The Will.
It is the internal force that drives you forward – the pure creative essence within you that interacts with the field of pure potentiality and collapses it to reflect what you desire for yourself and your life.
It is how you push into and towards the magnetic pull of your dreams – of your highest good and greatest benefit.
The problem, though, is that most people only know how to exert one end of the will’s polarity – that of conquest.
The will of conquest goes out into the world and shapes it according to their preferences, values, and beliefs.
Divine conquest isn’t driven to take but to create. To plan, to build, and to manifest. However, over-reliance on the conqueror’s will eventually leads to an overexertion of force, resulting in the buildup of resistance and the reduction of one’s power.
This happens because there is no cultivation of the other end of the polarity, the opposite energy to the will of conquest – the will of surrender.
The will of surrender allows what is and yields to the flow of life. It is the embrace of faith, trust, and acceptance. It has no need for things to be any other way than they already are and does not experience a lack of alignment as a result of the conqueror not having yet fulfilled what it feels is its destiny.
It is centered within the unfolding of life, choosing not to doubt its natural trajectory – that which has kept the universe alive and evolving for billions of years.
These two ends of the spectrum, while at opposite ends of the pole, are not in direct opposition to one another. They can be synergized – and when they are, that is when you’re able to access the full extent of your creative capability.
Activating the will of conquest
The will of conquest is active and externally directed. It is an internal force projected outward. This is the will you’re tapping into when you’re progressing towards your dreams. You experience what your life is, you conceptualize what you want it to be, and you move within the world in order to close the gap – until what you’ve conceptualized is made real and experienced as what is.
To channel the will of conquest:
- Define your ideal vision – This is the architecture of your ideal reality, the projection of what you consider to be the best possible outcome for yourself and your future. It’s the life you live when your dreams are brought into the realm of experience.
- Define your ideal identity – This is the architecture of your ideal self, the projection of what you consider to be the best possible version of you. It’s the version of yourself that creates your dream life as a natural consequence of who you are and how you act.
- Define your ideal purpose – This is the architecture of your ideal work, the projection of what you consider to be the best possible use of your life force. It’s the way you spend your attention, time, and energy to create value in the world and influence your life and the lives of others for the better.
Once you’ve worked to clarify your ideal vision, identity, and purpose – you need to take harmonious action towards them. When I say harmonious action, I mean action that facilitates the actualization of each core area – either directly or indirectly.
For example, optimizing your sleep, diet, and exercise routines directly contributes to the actualization of your ideal identity, and indirectly contributes to the actualization of your ideal vision and purpose. When you feel and look your best, you have more energy and confidence. Greater energy leads to being able to accomplish more and to do so more effectively, while greater confidence leads to having more faith in yourself and your abilities – allowing you to take the risks needed to facilitate your defined version of success.
Alternatively, pursuing meaningful work directly contributes to the fulfillment of your ideal purpose and the crystallization of your ideal vision, and indirectly contributes to the actualization of your ideal identity. When you commit to work you love, you elevate your level of expertise – amplifying the effectiveness of the work you do and the results you can expect from doing it.
This leads to the opening of doors that provide more opportunity, optionality, and prosperity. This provides a greater sense of competence and self-assuredness of your capability within the world, giving you an improved sense of identity that believes you will be successful in whatever undertaking you commit yourself to.
Activating the will of surrender
The will to surrender is still and internally directed. It is an internal force projected inward.
This is the will you’re tapping into when you are seeking to better understand who you are. You are looking to uncover answers within the infinity of yourself (lowercase, your egoic identity) and yourSelf (uppercase, the observer of your egoic identity – the true divine essence of your being). It is tapping into the endless expanse of information – in the form of inspiration, insight, and realization – that exists within you.
To channel the will to surrender:
- Meditate – In stillness (seated or lying down) or in movement (walking or exercising). Allow yourself to drop into a trance, focus on and anchor your awareness to your breath and/or the motion of your body. Do not actively attempt to silence your inner voice – instead, watch the thoughts that pass through your mind as if you were watching clouds in the sky passing in and out of your view. Aim to occupy a state of pure “being” – fully aligned with yourSelf (the infinite observer of your egoic identity) but don’t force it – this process takes practice, and should be approached the same way you would approach developing a skill.
- Study – Augment your thinking by intentionally directing the flow of information through your mind. Study that which keeps your thinking elevated and the nature of your own consciousness at the forefront of your awareness. Philosophy, spirituality, and psychology. Every time I’ve ever experienced a major level-up in my life and business, it wasn’t as a result of studying entrepreneurship, strategies, and tactics – but by studying the aforementioned subjects. To know thyself is to live in alignment with nature, and to live in alignment with nature is to intuitively find the path of least resistance towards internal and external thriving.
- Journal – Order your thinking by intentionally directing the externalization of your mind. To journal is to crystallize all of the thoughts and feelings that rise and fall within your awareness. If studying purifies the inward flow of consciousness, journaling purifies the outward flow. It keeps the waters of your mind from growing stagnant, cloudy, and discordant. Journal regularly so that you might empty yourself of what you do not need.
In many respects, the will of surrender is harder to exercise than the will of conquest.
We live in a world that favors rationality, action, and progression – and so going out into the world and doing comes more naturally to most of us than going into ourselves and simply being.
But engaging the will to surrender is vital to one’s well-being because it is the release of control and freedom from your state being dependent on external circumstances.
It is creating space separate from what you think you want for yourself – allowing for the same forces that perfectly direct the infinitely complex forces of nature to direct you as well.
The moment you embrace surrender is the moment you start living for the journey rather than the destination, when you relish in the creative act for its own sake rather than for the sake of what it can provide you, and when you allow yourself to flow with the current of life rather than constantly feeling the need to create your own.
Harmonizing the polarities of will
Most teachers, guides, and gurus will advocate for one of two paths – the path towards the fulfillment of desire in the name of personal growth and creative accomplishment (will of conquest) and the path that demonizes desire as the root of suffering and in order to truly be complete, one must totally detach from it (will of surrender).
But there is a middle way – a way that harmonizes the polarity of will and allows you to embrace each without the rise of contradiction and conflict between them.
The key is not to eliminate desire, but to develop a conscious and responsive relationship to it. To understand that this is a consensus reality – a shared, co-creative experience – and, by definition, will not always align with our intentions or what we think we want.
It is virtually impossible for every moment to reflect our personal desires perfectly, and so we need to release the sense that it has to in order for us to embrace joy, happiness, and contentedness.
Additionally, to accept that desire is eternal. Even upon achieving a coveted dream, your spirit will naturally yearn for more, to go further, and to seek novelty. This is not a flaw, but a design – it’s the tool that allows you to interface with the limitless potential of the universe, collapse it into form, and manifest it into being.
It is also a tool utilized to eliminate problems, challenges, and obstacles. But like desire, these are eternal – there will always be problems, challenges, and obstacles because these are the fertile soil of life, that which fosters continued growth and expansion. They are not to be avoided, but – to the best of your ability – embraced when they arise.
Ultimately, desire is the signal that brings our attention to a perceived gap between our current reality and the idea of our ideal reality. To bridge this chasm without emotional distress, you take conscious action towards realizing your desire – the desires you feel are worth realizing – while simultaneously immersing yourself wholly in the present, embracing and appreciating the now for what it is, despite what you would like it to be.
This is how you align the polarity of will, activating both the energy of conquest and the energy of surrender simultaneously.
This dance, between acceptance of life as it is and the pursuit of shaping life into what you want it to be, is what exists as the very essence of living wholly, consciously, and completely.
Much love and, as always, thank you for reading.
– JCS
