MAN AGAINST HIMSELF
In point of actual fact, it is impossible for the conscious mind to truly entertain an image that is in direct opposition to subconscious feelings. For instance, if we are afraid to dive off a diving board and resolve to overcome this fear, we must first condition the subconscious not to be afraid. If we do not, we have absolutely no chance of diving off the board. We may climb up on it. We may look down at the water. We may command our limbs to throw us forward through the air, but they simply will not respond. The fear created image in the subconscious holds us back, protects us from the danger it fears. That conditioned image was placed in the subconscious by the impact of conscious mind, but imagination and a new conditioned image, free of fear, may be placed there also by conscious mind, and when it is, we are free to dive off the board and will.
Will power itself is a much overrated and misunderstood thing. Like a rattlesnake the will often turns on its tormentor and delivers a painful laceration instead of the obeisance sought. The story is told of the man who had become obsessed with the power of his mind and his will. He believed he was able to command all animate things to do his bidding, and now sought to prove the effectiveness of his thought upon inanimate objects. He secluded himself in his study, placed a small block of wood upon his desk, sat down in a chair opposite it, sought to move it by the power of his mind. Three days later relatives, failing to elicit response to their knocks and calls, broke down the door and found the poor man seated before his desk in a catatonic stupor from which he never recovered. Far from his having imbued the block of wood with his own volition, the block of wood seemed to have removed all volition from him. He never again, in the few remaining years of his life, evidenced any symptoms of will whatever. He had to be fed, dressed, completely cared for. He had expended his will completely.
In deepest truth, will is not something we develop, but something that is developed in us. It gathers itself out of a vaster, more highly developed and universal consciousness and makes itself manifest in us as a tendency to action or opinion that we have no desire to oppose. The vast majority of people in the world are not so much drivers as driven; and the unequivocal statement can be made that all those who fancy themselves as drivers are driven in reality. Will is not ego-dominance as modern fiction and drama would have us suppose. Inflated individuality is not the stuff that comprises the underlying motivation of the captains of industry, science, art, warfare. Rare is the man and wise indeed who rises to a pinnacle of world prominence and realizes that he has been brought to that point as an instrument, not as a prime mover, that he, himself, has been a servant each foot of the way, that something greater than he has moved in and through him to accomplish the ends that have been credited to him. Yet such a man is secure against the onslaughts of both time and change, and just because he is secure, just because he is equal to both victory and defeat, pleasure and pain, so his position in the world remains secure, for he has nothing further to learn by riding the eternal whirligig of opposites by which the one infinite and eternal intelligence plumbs the depths of its own knowledge and feeling.
EXPRESSING YOURSELF
The most important thing that any of us can learn about will power itself is that it avails nothing when accompanied by grim concern. The man who moves in accord with his inner self moves in accord with a force that no will power in the world can possibly alter in the minutest fraction, and he moves joyously. The grim concern of the ego-will is simply conscious desire out of joint with subconscious desire, and where these two meet head on, subconscious desire always wins. Far from exerting will against subconscious urgings, a man must first discover his true self by letting down all guards and prejudices and inhibitions, so that the power that makes him what he is can at last flow through. If the image then revealed is too repugnant to either his conscious mind or the laws and rules of society, then he must set about inculcating a new set of reflexes in the subconscious through a method of auto-conditioning; in short, he must remake his psyche. It will be a rare thing, however, if he remakes it in the exact image of his conscious desire; chances are such desire was false to begin with, having been accumulated in the subconscious through ego-conflict and social propaganda. Each of us is the product of a basic force at work in the universe, and each of us, because of the simple fact of his existence, is an integral part of the progress of that force through and out of primordial matter into consciousness, into super-consciousness, beyond. Only when we are our natural selves is it possible for us to project the power and mastery which is innate in us. Strangely, the majority of humanity lives in a straitjacket, restricted and repressed on every front of existence often knowledgeably so, but always justifying such restriction as being necessary to conformity, and this is the delusion that binds us. The one supreme power and vital mind that inhabits all creatures has not assumed its manifold masks for purposes of uniformity, but for purposes of variety and myriad expression. Conformity of any kind in the development of the psyche and character of the individual should never be anything more than happenstance, occurring only because the true nature of one individual happens to be like the true nature of another. The object all the while should be individual expression, and when this is the motivating force in the life of the person, he immediately increases his worth to society by acting as an absolutely unduplicated sounding rod in the cosmos, contributing his interpretation to all whom he contacts and therefore becoming a much more valuable member of society than the conformist with his preconceived ideas and predetermined reactions and basically unhappy psyche.
