Working through will-power is the domain of the mind, however, it’s highly unnecessary to employ your personal will when you have your life-force providing the momentum to live your natural expression. The hatred dimension in our brain gives us the tendency to be “masochists” at some level or the other, in that we get a sense of accomplishment/gratification by going through pain and strain – there is a “high” that we get from exerting such a force on ourselves, but such a behavior can well cause us to get into an imbalance which can create injury, or fatigue, to the body, or deteriorate our well-being in some way, due to the severity/strain of our “forced actions”. Once you are resistance-free in your being, you are in alignment with your life-stream, and its momentum carries you into your natural expression on a daily basis – so there is no need or necessity for you to exert will-power.
The idea of “effortless existence” can make the mind feel that it will lose this sense of “hard-work based accomplishment”, but in truth effortless existence does not mean that you will just be lolling around, it just means that you will move into activities in an effortless manner, from a place of inspiration, without strain, and work in alignment with the right timing, avoiding unnecessary actions, and producing quality output. Also, it does not mean that you will avoid the ordinary daily chores, and just be doing extra-ordinary work, because there is as much natural expression in the ordinary chores as in creating master-pieces of art. Effortless existence is the natural state of being when one is fully aligned with his/her life-stream because there is no need for any “personal will power” in this state of being, unless you want to exert yourself for the joy of it – there is lee-way for everything in life.
The challenge of letting go of personal will
People imagine that letting go of their personal will would create a dysfunction in their life in that nothing will get done. The Ego in the mind, or “me” thought, in its limited understanding, assumes that it’s at the helm of taking care of its life, as this body, and hence uses will-power to get things done. But the use of will-power also brings in the mind’s limited vision into play, because your mind can’t know the bigger picture and hence lacks the intelligence to guide your life – your will-power based actions could well be taking you in a direction opposite to the direction where your life-stream is guiding you. In fact the common argument of a struggle oriented mind is – “if I let go of struggle who will pay my bills”, as if the life’s intelligence that came up with the creation of this cosmos is too dumb to take care of these requirements of existence for this body’s expression.
Letting go of will-power can well be the biggest challenge you will ever face during this transition from struggle based living to aligned living. It does require a huge leap in faith to let go of your personal will. There is this saying “Not my will, but thy will be done”, where “thy” refers to God, or more precisely the life-force that we are – it can scare a lot of minds to imagine such a surrender of personal will, but, in truth, living through your personal will is the biggest risk you could ever take in your life because it disconnects you from the intelligence of your life-stream, disturbs a natural balance and could keep you from living your real/natural potential. If you see, a lot of your personal will stems from some beliefs, external conditioning, lack-based perception, fear and lack of trust in life. In fact, if you sense the energy behind your personal will, you may well detect a lot of fear, hatred and lack, which is usually the driving force towards straining yourself.
Letting go of personal will does not mean that you will end up a hermit or a recluse in some way, those expressions are just “spiritual egos” in many cases. Whatever is your natural expression comes through when you let go of the struggle created through forcing yourself from a place of fear/lack created motivations. To enjoy the material/physical world is as much the expression of life as it is to express your creativity through your unique talent and skill. This whole notion of “curbing” your physicality through some spiritual ideas is just another negativity of the mind where it holds some “noble”, or holy, ideas about how life wants to express through you. For example, to live a simplistic life may be a natural expression in one person whereas as living luxuriously may be a natural expression in another person – when you let go of your conditioned will, you will always fall into your natural expression.
Letting go of personal will leads to the dissolution of realities that you were maintaining through strain and force, be it a job, relationship, routine or discipline. This dissolution is required so that a new order of reality can come into place which is rooted in your natural expression, and is aligned with the movement of your life-stream – in this place you are in relationships that are aligned with you, which don’t require effort/friction to maintain, you are in an expression that feels passionate/inspiring to you, and your reality is a reflection of well-being, ease and abundance. It’s a totally new way of living, compared to the strain based living that many mind oriented humans are rooted in. The challenge, of course, is in the transition phase when you move from the struggle-based living to aligned living because it requires you to go against a lot of your limiting external conditioning.
