Self-mastery and self-regulation – 10

Discovery and development of the will (Self-identification III)

Awareness, as it is understood in Psychosynthesis, is awareness in action.

Growing self-consciousness has several positive consequences allows us:

  • to find in ourselves a point of reference,
  • to experience a deeper sense of identity
  • to develop a more encompassing and objective view of our inner life
  • to experience more personal autonomy
  • and, most importantly, opens space for our will to manifest in our actions (Ferrucci, 1982)

Thus, the emergence of the “I”, finding our own centre, means also discovering our will: realising that we have a direction in life, that we can choose our goals consciously and freely, and that we can reach towards them (Rosselli, 2000). The essential experience of the will consist in realising the unity between personal self and will, feeling, in other words, that we are an “I-that-wills”.

Awareness, as it is understood in Psychosynthesis,
is awareness in action.

Assagioli (1973, p. 9) maintains that “the discovery of the will in oneself, and even more the realisation that the “I” and the will are intimately connected, may come as a real revelation which can change, often radically, a person’s self-awareness and their whole attitude towards themselves, other people, and the world. They perceive themselves as “living subjects” endowed with the power to choose, to relate, to bring about changes in their own personality, in others, in circumstances. This enhanced awareness, this “awakening” and vision of new, unlimited potentialities for inner expansion and outer action, gives a new feeling of confidence, security, joy – a sense of wholeness.”

It is clear from what has been said so far that the will has nothing to do with duty, obligation or with the repression of any part of us. The will, in Psychosynthesis, is not harsh or effortful, nor does it encourage an illusory attitude of omnipotence.

“It is not something rigid, giving orders and imposing prohibitions. Instead it has an essentially regulatory function. An apt analogy may be that of the conductor, who does not play any instrument himself but directs the players of the various instruments”

(S. Miller, The will: interview with R. Assagioli, Intellectual Digest, 1972).

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