Welcome to part 2 of stages of will power development. View part 1 of the article here.
4) Strong Will Power, Strong Positive Sense of Self Identity – There is a large shift in how willpower is used at this level. The use of will power becomes less about influencing others or fighting against some external circumstance. Instead, will power is directed internally. You are facing your fears and overcoming them. At this stage you are already likely making decisions that are good for your health so keep that up. But to move forward the focus should shift to building will power through increased self awareness. Whenever an external situation occurs it can trigger some type of negative response in the mind and body. This response is largely based on our unconscious programming. These triggered responses are reflective of beliefs that are out of alignment with the new emerging self. As a person starts to develop a greater degree of self awareness then will power is used as a tool to allow the emotional expressions associated with disharmonious unconscious beliefs so those patterns can be cleared from the mind and body. As this happens over time, your self awareness will continue to increase. The previous stage was about releasing negative emotions. This stage will be more about refining your beliefs. This allows a person to better differentiate what is truly in alignment and what is not. At this level you know who you are and what you are about. You may have a strong sense of what your path in life is. You know what your values are and are willing to live by them, and you may even think you know your purpose in life. Here, will power is used as a way to enable a person to follow what is in alignment with their own path in life regardless of external circumstances. Will is used to achieve many goals but those goals are not only for the benefit of self they are also for the benefit of others. When you can do this, you start to become happier and more fulfilled and you can bring that with you to any experience whether it brings you material success or not. Once a person develops a high degree of self mastery it will become easier to have the life you want. However, this is not the end game. There is still more. If a person continues to develop greater self awareness by doing the inner work, eventually you will start to tap into something that is greater than you. This will cause a person to feel unsettled and may cause you to start to question the point of everything you have done. If you have achieved and lived the life you have always wanted, then what is next? Is this all there is to life? There has got to be more, right? You may still be happy but might have a yearning for something more but not know exactly what that is. These questions will lead you to the next stage.
5) Divine Will, Divine Self – At this stage the prime focus becomes connecting with the divine. Intuition starts to become a factor in choices that guide you on your life path. Your higher senses can start to develop and you may be able to read situations and people in a way that others can’t. Your perception of life may even change to such a degree that it fundamentally changes how you interact with life itself. You may start to understand how reality works and it becomes easy to take a higher perspective on issues. Be aware of the trap of becoming too ungrounded and developing an unhealthy detachment from life. The final stage of developing will power represents a paradox. The greater you develop self awareness, the more you become in touch with the truth of who you really are which is infinite and eternal love. All is One and One is All. There is no separation between you and anything else that exists in reality. The version of who you thought you were can get shattered. Even when you thought you were living your life path in accordance with your own values and had found your life’s purpose it was still just trick of the ego mind to maintain a sense of identity. The problem is that sense of self was false because it was dependant on the illusion of separation. You know nothing, the divine knows everything. In understanding this you bring about the process of surrendering your will to divine will. Hence the paradox. You surrender your will, but you are still surrendering it to your self. Your true self. But it is still you. Get it? It can be a hard concept to grasp. In doing this, you surrender every last bit of any individuality that you have to ALL THAT IS. Some of the deepest levels of fear we have all surround letting go of our individual self identity. At this stage will power is used as a platform to process these fears.
The most practical way I can explain this stage is that your prime focus becomes not only on becoming a more loving being but becoming love itself. As you continue to increase your frequency on the inside, the external world will organize in such a way that reflects this. You trust and surrender to that. Any challenges that arise are seen as experiences that point you to go within to see what beliefs are out of alignment with love. The greater your capacity to become love then the greater you can use your will to manifest whatever you want. But since wants are guided by the ego self, you let go of what you think you want and allow the divine mechanisms of life to bring you what you need. This does not mean you sit on a couch all day and “attract” stuff to you. It means you take action to follow your joy and let life unfold in a way that reflects that. Without expectation. In doing so you surrender your will to divine will. Then life unfolds in a way that allows for greater expansion and expression of love from one present moment to the next. However that manifests in the external world isn’t known until it happens. The key theme to address in this article is that developing will power to the highest level depends on three things. Vitality, self awareness and surrender. Will power is best used internally to provide a platform to face your fears and process emotions that are out of alignment with your spirit. Emotional processing requires energy, and that energy comes from you. At initial stages it is imperative to first take care of your body through proper sleep, nutrition/detoxification, meditation and exercise. When you are acutely or chronically tired your strength of will decreases. As vitality builds then the energy is made available to process emotional blocks that are preventing you from taking charge of your own life. As will increases then continue to maintain vitality while switching your focus to increasing self awareness as it becomes the vehicle for developing strength of will. Finally, to access divine will there must be a process of surrendering the individual self to your True Self.
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