Self-mastery and self-regulation – 16

The faces of will – with an exercise

“Cultivating the will is a task that underpins your mental health. And it is the task of a lifetime. You won’t find any quick and miraculous recipes here. You cannot acquire will overnight. It takes patience, and also the humility to recognise one’s own weaknesses.”

Ferrucci

As Assagioli (1973) noted, the wide gulf between man’s external and inner powers is one of the most important and profound causes of the individual and collective evils that afflict our civilisation and gravely menace its future. The remedy for these evils – the narrowing an eventual closing of the fatal gap between peoples’ external and inner powers – has been and should be sought in two directions: the simplification of his outer life, and the development of his inner powers.

Among these powers, the primary and most fundamental is the force of the human will, which we can realise:

  • first by recognising that the will exists;
  • then by realising that we have a will;
  • finally, by discovering that we are a will.

The experience of ourselves as willing subjects can be summed up in the phrase “I am a force, a cause”. As we have seen, the “I”, the centre of the personality, is perceived as something that has, besides a static aspect (the observer), also a dynamic, “energetic” aspect, that of strong-will (the actor).

Having thus recognised that we are this I-that-wills, having appraised the value of the will, we must strive to train it and develop its strength so that it can fulfil its usefulness in all areas of life. But we know that the strength, the energy of the will is only the first of its aspects. In order to have a complete vision of the will in the psychosynthetic sense, we must also consider its wise or skilful aspect, ensuring we can achieve our objectives with the least expenditure of energy possible; the good or loving aspect, which considers, in addition to individual well-being, also that of others and humanity; and, finally, the transpersonal and universal aspects, concerning the action of the transpersonal Self on the I.

Each of these aspects relates to a different field of psychosynthetic work. Although, for educational purposes, these aspects will be considered separately, in reality, they are not separate.

Strong will personal psychosynthesis (concerns the aspect of mastery)
Skilful will personal psychosynthesis (concerns the aspect of transformation)
Good will interpersonal psychosynthesis (concerns the I-Thou relationship)
Transpersonal will transpersonal psychosynthesis (concerns the I-Self relationship)
Universal will transpersonal psychosynthesis (concerns the relationship between the individual and the universal aspect of the Self)

EXERCISE

Reflection on the will (Ferrucci, 1995)

Consider your will. Does it ever happen that your will:

    • bends to the will of other people?
    • is overwhelmed by your emotions, such as depression, anger or fear?
    • is paralysed by inertia?
    • numbed by habit?
    • dissipated by distractions?
    • corroded by doubts?

Do you generally decide to do what you really want to do, or does some other factor prevail? Consider each point, then write down your considerations.?

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