” “In a complete loss of will, self-will, God’s will, all kinds of will, there is a miraculous condition of affairs,” she says. Then she goes on to preach Christ’s teaching of non-resistance.

Every positive character, and probably every negative one, too, passes sometime through an experience identical with this woman’s. The more pronounced the character the more definite is the change from self-will to self-abnegation.

A negative character will hang on eternally to his self-will, and the giving up of his will causes him all the anguish this woman experienced as a result of using her will.

Now without pointing out to you the mistakes of this writer let me give you my statement of will, its nature and uses; after which I think you will see the Old Thought Woman’s understanding needs to grow a bit.

Will is the motive, electric force of the universe; the only force there is.

Will is the energy which forms worlds and swings them in space; which dissolves all forms and creates anew.

Will is attraction and gravitation.

Will is love, and will is hate.

Will is the passion, the active force, of the One.

Will is omnipresent and omnipotent.

Without will there could be only stagnation, death, annihilation.

But there is Will; and there are wills; there is all-pervading, all-evolving Will, and there are countless little tossing, warring wills. There is one great ocean, and there are countless little, tossing wavelets, each taken up with its own aims to rise above its neighbors.

On the unseen side Will is one, the only One. On the seen side there are only wills, beginning and ending within the personal circle.

Will is the executive of omniscience.

Will is the executive of universal, all-evolving Wisdom. “Will of God” is no fiction; it is the one immutable, inexorable FACT which personal wills ceaselessly and uselessly toss themselves against, to their undoing and the increase of knowledge.

All-Wisdom and All-Will are the one great ocean, from which personal wisdom and will are tossed, and to which all return.

Will and Wisdom are all there is in the universe; they are one and inseparable. Water is correctly formulated as W2W, instead of H2O; and every atom in the universe, seen or unseen, is simply Will in definite and varying proportion to Wisdom. The less Wisdom in the mixture the more foolishly will the Will be exercised.

Will is used commonly as a name for volition exercised by the conscious 5 per cent mind. The individual reasons from his own narrow view and sets his will to execute his finite judgments.

For the time, he sets his judgment up as infallible, grits his teeth, clinches his fists and drives through; -- until he comes slam up against Universal Will.

It is as if one of your hands set up a judgment of its own and attempted to force the other hand to move after his pattern. Your right hand sees and judges for a right hand, but not for a left hand.

Just so with this Old Thought Woman; she set up her judgment and attempted to bring relatives, friends, enemies, animals, under subjection.

Under subjection to what? -- her will? No -- under subjection to her judgments. Her will was simply the executive -- the sheriff’s posse. Having a strong will she had her way in many cases, where a less determined individual would have held just as severe judgments without having the will to execute them.

Was her will “evil,” a “delusion”? No. But her wisdom was a minus, a personal, quantity and her will thereby misdirected.

I am a very strong willed woman and I glory in it. But the time was when I made all kinds of a chump of myself by setting up my judgment for other people’s guidance, and sending my will to execute my judgments, willy-nilly on the other fellow's part.

My will was first class; likewise my intention; but my judgment was exceedingly narrow and crude. I got into all kinds of hot water, just as this Old Thought Woman did; and finally I couldn’t stand it any longer.

I “went to the Lord.'” I prayed and agonized and humbled myself -- as I needed to. The trouble with me was that I had not learned yet that my judgments were not the best on earth and my will [was not] the only executive.

All these failures on my part made me look at last for higher judgments and mightier will.

Among men I could not find them. Not a writer or lecturer or friend but showed me plainly that his judgments were as wry and his will as circumscribed as my own. So I turned to the unseen and unbelieved-in, but greatly needed and longed for God. I “gave up my will” -- I said, “Not my will but thine be done.”

It was hard to do, but being a strong willed woman I did it and did it well. I lived daily with Jesus in that sublime “Sermon on the Mount.”

Of course “I found peace.” Having laid aside all personal aims and ambitions and given up all efforts to make myself or the world better, I found peace.

An Indian lying full length in his canoe, which is floating softly and surely down the broad Columbia toward the ocean, is an emblem of peace.

The individual who wakes up at last to the fact that what he has been tearing himself in tatters trying to accomplish is already being accomplished by a broad river of Will of which his own will is but a wavelet, finds himself embodying peace.

“He that loseth his life shall find it.” He that loseth his will shall find it -- for the first time. I thought I was giving up my will, when it was only my judgments I gave up. And I gained in return the entire will of the universe. I changed my point of view -- that was all. I had been seeing countless myriads of striving, tortured individuals, each warring in chaos to bring order according to his judgments.

Now I saw God as the animating soul and will and wisdom working in and through and by these striving ones.

From a formless wavelet striving to get up, I became the Indian, resting, realizing the mighty Will underneath me that carried me unerringly in the right direction even when I did nothing.

I rested and let the All-Will carry me and everybody else. At times it seemed that I must spring up and make this one or that one go right or do right. But I used my will on myself and kept hands off.

I could not see that the All-Will was bringing this out right; but I had made such a miserable failure when I was running things that in sheer despair I determined to resist nothing, compel nobody, but just trust that the All-Will would bring things out right. I kept saying to myself, “Hands off -- hands off; -- loose him and let the All-Will run him,” until I really learned to let the All-Will do it.

