Chapter Thirteen: Free Will Versus Willingness

There really is only one thing left to understand and that is whether you are willing to surrender the will of your mind and accept the will of your soul. You may feel like there is a new you after listening to these chapters. The old you is standing directly beside you with enough momentum to take over the new you. You will have a lot of sideways movement, backward movement, and of course, forward movement on your trek to enlightenment and this chapter clarifies that this is okay and expected.

Transcript

Free Will Versus Willingness

Positive affirmation: With a clear and earnest heart and mind, I direct my will to create harmony in my life.

Free will is the choice we make to choose whatever path we want to pursue. But with choice comes responsibility. Before you make impactful decisions for your life, ask yourself: “Does this serve my soul, or am I fulfilling a desire?” 

 Free will can be tricky to manage, fun to play with, and potentially dangerous if it is mishandled. In an effort to escape life unscathed, my greatest struggles have come from exercising my free will; however, there can be order to our struggles as well as our joys. The mind projects its opinion onto life’s experiences with sheer ruthlessness. It does not understand the larger context of life. 

Conversely, I don’t believe free will gives us permission to wildly chase our desires, nor is it right for us to force the world around us to comply with our minds’ opinions in an effort to satisfy our egos. Our soul is an unbiased witness to life. Its nature is free and unattached to all of our endeavours. Chasing desire is a fruitless pursuit that bastardizes the purpose of having free will. The will of my soul is very different from the will of my mind. My soul understands the duties I have agreed to and is impartial to them. In my position of being impartial, I am able to commit to my duties with fewer interruptions from the demands of my ego.

Surrendering the Will of Your Mind

By surrendering your will, you may set forth a flurry of action in your mind. The very idea of surrendering your will is counter intuitive to the infrastructure of the mind/ego. The mind has a built-in contingency plan for survival, and any sign of abandoning it sounds an alarm to your ego. The ego has no tolerance for surrender, because surrender is the beginning of the end to its existence. 

Surrender may seem like you are giving up, but it is actually turning your attention to your source of true power. It opens the possibility to hear your soul’s guidance. This guidance may be simple and direct—so simple that, at times, you may invalidate the wisdom in it. It is your mind that wants things to be more complicated than necessary. 

Some of the greatest truths are very simple. One of the greatest being love. Love is a simple truth that everyone understands. It is your mind that makes it complicated. Following love offers simple and effective guidance that is divine in nature. 

Does God Have Will?

Where does God fit into all this, and does God actually have a will? During one stage of our consciousness, we appear to be a separate fragment from the Divine as we experience being human. But as we transcend into deeper states of consciousness, the dichotomy between us and God disappears. God and the “I” are no longer two things. There is only one thing, and that is God. 

 God does not require or want petty things from us. Nor is there a God sitting out there wanting to control our life. By giving our Creator humanistic traits, we reduce God to fit into our mind and reduce the Omniscient to the finite nature of being human. This is nothing more than a fantasy of the ego as it tries to weigh and measure what is beyond measure. Understand that when it comes to the will of the Divine, it is something that is carried out over the duration of our life. God’s will plays out through those little nudges we get to turn left or turn right, take a job or leave a job. Not every decision is from the will of God, but the ones that we make from our heart and soul are Divine in nature. Learning how to discern where our will is coming from is a matter of learning how to be in touch with our soul versus our mind. 

Our destiny is actualized by allowing God’s will to manifest through us. For God’s will is the destiny of our soul. Once we realize that God’s will, and the soul’s purpose/destiny, are one and the same, we then surrender to God without the opposition of our mind. As we unite into God’s will, God’s grace enters our lives, gifting us with divine favour. Creating God’s will is the work of the soul. It is also what brings us into union with the true self.

The will of the Divine moves through us always. Nothing is outside of God. Our life in not a singular linear event played out over the duration of time. It is a multi-dimensional occurrence playing out in all of time. Our soul continues until it has communion with the Divine, at which point it dissolves into the oneness of all. 

No matter how chaotic you think life is, there is order to the world. As you expand your consciousness, the order of life is more evident. Within this understanding there is peace, not turmoil, in contemplating the not knowing how or what is to come next. Next is not important. What is important is to surrender your will and allow a deeper awakening to unfold in you, now. In that awakening, there are many beautiful, partial truths to abandon. The will of your mind may be one of them. 