Personal will fuels mind momentum
Since personal will is the creation of egoic perception in the mind, it’s only obvious that living through personal will keeps fueling your mind momentum more and more. Letting go of personal will is the fastest way to reduce the mind momentum. That’s why I am never a proponent of “techniques”, except as some initial practice to gain some primary leverage and understanding. All techniques require a will-power or personal will, even those that look very spiritual like “trying” to be compassionate – any form of “trying” is against the natural expression of the moment. The freedom of life is that you can live free of techniques, and will always be available to the guidance of life in the moment – there is no need to carry a baggage of understanding, techniques or concepts.
You must understand that your life force is highly intelligent, and it knows what’s required of the moment, it knows how to ensure a full expression of the potential in which you were born, be it the creative expression or emotional expression. You will not become “defunct” in any way when you let go of your personal will, rather you will sense yourself coming to a place of effortless movement, synchronicities, wisdom, creativity and harmonious expression – a balance gets established without you trying to balance anything. The mind can keep struggling to maintain balance and it never figures it out, but when you let go of personal-will a balance gets established effortlessly because your physicality becomes an expression of the wholeness that’s inherently the nature of life.
If you’ve not experienced what it feels like to live in alignment with your life-force, it’s very understandable that your mind is highly skeptical about the efficiency of living this way. For some people this pointer, of letting go of personal will, resonates immediately in their heart because they may have seen through the limitations of their mind’s strategies and efforts, and hence are open to giving a chance to this other way of living. For others, who feel highly skeptical and fearful of letting go of their personal will, it will just take some more readiness before this pointer hits home. This readiness usually comes in when one comes to a dead end with respect to their mind’s will based efforts and strategies.
Transition from will-based living to aligned living
If you are disconnected with your natural expression and natural reality, then it will entail a small transition phase before you become aligned with it. There is no getting around the transition phase, because some old realities need to be dissolved before new structures can come in place, in fact the energy for the new structures is gained from the energy obtained by dissolving the old structures. The deconstruction phase, where the old realities start coming down (not only in the external, but in your mind, in the form of dissolution of some patterns of behavior, beliefs, habits, perceptions and attitude), is challenging but it also prepares you in terms of maturity, clarity, lightness and depth that’s required to live a resistance free life.
Every shred of personal will is usually brought down before a full alignment happens, and when you are in the middle of this transition (say 50% inside it) any form of holding on becomes too strenuous, and you just naturally let go of your personal will and become open to be moved by life. This is one reason why it helps to have an understanding of what this transition involves, so that you don’t feel so confused when you are in the middle of it, because in some cases it can feel like a total upheaval especially if you were living a highly disconnected life. You will notice, however, that you are well taken care of during this process even if there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion in the mind, when it’s in the middle of it. Though the transition phase is not what I would call the most functional state, because you are in a limbo between losing your personal will and not being totally taken in by life-force, nevertheless you are well-taken care of even in the midst of perceived chaos, usually you will realize this in hind-sight.
If you are in the middle of this transition, you can easily resonate with what I’ve said in this post. However, if you’ve not really moved into this transition or if you are in the initial stage of letting go of mind momentum, it may seem a little disconcerting to go through this phase – because the mind doesn’t like the idea of going through change so much, though it desires the fruits at the end of a change. Of course, not everyone goes through an “upheaval” during the transition, for many it could just be a smooth transition, because their reality was not very disconnected to start with – big upheavals happen only when you’ve been living in a totally disconnected manner. Your personal-will can have enough force to sustain a lot of disconnected realities, so a big part of this transition phase is the ebbing away of your personal-will, and if you don’t resist this natural movement the transition happens much faster until you get aligned with your natural expression and congruent external realities.
its like if your stuck in a river and can’t swim. If you fully let go and have absolute trust you will float to safety. But if you have the slightest distrust or try to figure it out yourself you will surely drown.