In point of actual fact, it is impossible for the conscious mind to truly entertain an image that is in direct opposition to subconscious feelings. For instance, if we are afraid to dive off a diving board and resolve to overcome this fear, we must first condition the subconscious not to be afraid. If we do not, we have absolutely no chance of diving off the board. We may climb up on it. We may look down at the water. We may command our limbs to throw us forward through the air, but they simply will not respond. The fear created image in the subconscious holds us back, protects us from the danger it fears. That conditioned image was placed in the subconscious by the impact of conscious mind, but imagination and a new conditioned image, free of fear, may be placed there also by conscious mind, and when it is, we are free to dive off the board and will.
Will power itself is a much overrated and misunderstood thing. Like a rattlesnake the will often turns on its tormentor and delivers a painful laceration instead of the obeisance sought. The story is told of the man who had become obsessed with the power of his mind and his will. He believed he was able to command all animate things to do his bidding, and now sought to prove the effectiveness of his thought upon inanimate objects. He secluded himself in his study, placed a small block of wood upon his desk, sat down in a chair opposite it, sought to move it by the power of his mind. Three days later relatives, failing to elicit response to their knocks and calls, broke down the door and found the poor man seated before his desk in a catatonic stupor from which he never recovered. Far from his having imbued the block of wood with his own volition, the block of wood seemed to have removed all volition from him. He never again, in the few remaining years of his life, evidenced any symptoms of will whatever. He had to be fed, dressed, completely cared for. He had expended his will completely.
In deepest truth, will is not something we develop, but something that is developed in us. It gathers itself out of a vaster, more highly developed and universal consciousness and makes itself manifest in us as a tendency to action or opinion that we have no desire to oppose. The vast majority of people in the world are not so much drivers as driven; and the unequivocal statement can be made that all those who fancy themselves as drivers are driven in reality. Will is not ego-dominance as modern fiction and drama would have us suppose. Inflated individuality is not the stuff that comprises the underlying motivation of the captains of industry, science, art, warfare. Rare is the man and wise indeed who rises to a pinnacle of world prominence and realizes that he has been brought to that point as an instrument, not as a prime mover, that he, himself, has been a servant each foot of the way, that something greater than he has moved in and through him to accomplish the ends that have been credited to him. Yet such a man is secure against the onslaughts of both time and change, and just because he is secure, just because he is equal to both victory and defeat, pleasure and pain, so his position in the world remains secure, for he has nothing further to learn by riding the eternal whirligig of opposites by which the one infinite and eternal intelligence plumbs the depths of its own knowledge and feeling.
EXPRESSING YOURSELF
The most important thing that any of us can learn about will power itself is that it avails nothing when accompanied by grim concern. The man who moves in accord with his inner self moves in accord with a force that no will power in the world can possibly alter in the minutest fraction, and he moves joyously. The grim concern of the ego-will is simply conscious desire out of joint with subconscious desire, and where these two meet head on, subconscious desire always wins. Far from exerting will against subconscious urgings, a man must first discover his true self by letting down all guards and prejudices and inhibitions, so that the power that makes him what he is can at last flow through. If the image then revealed is too repugnant to either his conscious mind or the laws and rules of society, then he must set about inculcating a new set of reflexes in the subconscious through a method of auto-conditioning; in short, he must remake his psyche. It will be a rare thing, however, if he remakes it in the exact image of his conscious desire; chances are such desire was false to begin with, having been accumulated in the subconscious through ego-conflict and social propaganda. Each of us is the product of a basic force at work in the universe, and each of us, because of the simple fact of his existence, is an integral part of the progress of that force through and out of primordial matter into consciousness, into super-consciousness, beyond. Only when we are our natural selves is it possible for us to project the power and mastery which is innate in us. Strangely, the majority of humanity lives in a straitjacket, restricted and repressed on every front of existence often knowledgeably so, but always justifying such restriction as being necessary to conformity, and this is the delusion that binds us. The one supreme power and vital mind that inhabits all creatures has not assumed its manifold masks for purposes of uniformity, but for purposes of variety and myriad expression. Conformity of any kind in the development of the psyche and character of the individual should never be anything more than happenstance, occurring only because the true nature of one individual happens to be like the true nature of another. The object all the while should be individual expression, and when this is the motivating force in the life of the person, he immediately increases his worth to society by acting as an absolutely unduplicated sounding rod in the cosmos, contributing his interpretation to all whom he contacts and therefore becoming a much more valuable member of society than the conformist with his preconceived ideas and predetermined reactions and basically unhappy psyche.
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