The Grace of God

We do not walk this path alone; the grace of God plays a significant factor. God’s grace is a gift we are given. With devotion and intention, we call upon God to weave Itself into our lives. The grace of God is always at work; however, we may not be aware of all the miracles taking place. As we grow in consciousness, so does our awareness of God’s grace unfolding within and around us. Our job is to look toward our soul or toward love. God moves the rest of the way to us. As our devotion and willingness to surrender to our soul increases, grace becomes like a tidal wave, moving all that is required of us to effectively fulfil our soul’s purpose. 

The Willingness to Serve the Will of My Soul

In an effort to serve the will of my soul, I have surrendered the will of my mind. I have turned my life over to God. Although this may sound like I’m giving up my life, it couldn’t be further from the truth. I am claiming the life that was destined to be mine. This is the best life available for me. In you lies all the prophecies of your life. It is all written for you. It is found in the will of your soul, and your heart is the doorway. By following your heart, you know what to do. Following the heart isn’t a difficult or a hidden road. You will be guided every step you take. There is a knowing in you as to what you are here to do. By making the choice to enter the path laid out for you, you become the right hand of the Divine. Free will is no longer the object of your affection. Free will is now surrendered and replaced with a willingness to surrender, to “being willing.” Living your destiny only requires your willingness to surrender and keep surrendering yourself to your soul. 

True surrender is more than just letting go. To deepen your surrender, you make a covenant with yourself to surrender your body, mind, spirit, and soul. In that surrender you become willing to do whatever it takes to follow through with soul’s guidance. Anything less than one hundred per cent commitment signals lack of trust, thereby giving fear the power to reside within you. This new position creates a deeper commitment to your soul’s purpose and delivers you into a living relationship with your soul. 

One of the mind’s commentaries that disables your ability to surrender is, “I know, I know, I know.” It runs like a tape loop because your mind thinks and believes that it knows everything. This renders you less capable of surrender. The constant bombardment of “I knows” in your mind interrupts the moment you are in and keeps you stuck in your head. In surrender, you admit that you don’t know and that you are open to be guided by your soul. There is nothing left on the level of the mind to explore. We receive guidance from our soul by moving outside the context of our mind. By doing so, the guidance deep within us gets louder and clearer. This positions you to dance with the unknown and live life as an adventure with God, returning you to your natural state of innocence. You may know about a lot of things, but just because you know about something doesn’t mean you have exhausted your learning on the topic. 

From the perspective of “being willing” (surrendering to the will of your soul/God), you allow and accept what is present in your path without the need to reject what is meant for you. This allows you to see a much deeper reality playing out all around you. The order and perfection become more obvious as your relationship with your soul grows. It does not make the evils of the world less tragic or right—it just positions you to move beyond your problems more swiftly. 

Adding Devotion to Surrender

Ceaseless staying with God is the deepest devotion you can offer God. 

If everyone started to follow their destiny, this world would be a much different place. You would be experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. Surrender removes the struggle with life. With true surrender, you find yourself in a much deeper place of devotion—a devotion to the Divine in you that is solid and stable. By giving your devotion to your soul, you have a place to direct your attention. You no longer need to look outside of yourself for the guidance you need in your life. You move into what I refer to as “ceaseless staying with God.” 

This is the gateway to entering heaven on earth. Passing through this gate places you into an entire new dimension of your soul. Heaven on earth is more than a possibility; it is a solid and stable reality that is here now and meant for you and me to discover. It is a dimension in yourself that can be discovered by anyone who comes to it with an earnest heart and a persistent will. It is not a faraway place that is inaccessible or revealed to a chosen few. It is for everyone to enter and explore. The concept that heaven and hell are what come after your life here on earth is not the whole truth. Heaven and hell are here now. We will continue to experience both until we wake up to our soul. Once we know the depth of the soul within us, heaven and hell disappear, and we move on to eternal life. Heaven and hell are temporary results of the karmic path we walk upon this earth, whereas the soul is the eternal life of God. (I’m getting ahead of my self here. I have borrowed some of this from my next book.)

