The Hard & Soft Will

Every moment of every day we are exercising our will, creating and forging our path in life.

 

There was no map given at birth of how to create our heaven on earth. We have had to make it ourselves, create our purpose, create our meaning of life and muster our heart and mind towards this end.

Each time we choose what meaning to give to our experience, decide what purpose the day shall have. Each time we choose what face we give to the world, who we will or will not be, we create life through our will. We can’t not do this, for we are given an irresistible urge to never stop trying and we create a thousand acts every day to breathe life into its meaning.

Each day we make hundreds of moment by moment decisions of what to do and how to feel, each week we create thousands of paths in our journey of life. Each month a million stories have been created about why we are and who we are. And each year countless brush strokes have been applied to the picture of our meaning of life.

 

We are the magician and through our will, we create life. It is our wand of command and every day we choose what we will and will not do, what we will create and what we will resist.

 

We have been given free will; born from our consciousness our free will is our destinic touch in life. It is the path chooser and path creator. Through the power of our will we create life and give it meaning; choose what will and will not be. It is sacrosanct and should not be given away easily. But the way of the world can leave us with a fear that there is not enough time, money or love to be who we are, causing us to surrender our will to the thousand persuasions that rain upon us each day.

 

soft & hard Wil

The hard will learns the tune and the soft will sings the song.

There was once a father who knew what’s what and how things should be done. He was the giver of order and security.  He was the creator of the well-made plan and the carrier of the list of the things that needed to be done. But there was a small problem, he lived with a child who seemed, to the father, to be everything he wasn’t; unordered, untidy, didn’t have a plan, just wanted to play and have fun. So the father thought the child silly and a daydreamer, the child thought the father bossy, boring and too controlling. They were not happy together.  But also, not happy apart from each other. The father did love the child’s creativity and enthusiasm for life and the child did love the order and clarity that the father offered.

In time the father would see that his weaknesses were held beautifully by the child, that within the child’s company he became a greater light that no longer needed intolerance and dominance to survive. The fathers acceptance of this caused the child to see the wisdom of the father and they would in time, be seen dancing and laughing together. Each one taking turns to lead the other, each one in joy at the others company.

The hard will is used to make the time, create the space and gather the amenities so that my soul can breathe.

The hard will, with all its bluster, noise and action, is much admired and sought after in the world today; those demonstrating its ability are well rewarded with money and power. So it is not surprising that this will has become the predominant will and the soft will has become devalued and unloved.

 

The hard will is great for getting there but not so good at being there. The ‘being there’ is where the soft will shines.

 

The hard will is great at getting there, making the path and clearing the way. Its what it does and it is good at it. The trouble is that it suffers from overrun. It likes to be in control and gets twitchy and insecure with the just being there bit. This can often make life an endless ‘getting there with very little ‘being there’.

I am grateful for my hard will, without it I would never get out of bed in the morning. It has drive, hard focus and is a powerful ally in the doing of life. It loves the practical and utilises the thinking and reasoning to build it’s ‘to do’ list and its picture of the world.

The hard will, by its nature, is inflexible and narrow in its view of life. It primarily deals with the manifest, the seen world and its presence compounds the belief that what we see is all that is. It has little perception of the forces that cause the known world to be; locked in the physical world and the cut and thrust of life, it sees but a fraction of the truth, a grey sketch of life, beyond which exists the thousand colours of the universe.

The hard will is the will to do and the will to resist that which stops the doing. It makes safe the place of our creations.

The soft will catches knowings that exist on the edge of our perception. It has the ability to connect to the creative force of life, to see beyond the confines of our expectations and conditions. Because it is open and flexible it gives us the power to perceive the living meaning of things, to connect and create from the causal essences of life.

It is the will of a gentle dance of perception, an unhurried journey into the unknown. It is listening to the forces that wish us well, a contemplation, a meditation without conditions. It asks only that we know, at least in this moment, that all is ok, that we carry no fear only flavours of gratitude and perhaps a dash of awe that we are alive.

When my mind is joined by the presence of the heart it does avail me of the soft will, and it is then that I can catch the greater truths of life and the inspiration for its journey. This picture can then be given to the hard will for action. And so the cycle begins again.