Its challenging to find the balance of letting go of will power while the mind does its thing. I will “let go”…..
Thank you Sen, I really appreciate your articles. I am a Buddhist, but have always been unable to sustain a daily meditation practice as recommended. Sitting with others meditating, part of me always questions what we are all doing. The ‘strain’ element and the unnaturalness are apparent, especially on long, silent meditation retreats with forced inactivity and indigestible food. I would love to think there is a more natural-seeming way, a way that springs out of interest and engagement, rather than what often seems to be withdrawal and excessive self-containment. Something more like gardening, which is a passion of mine (I write about it too) and seems to reduce my ego and makes me feel a part of life.
Hi Sen,
‘Effortless existence’ yes I love the wording . That’s is what I wanted all my life.
I had met a few years back with some teacher who thought
he was in deep sipirtual path. He called families and jobs
as FILES. I think he had a point but he was even more
selfish than my 10 years old! When you are engaged with responsibilities
which you can’t walk away ( like looking after your children)
how you bring to your life ‘Effortless existence’ ?
I think or thought I was letting go , I couldn’t care about my fab house, car etc any more
but still I have to feed my kids and give them a home. The reality is out there for many
people out there. I don’t know any sipirtual teacher
with a family and a job. I don’t want to know where and how you live but don’t beleive
your posts comes from family environment ! How can ‘ effortless existence ‘ work people lost jobs,
lost their homes and the banks and systems after them and they have famlies to look after. It could be many other samples but still I like to ask you very same question.
Deniz, the mind cannot know, or understand, what the term effortless existence really means, because the mind’s idea of effortless existence is to be irresponsible, careless, slack, over-indulgent and lazy, and all of this can just be expressions of “fear”. In fact, the mind does not know what fearless existence means, because fear is an inherent dimension in it. For example, your mind interpreted that “letting go” means to let go of the desire for the fab house and the fab car, and basically all this has nothing to do with what letting go means – to shun desires is just “spiritual ego”, nothing else. So you can see how your mind misinterprets what “letting go” really means. True letting go is when you don’t resist what arises naturally in you, so if the desire for a fab house is your natural expression, that’s what you get aligned with when you let go of your egoic resistances. When you try to shun the desire for a fab house, that’s just another ego based resistance, this time the “spiritual ego”. Also a teacher who calls family or jobs as “Files” has a very low understanding/awareness of life, and could well be rooted in fear of physical living, seeking refuge in a spiritual hide out. The mind will only go into extremes, it will either get into a struggle-based living or it will try to be a recluse, both these expressions are one of fear, because that’s the only thing the mind can do, move from fear.
When the mind momentum loses its intensity in you, the mind no longer influences your being/vibration. In this place you become resistance free, because the mind is the only source of resistance. In this place you are free of the resistance of fear, and hence are fully allowing of your natural expression to unfold as per the movement of your life-stream. This is when you become fully privy to the well-being inherent to your life-stream. Life is not a cop out, from responsibilities, on the other hand it actually moves you into full engagement and connection with a responsibility inherent to your natural expression. It’s just there is no need or necessity for you to struggle in order to live a good life, in order to provide a good life for people dependent on you for their well-being, like your spouse or kids. When you are aligned with your natural expression, it’s a given that you attract well-being in your life, while also bringing well-being into the reality of this world.
Your present way of living, which is solely focused on “fear based” struggle of the mind in its idea of taking care of your personal life, is what you can call negatively selfish, because you are not aligned with wholeness that life wishes to express through you which goes beyond just a narrow idea of survival. But the mind can only move from this place of fear. If you want to expereince a new way of living, which is free of fear and aligned with your natural expression, you will need to let go of the resistances in the mind, and be willing to align with your life-force – as long as you hold on to the fears of the mind, you can’t really let go. Of course, mind will always feel angry at the very notion of a struggle-free life, because it knows that it can’t have it – you need to let go of the mind momentum, before you can come to a place of struggle free living, aligned with your true calling in life. You can’t know what kinda expression you will move into when you are free of the fear created by your mind momentum, but rest assured it won’t be irresponsible, you will be living the full potential of the intent in which you were born, which includes taking care of people dependent on you. For some people, their natural expression would be to have a married life, kids and family, for some it may not be so, in either cases, struggle is not necessary. Struggle only implies that you are holding on to some fear-based resistances in your mind, and moving from a place of fear. When you are free of mind momentum you are free of a struggle based life.