Of course I thought, just as this Old Thought Woman does, that I was exercising no will at all. But I was, and she is doing it, too.

The only difference between the use of my will before and after this self-abnegation was this: After I “gave up my will” I had the All-Will on my side for the first time, and so easy did it seem to be to let the All-Will do everything, that I did not realize that the All-Will worked through and by my personal will.

It was as if I had been trying desperately to lift something too heavy for me, and suddenly my efforts were reinforced to such an extent that it was easy. Or, as if I had been trying hard to shove open what seemed a door when along came one who showed me where the real door was and how to open it easily.

I had been using all my will to make myself and others “good” and suddenly I found the All-Will reinforcing my little will -- as if a mighty power had been switched on to my circuit.

This was not really what happened, you know. It was this: My little will had been striving against other little wills -- as if one finger strove to curtail the action of another finger. At last, in desperation and without at the time understanding what I did -- I let go my little attempt; and immediately I began to sense the All-Will working through my will for the accomplishment of larger purposes I had not before dreamed of.

It was hard to strive against other wills -- hard; and the outcome uncertain, and fraught with suffering and disappointment. But it was easy to let the All-Will back my will -- so easy I failed for some time to realize I was using any will.

Like Solomon I asked for wisdom, for understanding. As it came to me I saw that whenever the All-Will backed my will and made action easy I was on the right track; whenever I felt a sensation of pulling against some other will I was on the wrong track and must let go and rest.

Many times the thing I could not at one time do without that pulling against feeling, at another time I could do easily with that sense that the All-Will backed me. Sometimes the All-Will backed me in doing what some other person opposed, and yet I was not backed when I did the opposing.

At first all this seemed like the capricious “leadings” of a “spirit.” But at last I began to see a principle in it.

I found the Law of Individuality. I found that when I willed to do anything which I desired, the All-Will backed me, unless I foolishly desired to curtail what some other body desired to do -- not what some other body desired me to do, but what he desired to do without interference from me. Do you see the point?

For instance, I desired to teach and heal; another desired me to cook and sew; and the spirit backed me. I serenely taught and healed. That other fumed and fretted, and yet, all serene, I knew the All-Will backed me. But that other smoked; I considered smoking wasteful and detrimental; and every time I expressed my opinions on the subject I felt that the All-Will was not backing me.

This one had a right to smoke, because he was not thereby interfering with the free action of another. But when he tried to put me back in the kitchen he had to use his personal will un-backed by the All-Will; because the All-Will was backing my will to get out of the kitchen. On the other hand, the All-Will backed his will to smoke; therefore, when I tried to interfere I opposed not only his will but the All-Will as well.

Now that is just what gives us all so many hard knocks in the world, dearie. We fail to respect the other fellow’s rights, and in so doing we run against not only his personal will but the All-Will into the bargain. No wonder we get some horrible bumps.

When you exercise your will against another’s freedom of action you shut yourself off from your source of will supply, the All-Will. This is why you clinch your fists, grit your teeth and contract your lungs and muscles. You are shut off from the source of will supply, and you contract in order to force your will power against another. Then you are exhausted, and have accomplished nothing. For if you succeed in “making him be good” this time he hates you for it. And he will break out with more force at the next opportunity -- because the All-Will is backing him even in the actions you judge as “bad.” Remember, the All-Will backs every personal will except when the personal will interferes with the free action (not interference) of another will.

Then, when you attempt interfering with the free action of another you force out your will upon him, just as you force out the breath from your lungs. Then you have to “catch your breath” and your will again.

It takes time to fill yourself again with will, and whilst you are doing it you suffer all those horrible sensations of remorse and weakness and disgust that come over one after one of these tussles with another will. You have all these feelings whether or not you succeed in downing the other fellow.

Oh, it doesn’t pay, dearie. It doesn’t pay to use your will except when you can feel the All-Will backing you.

What new thought people refer to as “cultivating the Will” is simply cultivating acquaintance with and consciousness of the All-Will. It is simply recognition of will; recognition of the ceaseless, underlying urge of the uni-verse which is working within and through the individual to express more and more of beauty and wisdom and good. To use the little, personal will apart from the All-Will one must contract and thus force out his will upon other people and things.

To use the All-Will one must first know he is right, then relax and let will flow through him to accomplish according to his word or desire.

In using the little, personal will one recognizes himself a member of a “multi-verse” -- a being separate and apart from all other beings.

In order to use the All-Will one must first have learned his relation to it and to all other persons and things; he must have recognized the universe, and himself and others as orderly, useful members of the universe.

Only as he recognizes Oneness is it possible for him to resign the exercise of the small, personal will and let the All-Will accomplish through himself and through every other man.

He that loseth his will shall find it one with All-Will.

And after all it is not his will he has lost, but his beliefs about it and its use. He has come up higher and caught a glimpse of the unity of things. He has hitched his wagon to omnipotence and behold all things are done according to his word.

The All-Will backs the individual in anything good, bad or indifferent, which he wills to do; just so long as the individual does not interfere with other individuals. So you see, in any effort you may make toward self-development you have All-Will working with and through you. And if you will attend strictly to business nothing on earth or in hell can stem the tide of your will, and so defeat you.

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control,
The firm resolve of a determined soul.”