I think it’s safe to say that everyone wishes they had more willpower.
Whether it’s the extra doughnut in the morning meeting that you know you should avoid...
...or the dishes in the sink that you know you should do but just can’t…
...or that moment when you sit down at home after a long day of work and can’t seem to get your legs to carry your clump of flesh to the gym to transform it into a slightly better looking clump of flesh…
Willpower is critical.
It’s the necessary directive power of the mind that allows you to make conscious decisions and carry them out.
But as we’ll see, willpower is a tricky beast when you’re not aligned. The disharmonics between the energetic vibrations of your two minds rip you apart in the agony we describe as “negative emotion”.
Just like plucking two disharmonic notes on a guitar and then hearing the unpleasant sound that is created by the vibrations of the strings, our two minds make similar vibrations that are felt as emotions in the body.
But before we get into the actual vibrational dynamics of willpower, we need to understand the animal we call “the mind” and it’s apparent divisions.
It’s tempting to fall into the delusion that you are just the single, separate person, with a completely individual mind that is succinct unto itself.
Until you think just a bit deeper.
Where do your thoughts really come from?
Why does it sometimes feel like they are out of your control?
How do you recall memories or create new ideas?
How does your heart beat, your stomach digest, and your liver detoxify?
And most important in regards to willpower, why isn’t it that you simply do that which you decide to do?
The answer is simply because there are two parts of your mind, which psychology has for a long time called the “conscious mind” and the “subconscious mind”.
The Kybalion calls these the masculine and feminine minds, and many spiritual traditions call them the ego and the Spirit.
I like to use slightly more functional terms - the directive mind and the generative mind.
The directive mind is what we call the conscious mind, and it’s what we most often think of as “us”. It is the mind that is consciously aware and which perceives the thoughts and emotions we experience.
We typically identify with our conscious mind, and feel a bit alienated from our subconscious or generative mind.
This generative mind is a mystery. In truth, we are blessed with the eternal mystery of what we are in totality, unable to define how it is that life force flows through our body, how it animates the physical form, and how it can create new ideas that propel us and the entire human race forward.
The generative mind is responsible for taking that which it is given via the directive mind, and amplifying it, animating it, and generating it. We can think of this as the “womb” in which our thoughts gestate into reality, until they are eventually born within us and simply seem to appear in our experience.
This isn’t always as overt as choosing a thought consciously and then seeing it magically appear in our experience, but it does sometimes happen like that.
Most often, the process is much more subtle.
When you choose a thought with your directive, conscious mind, and then give it enough attention and focus to get momentum rolling, then the generative mind will begin feeding back into our awareness more thoughts like it.
So for example, if you start thinking of new business ideas and create enough momentum by giving it enough time and attention, you will begin to natural “receive” plenty of more new business ideas. You will begin walking down the street and seeing how a new business could help someone’s lawn, how one could fix the sidewalks in a town, or how you could create some new awning to keep you dry in the rain.
Literally, everything you see will begin to be colored by the thoughts of “new business ideas”, because you have activated that focus with your directive mind enough that your generative mind is now amplifying, animating, and generating more of it and giving it back to you.
Once those new thoughts are admitted into your awareness, you have the choice of engaging them and therefore giving these amplified thoughts back to the generative mind to amplify them even more, creating even more momentum…
...or to disengage the thought and release it, thereby not feeding it back to the generative mind, and therefore reducing the momentum.
It is in this way that the directive and generative minds, the conscious and subconscious minds, the masculine and feminine minds, are cycling back and forth to each other in a spinning vortex.
Because the directive mind is the conscious decider of which thoughts to engage or disengage, it is the directive mind that decides the direction.
Because the generative mind is the autonomic provider of the power to grow these thoughts, it is the generative mind that generates the substance.
In truth these two minds are not separate - you cannot have one without the other.
Without direction, the generative mind can’t go anywhere. But likewise, without generation, the directive mind cannot move.
However, when they get out of sync with each other, we no longer have one smoothly functioning mind, but rather two minds that are fighting each other.
The directive mind says it wants one thing, but the generative mind is giving it another. You literally get “frustrated with yourself”, because you can’t seem to do the things you consciously recognize as wanting to do.
So what’s going on here?
It’s important to first recognize that every single thought you engage with is given to the generative mind.
We’ve all had the experience where you have a conversation with someone about a certain something, and then for the next few days you see that thing more than ever before.
I remember a long time ago having a conversation about Honda CR-V’s with my friends one summer, and for the next few weeks I saw an absurd amount of this car on the road. I saw so many that it could not be argued that they were always there and “I just didn’t see them”, although the suppressed doubt we all carry will always try to excuse it away in that manner.
This one simple thought, unobstructed, led to a noticeable change in my experience.
This is true of all thoughts.
If that’s so, then why can’t you think of having a million dollars and then simply have it?
There are several reasons:
First, most people are thinking so many thoughts every day that the power of each individual thought is far diluted.
It’s like trying to listen to someone talk in a crowded bar - their voice is being drowned out by all the other sounds, and so it becomes hard to hear and quite garbled. The generative mind is still receiving the thought, but it’s also receiving a ton of noise, and therefore it seems like what you think isn’t having any effect on your reality.
