Willpower and Self-remembering

QUESTION: Would you say that what we call ‘will power’ is derived from essence? I’m wondering about the effort required by a person to do a thing despite extreme mechanical resistance to doing that thing and if this same effort can also be considered self-remembering? If so, could one increase moments of self remembering by exercising one’s will power?

THE IDEA of will and willpower are both generally misunderstood because they are interpreted by and undertaken on the level of the four centers (the mind and body) whereas true will refers to consciousness or awareness itself.

One way to see the distinction is that the intellectual parts of centers can summon their utmost attention and use it to ‘push’ or ‘force’ something into happening—be it a diet or a tech startup. But the effect lasts only as long as the energy, attention, and persistence of the intellectual parts of centers last; things then inevitably resort to their normal, more mechanical condition where inertia sets in, habits return, and the vision and creativity of inventiveness dissipate. When this happens, the diet loses value and sustainability, the business environment becomes bureaucratic and competitive. In other words, the centers collapse back into their normal condition of undirected and low attention. As a result, the ‘I’s change.

The same thing happens as we approach self-remembering from the intellectual parts of centers. They each try in their own way (rightly) to hold and push attention in the direction of presence, of awareness. Envision your hands trying to ‘cup’ water and scoop it up. Most of the water gets lost, but you manage to have a taste. Nevertheless, it is just a taste and very different—entirely different—than the water knowing and experiencing its own wetness, which is what self-remembering in the fourth way is meant to imply: awareness realizing itself, consciousness becoming conscious as itself—which in this analogy requires no hands (no centers, no body or mind) to hold it or contain it or force it into being. Nevertheless, the hands—the intellectual parts of centers—play a critical role in coming to this realization and understanding.

In this sense, will is not exactly ‘derived’ from what the fourth way calls essence. But we can say that the wishing of essence can potentially transform into the being of presence.

As for the connection to self-remembering, the ‘effort’ of will power—going against something that is extremely mechanical—is not in itself self-remembering, although a strong, well-intentioned effort of this kind can create internal space for self-remembering: for presence to realize itself.

In this sense, the intellectual parts of centers do not ‘create’ or ‘develop’ or ‘increase’ self-remembering. It is more that they clear out space for self-remembering (awareness) to fill. They engender awareness, yet they are not themselves awareness and they do not control awareness. As Jean Klein said, “it is not the mind that attunes to awareness, but awareness which absorbs the mind.”