Strength of will  

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2009 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

Strength of will
Develop the strength of will
Hold to what is within
Keep our appointments especially with our appointment with the Creator

Develop the strength of will

Strength of will is about our ability to hold the focus of our attention and awareness without becoming distracted from a single point focus and our ability to act and do what we believe to be true and necessary. Strength of will ultimately depends on the attitude and thoughts that we hold.

There are two ways to develop a strength of will. One is through the mind. The other is through the heart. Strength of will developed through the mind is based on what we believe is true and necessary to do in life and endure whatever is necessary. It is about discipline. It is achieved through a mental brute force of holding to some action in some way. Some would call this type of discipline stubborn. This type of a strength is endurance and holding at all costs. Most programs develop strength of will with discipline and developing a powerful aspect of the mind.

However, this type of discipline creates an issue when we have to step out of mind in creative endeavors. The discipline itself interferes with what needs to be done. The mind simply become too strong and holds to its attachments rather than let go as required in a creative endeavor. In this regard, discipline can be used as a personal practice to develop the strength of will but the discipline cannot become an end in itself and it should not be used to develop inflexibility.

The second way to develop a strength of will is to access the passion of the heart. Here the strength of will arises from passion and not from what mind thinks. Such passion can be used to support what the mind thinks needs to be done or wants to do as that developed through discipline. However, it is easy to surrender to a creative endeavor when operating from the passion of the heart.

The recommendation for a personal passion is to become open to feeling and what we feel and look to align with what gives a fullness of being and a passion and/or desire to engage life.

Hold to what is within

Developing a personal power is about developing the ability to discern, explore, live and be our truth in the world. To discern our truth and what serves us, it is important to "burn off" the desires, interests, priorities and interests of the mind. To "burn off" the mind is simply to follow the lead of mind to see if it is aligned with the heart or if it leads us other than where are heart wants to go. We when we "burn off" the mind, we come to the realization what mind knows will not gets us what we desire. Hopefully, we can find ways to explore mind in our creative imagination and/or in playful actions in the world such as ritual, metatheater, constructing piloting programs or actions before or rather than creating pain. Unfortunately it is often only when we are faced with pain do we step out of mind.

The way to both "burn off" the mind and begin to act on our truth is to hold to what we know within. We need to learn to accept all that arises from within including our thoughts, feelings, sensations, inner knowing, and the like. Only when we do so will we being to step into our own personal power. Relative to our personal power, we can be our own worst enemy by denying what we know within.

In looking to hold to what lies within, we do need to become very aware that there will be things which we hold that arise solely from the mind. Rather than following any action to completion, we need to look to see if what we are doing is causing us to feel an inner satisfaction which never runs dry, feel freedom, feel an expansion within our being, feel a blossoming or flowering of our being and the like. Those which do serve us and serve our heart in some way. Those which don’t are of the mind and will ultimately only lead to a deeper separation within our being. It is recommended we abandon those which do not give such feelings at least temporarily. We may come back to them at a later time to see if the issue was we just were unwilling to face the needed sacrifice of creation which when faced with such activities or if we were being directed solely by the mind.

Keep our appointments especially with our appointment with the Creator

To most, the words, "Keep our appointments especially with our appointment with the Creator," is about having devotional time or prayer time to pray to God. This is a more than adequate understanding as a starting point. But, to claim our personal power and open the door to access and explore the depth and breadth of our unlimited creativity as desired in creating a personal practice, we must allow both what we do to communicate with the creator to change and our understanding of God or how God works in the world to change. We need to realize that at the most fundamental levels of Creation, Creation does not work as we normally experience Creation with our mind.

Additionally, it needs to be understood, there is an inner and outer creative power and we need to discern where the real creative power within a situation lies. There is the old Arab proverb, "Trust in God but theater your camel" and we need to being to fully understand what creative power lies within us and that which lies in what the concept of God represents. We need to do what we are responsible for doing and we need to let God do what God is responsible for doing. That is, when we keep our appointment with the Creator we may be communicating with God or simply a part of ourselves.

On the point of communicating with the creator/Creator, regardless of whether we see the creator/Creator as God or only a higher part of ourselves doesn’t matter. What matters is to talk to the creator/Creator as a creator. We need to realize a doctor talks to another doctor differently than they talk to a lay person. An engineer talks differently to another engineer than lay person. This is true for any discipline we choose. In the same way a creator, any creator/Creator, will talk differently to another creator/Creator they talk to a non creator. So talk to the creator/Creator as a creator regardless of whomever we believe the creator/Creator to be. We need to understand that our personal practice is in fact our contract with the creator/Creation and if we prefer, the God that we know and understand.

Keeping our appointment with the creator/Creator can be seen in one of two ways and both are applicable. One way is to tithe time to our communication with the creator/Creator. The other is be present to do the actions required of the creator/Creator

Relative to tithing time, it is wise to have some type of practice were each day or as some frequency where we do something specifically to communicate with the creator/Creator. Some would all it praying or a form of pray. But the use of the world pray does not convey what needs to occur in this dialog. Rather, it should be more of talking to the creator/Creator as we would talk to a friend about what is occurring in our life and in our creative endeavors and wait to see what they have to say if anything. The person with whom we talk does not necessarily say anything. They may only have to listen. But, if we are going to ask for a response, then we need to be open in the way the creator/Creator communicated to us. We need to know and understand our inner language and how synchronicity in the world works as that reflected in the concept of the familiar discussed in the topic, "Traditional archetypes." In any case, we may want to have a standard time frame in which we meet. Some would call this tithing time with the creator/Creator as inner work or contemplation time.

Relative to doing the actions required, keeping our appointment with the creator/Creator is about the need to show up each day to demonstrate to ourselves that we will honor our contract with the creator/Creator and have the discipline and strength of will to be there at our appointed time. We don’t need to show up for the creator/Creator. The creator/Creator shows up for us each day by remembering to allow the creative life energy to continually flow through us. But do we honor and show up for the creator/Creator by consciously using and directing that creative life energy to build our temple and become a vehicle for Divine Expression in the physical world? Do we surrender and act as we need to act to create what we desire?

We keep our appointment to demonstrate to ourselves the we can and will do our part to meet the intention we hold. That is, we do what we have to do. That means showing up every day in the same way the creator/Creator shows up every day in our life. As a minimum the creator/Creation shows up every day flowing through us as our creative life energy. It should be noted that a big part of this showing up is being there in consciousness, fully present, and in awareness and not out of meeting some spiritless ritual with our mind focused on what we will have for breakfast or lunch or what we think we need to do to please God..

Keeping our appointment with the creator/Creator is honor what we say we will do. If we create with our thoughts, we need to honor our thoughts especially when we will say we will act. We need to ensure our thoughts, words and deeds are all consistent and one does not deny the others.

Related consideration for personal practice topics
Tithing - Focusing time and energy
The body as vehicle for the physical experience
What we believe
Becoming our truth
Focus
Learning focus
Create the space
Dealing with the mind
Thoughts for taking action
The practice in the long term

Related topics
Single point focus

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