Secondly, many of those noisy thoughts are in direct opposition to the thought you say you want. If you say you want a million dollars, most people think about how they wish they had it but don’t. Therefore the signal they are sending is “I don’t have a million dollars”, and so the generative mind returns more of “I don’t have a million dollars”.
Even if you do actually tap into the thoughts and feelings of having that million dollars, it’s very likely that soon after, you slip back into thinking about how you don’t have it, and therefore cancel out the original thought.
This brings us to the third point, which is the momentum of the cycling between the two minds.
When you first think a single thought, even if it is quite concentrated, clear, and accurately on target for what you want, that single thought alone only has a little power.
But remember that the generative mind amplifies what you give it.
So for the sake of example, let’s say the generative mind will triple the power/intensity of whatever you give it. So if you think about having a million dollars, this might be a level 1 thought all on its own. But pretty soon the generative mind will return to you a level 3 thought about having a million dollars.
If you maintain your engagement with this cycle and don’t contradict it, then you will return the level 3 thought and receive a level 9 thought, and so on it will go.
Most people, however, will kill the momentum before it gains enough speed, because they will start activating beliefs that they don’t deserve it, or they’re not capable of getting it, or any other habitual thought patterns that have kept their lives the same for so long. These habitual thought patterns are creating the same life by the exact same mechanism, as the generative mind is simply returning the level of thinking that they are activating.
But what happens if they don’t deny the momentum?
As the level of thought builds and builds, it will start transforming into action. It MUST transform into action, because action is simply physicalized thought.
If you think right now about lifting your hand over your head, but don’t actually do it, your brain is sending a low level of electricity to your muscles to do so. But the muscle cells will not contract until the electricity reaches something called the “active potential”, which is simply a threshold that signals a contraction. It is all or nothing, in that either the threshold is met and the muscle contracts, or it doesn’t and it doesn’t.
Our reality works the same way.
There are many “probable realities” that exist in the quantum realm only as potentials. Based on your level of thinking, you are increasing the likelihood of certain of these realities. But it’s not until their energy reaches a certain threshold that the quantum potential collapses into your physical reality.
This can be evidenced by the fact that a person can jump out of the way of a car on the street before their brain has time to actually react, and before the electricity has time to reach their muscles - the events are happening synchronistically, as are all events we experience.
In other words, we don’t live in the cause-and-effect Newtonian world we have believed. We live in a quantum world where the past and the future exist simultaneously, as potentials, which we collapse into our physical experience via our observation.
If we return back to the idea of manifesting a million dollars, what we are saying is that as the momentum builds, you will either take action, or deny the building of momentum, because high-momentum thought must materialize.
This is what is meant by the term “inspired action”.
When the good, harmonic feelings of the thoughts, aligned with what you desire, increase in momentum, the next step upward in momentum is some form of action, which is given to you in the same burst of positive emotion from which is was born.
And now let me pose to you this question: When you receive a strong inspiration to do something and you feel so engaged, excited, and clear in doing it, how much willpower does it take?
The answer should be obvious: It takes next to no willpower, and the only willpower it requires is due to lingering resistance.
Without resistance, there is no need for willpower.
Reread that statement again, because it is crucial.
When you are completely “with” the action you are performing, in an aligned state of inspiration and engagement, there is no willpower needed.
Therefore, if our aim is to increase the power of our will, the solution is to align our will with the totality of who we are, by using the will as it was meant to be used - in the directing of the subconscious, generative mind.
We align our will with this inborn power by letting go of the inner battle, fusing the split between our two minds, releasing our hold on the disharmony indicated by negative emotions, and healing the harmony that is natural to our existence.
We do this through our awareness.
All disharmony is injury.
It is a wound in your mind, and it has the same characteristics of any other wound:
It hurts.
The difference is that this wound is an energetic wound within your mind, and the pain is felt as the negative energy field of emotion that blocks the life force from flowing through your body.
The basic mechanism that is functioning is that our conscious will, our directive mind, is saying it wants one thing, but feeding the energy of its opposite to the subconscious, generative mind.
This expresses itself as the two minds pulling in opposite directions.
For example, if you need to do the dishes, but you’ve been in the habit of thinking that work is so hard and you never get enough time to relax and you don’t have any energy…
...then when it’s time to do the dishes, you can be guaranteed that’s what the generative mind will be spitting back out.
Now you have one mind saying “let’s do this” and the other saying “we can’t”. If you manage to summon enough energy by ramping up the desire to do the dishes, you can do them, but it’s not going to be easygoing. The tension will make it an unpleasant experience.
Therefore, you end up spending so much energy to do something so simple, because you had to overcome all the resistance that the generative mind was feeding back to you.
It would be so much easier to instead get the generative mind moving in the same direction as the directive mind, so that whatever the directive mind says gets done easily.
And the solution of how to do this lies in becoming aware of what we are feeding the generative mind.
The principles we’ve been exploring so far are active in every single person alive, but so few are truly aware of what it is they are thinking throughout the day, and even less aware of the corresponding emotions that they are triggering.