When you are living aligned with your natural expression you only lose what’s not congruent with you – if a job is a source of suffering for you, because it’s not aligned with your natural aptitude, then you will lose it and you will find a vocation that’s aligned with you. What’s the point of becoming aware and aligning with life, if it was not to be free of struggle based living? Isn’t that the only reason why you are reading these posts, why you seek to understand life? Because in your heart you sense that there is a better way to live your life.
The pointer of “letting go” is quite contradictory to what motivational speakers teach but it makes perfect sense. I am learning a lot from u, Sen.
Sen, of course I want to understand the life as it is and not have a struggle with it. Even before I start to the school I kept asking my dad ‘ why I came the world and what I suppose to do?’. I thought every body had job to do in this life. My dad sure would know that. But he didn’t…like many of us.
That is why I found your blog and I read every post you write. Since I found your blog I thought my practise took different level. Couldn’t believe how easy it was to catch and watch my mind.
How ever I had so many fears a few years back which they started with the reccession. Or I became aware of failling first time in my life. After so much pain I actually felt fear free since last August. It was great. And when I start reading your post everything was fitting the right places. It was even better. But out of blue last a few weeks has been so difficult. I am really struggling. My fears came back with nightmares. I follow your advice that I don’t run away from the night mare when I wake up, I stay and try to see what was going on my dream. It helps..but I realise now maybe my fears were never gone any where. They were just there all the time and this post made me very upset.
Again I really appreciate and thank for your replay. x
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Hi Sen.
Can you plz help me understand the difference between “letting go” and the “laziness” that the fearful mind settles for under the guise of letting go?? How do you know which is which?
Thanks
Rina.
Rina, the mind’s fears can become a resistance to us taking inspired action, or living our creativity. So one can become inactive due to the resistance of mind’s fears, which is what laziness is, where there is a sense of “dullness” or lack of inspiration. However, if you don’t fight this laziness, and allow its presence fully, you will soon be able to unearth the fear lying below it – and you can then allow this fear to come up, and thus be released. Also, during the phase of letting go, there is a lot intense release of suppressed negativity, which causes the body to feel fatigued (the release can tire the body), and hence it needs time to recuperate – during this time it would require more rest. You can read this post – Reducing mind momentum is the key – where I talk about the fact that this phase of detox is a phase when you can’t feel fully functional because the body needs time to recuperate from the release. So instead of fighting your body and forcing it to be active, you need to allow it the freedom to recuperate, trusting whatever needs to be done will get done from a place of inspiration. Once this release is done with, there is very little resistance in your body, and hence you feel aligned with the inspiration of your life-stream thus becoming fully active and engaged with your natural expression.
Thank you, that makes sense. I just feel that everything I’ve dOne so far in my life has been out of the fear of staying stagnant. So I dove into big things and projects that once in them I had to carry them
Out till the end. I was always “pushing” instead of
“being pulled”. I only knew how to do “shoulds” and not “want to’s”
Now I’m exhausted, scared to death, idle, and feel completely uninspired, incapable and resistant to doing anything! I am taking it easy and accept the way I am fOr now waiting for the resistance to wane so I can get an idea about what I want and what kind of person I am. I let go of the pride that didnt let me fail because Inspite of all the success I am now living in the biggest failure, that of not knowing yourself.
But after I realized all that and it hit me like a pile of bricks on the head, I decided to settle down and deal with the inner issues first. Wait for the negative to melt under the light of my awareness so I can start a new and different page. I hope I will find the way, because I am asking and seeking. And I wish this for everybody, because I know how hard the suffering can be. I hope this is a process and not an outcome.