When you surrender to your soul, a fire within you ignites. When you add devotion to your surrender, it is like adding gas to that fire. Your devotion to surrender means that you are surrendered with love. Your surrender is not a onetime event either. It is ongoing and applied many times a day. At times you may not even know if what you are doing is working or making a difference, but stay true to your practice. The part of you that is in question is your mind—not the true you.  

 The Will of God’s Love

The will of God’s love is forever accessible. There is never a time when you are beyond its reach. Consciously surrendering your life to your soul’s will makes your life an instrument of God, causing you to be the right hand of God. Becoming an instrument of God positions you as close as you can humanly get to the brilliance of God’s love. It illuminates the path you are on and removes many of your struggles. With great persistence to execute your soul’s will, you place yourself on the path to experience a depth of love that you have only dreamed about. It is a love that is so pure that being in its presence nourishes your soul for eternity. Let the grace of God’s love remove all doubt in you. By doing so, it makes anything possible. 

The fastest way to experience love from the Divine is to give your consent. By inviting God to be with you in your life, God’s love can work more freely through you. This is your choice. It is not one that you should be bribed into. God has no desires for you. Your consent must come freely, not through fear of consequence that you will be punished if you do not consent to God. Fear has no place in your relationship with the Divine. According to Thomas Keating in his book, Intimacy with God: An introduction to Centering Prayer, “fear of God” is a technical term in the Old Testament meaning “the right relationship with God.” It does not refer to the emotion of fear. 

Having a fearless relationship with God is a fundamental understanding that helps develop a deeper relationship with the Divine and the love that is available to you. It is much easier to freely come to God knowing that your relationship is based in love and not fear or judgement. God inflicts no evil punishments onto you, nor does the Divine restrict its love to you. It is we who judge ourselves and restrict ourselves from love.

Willingness to Love  

When you first start to make the choice to love, you choose it; however, as you grow in consciousness, you begin to allow for love to choose you. Your willingness to love must come freely, not through a forced effort. We do not forcefully push love onto ourselves or others. Willingness to love means that you become an open vessel for love to flow through you. In your willingness to love, you no longer hold mindsets or practices that drive you away from love. You just remain open and ready to give to what shows up in your life. If you have to force yourself to love, then you are not loving at all. Being an open vessel for love takes you all the way back to the first chapter of this book. You must bypass your mind and just remain open and clear for love to do its work through you. 

Ultimately, free will has provided me with my greatest lessons. Through all my ups and downs I have learned that my soul/God has the best laid plans for me. It is my choice to surrender so that I can allow those plans to flow in my life. I have given up the notion that my mind can provide me with accurate directions. I trust in God. 

It has been a lifelong battle for me to give up control and to put my trust in God/soul. Many years ago, I got a tattoo on my wrist that said “trust no one.” That was my motto when I felt hurt and betrayed. Eventually I decided to have that tattoo changed to say “trust in God”. This was a turning point for me. It was a starting point for me to begin to trust God and to eventually learn how to surrender. Trusting the Divine is the start of the right relationship with God. It initiates a friendship. Once you have a friendship with God, you then open the door for a deeper and more intimate relationship to ensue.  

 Tools to Deepen Your Experience of this Chapter

1.     Reflect on how you use your free will. Do you follow your mind, or do you look deeper within before you make big life decisions? 

2.     Ask yourself: What is the will of my soul? Take some time with this question. Ask yourself before your mind takes hold, like before bed or when you first awaken. Then write down your answer. Another tool is to ask before you meditate. During the meditation, let go of the idea that you will receive an answer. Your answer may just come when you least expect it. 

3.     Make small steps at surrendering the will of your mind. Notice where and when you can let go of little wants and desires. Work this into your relationships with others, staying present with the moment. Surrender your desire to leave this moment to endlessly chase thoughts in your mind.

4.     Take time to work at developing your ability to listen to your heart. Make life an adventure. Spend a day following your inner guidance. 

1.     Start by becoming quiet. 

2.     Listen and watch for clues. When it feels right or when you get a nudge or a sudden knowingness, act on it.

3.      Do whatever your guidance is telling you. For example, go for a walk. If you are guided, stop into a store. Allow whatever comes. The fun part is to just trust, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. The longer you work at being guided, the more interesting it gets. 

5.     As you keep practicing surrender, bring as much love into your interactions with self and others as you can.