And because of this, they end up feeling like a victim to the world and their subconscious selves, needing to fight in order to get what they want.
Therefore, to increase willpower, we need to both become more aware of what we are feeding the generative mind, and to surrender to it - to stop fighting it and instead work on it by improving what we feed it.
The entire reason that we feel any degree of powerlessness and low willpower is due to resistance.
We feel that we are limited, and that there is something preventing us from doing or having that which we want, therefore we are powerless.
But the truth is that ALL resistance, whether seemingly internal or external, comes from the generative mind, and nothing can come from the generative mind except that which we plant there with the directive mind.
In others words, in this exact moment you may not have the option of completely controlling what happens to you, due to the fact that there is momentum occurring from engaging with thoughts of limitation and lack in the past…
...but you, in fact, DID put those thoughts there from a higher perspective, and are now experiencing this limitation and lack as a result of the return manifestations from the generative mind.
And because You put those thoughts there in the first place, you can just as easily start removing them, and return to your unlimited, abundant state, that is your natural resting place.
Once you do this and remove the blockages in the subconscious mind - those thoughts of limitation and lack - the willpower of the directive mind will become seemingly supercharged, and you will be able to create whatever you want quite quickly. On the highest levels, you can do it instantaneously.
This is because when the directive and generative mind are in complete harmony - in complete agreement - when you direct your thought to something, the generative mind instantly cooperates.
It’s the difference between a team that hates their leader versus one that respects and devotes themselves to their leader. When there is love, respect, devotion, willingness, etc., the team will immediately execute on the leader’s orders.
But the leader can only create this level of love and devotion by gaining the trust of the team, and that can only occur if the leader is equally devoted to the well-being of the team and not just himself, and if he proves this devotion consistently enough to develop that trust.
To translate this back to practical terms, we can easily see that a depressed person has far less willpower and executive function than a truly happy, joyful, and peaceful person.
The depressed person has lost the trust of their generative mind, and can no longer direct it efficiently. Anything and everything they do requires massive energy to “force” the generative mind to do what they want, because it has to overcome all of the resistance that they, themselves, put there in the past.
But someone who is realized, someone who has healed the harmony within themselves, can decide to do something and BAM - it’s already happening. These people can seem to have superpowers to those at lower levels, but all it is, is the proper and harmonic functioning of the two minds.
(Note: This does assume that the happy person is truly happy and not “on the surface” happy, which means they simply push down and suppress the subconscious parts they don’t like, and therefore fool themselves into thinking they’re happy, when they’re actually far from it. This will be discussed further in a future article)
So we see that the better use of willpower is not to continue using it to overcome the resistance, but instead to remove the resistance, thereby increasing the power of the will.
There’s a wonderful analogy on willpower and executive function that goes something like this:
You have 10 credits of energy to spend per day, and once those credits are spent, you have no more ability to effectively “execute” or do things.
Everything you do costs credits to a higher or lower degree.
Some activities restore credits, but some of these activities have an initial cost. So for example, if an activity might restore 5 credits, but it costs 3 credits to perform and you only have 2 credits, you won’t be able to do the activity, even though it has a net positive effect.
This is the whole “I would feel better if I worked out, but I just can’t get myself to go” phenomenon.
But if this was the whole picture, it would be quite a bleak one. We would be doomed to a limited amount of energy each day, and we would feel the lack of living the truly abundant, dream-manifesting life that is natural to us.
Luckily, it’s not the whole picture.
In truth, you can also spend your credits on increasing the power or value of your credits, by turning them back on themselves.
So for the sake of example, if you spent all 10 credits in a day on increasing the value of your credits, then they would now double in value, and then your credits would be worth the equivalent of 20 credits.
Now you have double the energy to spend. Because the generative mind is now more cooperative with the directive mind - because you have released the resistance that made your credits less effective - you have now doubled your willpower in practice.
But what if you continue to spend your credits on increasing their value?
On day 3, you’d have 40 credits.
On day 4, you’d have 80 credits.
Continue this for 30 days of focused inner work - a very short time span in the overall picture - and you would have over 5 billion credits.
Compare that to someone who didn’t do any inner work, who is still meagerly spending their 10 credits per day, completely absorbed in the outer world, without any recognition of how they are limiting themselves.
And while these numbers are just for the sake of example, in practice you will find the most amazing shifts in your ability to perform in the world when you stop spending all of your willpower credits out in the world, and begin spending at least some of them on increasing the value of your credits.
You will have begun the journey of inner growth, which is the true path to happiness and success, however you define them.
So how do we increase the value of our credits?
By doing the inner work.
By releasing our negative beliefs.
By taking responsibility for our current experience.
By viewing every moment of life as a learning opportunity.
By letting go.
By releasing our small ego self.
By loving, and being unconditional about that loving.
By looking for positive aspects.
By doing things we enjoy and looking for ways to enjoy the things we don’t enjoy.
By meditating, which is “clearing the air” between the two minds, between the leader and the team.
Once you get started, it’s so simple. It just takes a new focus.
We’ll be talking further on these sorts of topics on articles to come.
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And if you want to learn the 5-step process of surrender, be sure to check that out here.