Thaks for sharing your knowledge!
Rina.
Hi Sen,
I have a question. When you let go of willpower and allow your true self to guide you effortlessly, I have experienced a relaxed feeling and my days usually go right. But I am an impulsive soul. I need constant for variety all the time. This is true of food, friends and careers. So far, I have used my mind to control this tendency and it ultimately resulted in my getting stuck in some sort of marsh of fear and diffidence. Controlling this tendency to be free and myself results in me becoming lost, to say the least. It is only lately that I have been able to extricate myself from this.
But now, I find that when I follow my will, it takes on strange paths. While it is great for your personal life, it might, I am afraid, harm my professional life. I can’t give it up, but if I start using my mind to exert control, it feels so strange now. Not after having come to this higher and happier state.
Usually, I work out most things on my own, but I’m stuck here. Imagine hopping jobs every year…that would be my paradise, not for the money, but for the variety and joy of newness that it brings. But “practicality” intervenes, and practicality is all ‘mind’ – not “letting go of willpower”. So I am stuck. If I let go and live my ideal life, I will destroy my career ( or so I predict). And if I don’t let go, I’ll only end up interfering with the natural flow of life force and end up back in the marshy place from where I began. What is your take on this?
Hrish, the deal with “being conscious” is that it eventually keeps taking you towards your natural expression so much so that you can no longer avoid it. At some point, your level of awareness is so high that it’s impossible to not acknowledge your heart’s call, it’s impossible to no be true to yourself, so you are left with no choice but to follow your natural expression, what feels like your inspiration in present reality. The concept of “practicality” is just a concept in the mind, it’s a pseudo-security that we learn by buying into a certain model of living. The deal with “being conscious” is that you can’t just stay hinged on a particular fear-based/lack-based model of living, you either choose total freedom or you choose imprisonment. At some point this obvious choice would need to be made within, you can’t escape this choice from long as you keep growing in awareness. So basically, the bottom-line is to follow your inspiration, that’s the only way you can ever stay true to your heart and to your life-stream intelligence, this is what allows for a “refreshing” experience of life within you, else you start feeling stagnant in your being.
Thanks Sen!
sen plz help me now. I have been allowing for 8 months ,after many highs and lows now I feel some stability in my inner being. 5 days ago I watched a movie ‘the secret’ , after watching it a different energy took control over me which continously inspiring me to visualise my true desires its a very strange energy which always feels very homely, so I am bit confused about it that should I let go this insipiration as it will be forced thinking in one way or it is a sign from my life for returning of my focus. I am just 18 years old and I want to be a footballer and I haved recently passed out from 12. what did you do during returning of focus in your case? plz help, thanx in advance .
Ankush, visualizing your desires is fine, but The Secret to me is a very quarter-assed explanation of what the Law of Attraction is. All of the actors in that movie have these big (probably fake) smiles on and the whole movie reeks of materialism. i.e. You want that car, mansion, dream job, etc? Here you go!
Of course the movie is pitched like that, because it shows off a very “extraordinary” approach and that’s what sells. The movie doesn’t talk about the vibration from which you’re trying to force manifest, how to actually do it, or your own personal requirements.
The common skewed interpretation is that everyone on Earth wants a mansion and a garage filled with Porches, when if you were to ask an Ethiopian, he’d just say “food, water, and a hut” or something.
If you take anything away from that movie, it’s just that “law of attraction is a thing”. Also, the way they look at happiness is based off of manifesting things, which are of course short lived and leave you empty and wanting more.
When it comes to visualizing your desires, go ahead, because it’s natural, but don’t try to force yourself to imagine you’re actually driving your new car on the couch like what The Secret shows, it’s ridiculous.
Wow! This article is so helpful. Thank you very much for posting it! I’m in the midst of this transition phase and looking forward to what happens next 🙂
Greetings from Germany!