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Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection — Chapter-93: Nature and Development of Will Power
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- PDF pages: 388–392
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- Note: Work: New Science of Living and Healing, section 6 of 9.
NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF WILL POWER. Table of Contents “Burnt offerings for sin thou wouldst not. • • • Lo, I come to do thy will, Oh, God!” —Heb. x: 8-9. IN HUMAN LIFE I seem to see three different forms of manifestations of energy, which for convenience's sake I am going in this article to call physical, mental, and spiritual. Physical energy is what we have been treating of in this series of articles; proving that it is not drawn from food, but is received in sleep. It is the life force of the organism, the work power of the body. Mental energy is thought power. I do not know what the difference between physical work power and thought power may be; I do not know whether there is a difference or not; but I know that there are individuals who have a great deal of physical power and apparently very little thought power; and there are others who have a great deal of thought power and very little vital energy; and so I will consider them as separate forms of force. We will, therefore, adopt this hypothesis; that you display three forms of energy; first, the physical power, which carries on the work of the material body, and second, the power which runs your think- machine. I do not know what your think-machine is, or where it is; I do not know whether you think with your brain or not; I am inclined to think that you do not; but anyway, I know that you have a thinker, because you think; and I know that it takes power to operate your thinker, because thought is a force itself, and cannot be produced without the expenditure of force. So I know that you have a thinker and that it takes power to run it; and I am assuming that this
power is different from physical energy, although I do not know that it is; but it makes my point a little clearer to speak of physical energy and thought power as if they were different things. Now, this thinker of yours is absolutely indifferent to moral considerations. It knows nothing, and cares nothing about good and evil. There is no connection between thought power and goodness. Bad people often have much thought power, and many excellent souls have very little. A devil may be a very keen and acute thinker, and a saint may be almost destitute of reasoning power. Your thinking machine works in the direction in which you set it running. If you start it planning to execute a noble deed of charity, it will go on and arrange all the details, and if you put it at work on a plan to rob a bank, it will work on the details of that plan just as readily. I think you will agree with me, however, that you have, at least in a rudimentary way, the power to control and direct your think-machine. You tell it to think about this, and it does; or to cease thinking about this, and to consider that, and it obeys you. So you see here are the three forms of power I have mentioned—first, physical power; second, thought power, and third, the power to control and direct the thought Now, it is this power to control and direct the think-machine that we wish to develop. The trouble is that there are too many other forces operating it Some one, or some thing, starts it running on the fear thought or the thought of despondency and discouragement, and it runs away from us; we want to master it completely, so that it will only work on the thoughts of hope and faith and love and health; how to do it is the question; how to develop this power of control. For it is not a thing to be acquired, but one to be developed; we have it within. Did your thinking-machine ever run away with you along the line of self pity? First, it says, you are not appreciated; you are not understood; those around you do not realize how fine your nature is, and how delicate your sensibilities are! They are all blind, callous, selfish; they do not love you as they ought, they do not see, or seem to care how they make you suffer! Ah well, they will be sorry, when it is too late! And then your imagination runs on and you see yourself sick, dying, dead—and your weeping friends stricken with awful remorse, standing around your coffin and wishing they had treated you better—did your thinker ever get started on that line? And when it reached a certain point did not something else seem to rise up within you and say: “Nonsense! You know better than all this! Stop it, and think sense!” It was as if the engine ran away while the engineer slept, and he suddenly awakened and assumed control. This engineer is
always within you. You have always faith and hope and love at the center of your being. You do not have to acquire them from without, but to arouse them within. The engineer is there, but he is like one in a tomb, asleep; he must hear the voice and come forth. That is salvation. “You who were dead in trespasses and sins hath he quickened,” said St. Paul, who was very scientific. To be dead in trespasses and sins is simply to have lost control of your thinker. The engineer is in a dead sleep, and the sin thought and the fear thought and the disease thought are running the engine. The force works undirected. How shall we waken the engineer, and get him “quickened” so he will stay awake? How shall we vitalize this third principle, and get the power of control over our own internal forces? This is the supreme question. We know how to charge the battery of vital power in sleep; how shall we energize the soul? Let me point you to the connection between silence and physical power. When you want vital energy you have to quit reaching, snatching, and grabbing for it, and just lie and shut your eyes and let it come. To charge the brain with power you must get still; stop the busy hand, close the eye, suspend the action of the senses; and life comes in. Cease all activities, and couple on to the one Eternal Life as to a dynamo, and get charged. That is the process. Why not try it in charging the will? Suspend all other work and make connection with the Eternal Will, and receive spiritual power as we receive physical energy; why not? I wonder if any of our readers were ever in an oldfashioned Quaker meeting, where the congregation sat in silence for an hour? If you were, you know something of how it feels to be in an atmosphere surcharged with spiritual power. For a hundred devout men and women to sit together in perfect silence for an hour, with their thoughts withdrawn from earthly things and their souls open toward God—it is no wonder that the early Quakers were spiritual giants and giantesses. It is a great pity that the friends of the present day have fallen in line with the practices of their competitors and fill every moment of their meetings with gibble, gabble, gobble,—words, words, words! The marked spiritual power which once distinguished the Quakers came to them in their silent meetings, and they have lost it with the discontinuance of the practice. The silent meeting was scientific; it was in line with the law of transmission of life, and to that law you must individually conform if you are to have energy of soul. So, this is the method. Go into your closet and shut the door. Get by yourself in the quietest place you can find, and where you may be free from interruption for a little while. And sit down; relax the body; rest. And now, stop thinking. You
have not gone apart to meditate, or to think about God, or about anything else. Stop thinking; silence; be still. And when you are still begin to pray. Now this is a wordless prayer, and a prayer without thought. You are not to pray with the thinking-machine but with the will. You are not to think thoughts and tell them to God; nor are you to ask Him to think thoughts and tell them to you. You are not seeking God's thoughts but His energy. You do not wish to hitch your thinker to His thinker, but to unite your will to His will. You will readily see that if there is a purpose in the universe, there must also be a will behind the purpose, and this will must be the source of all will power. Get rid of the notion that there is any connection or similarity between stubbornness and will power. Will power is power to control and direct your own thought. It is spiritual energy and comes by connection with the universal will, in like manner as physical energy comes by connection with One Life. What manner of prayer, then, will connect your will with the will of God? Only this, and no other: “I will do Thy will., Oh, God!” That is all the prayer you need. “Not every man that sayeth onto me Lord, Lord, but he that willeth to do the will of my Father shall enter the Kingdom.” To will to do the will of God is the sum of all religion. It is the highest possible assertion of self-hood. It comprehends all possible good effort, and shuts off all evil. It suspends all activity but God's and holds the soul in silence before Him. It is the greatest assertion of will power of which man is capable. Angels can do no more. And that within you which wills to do the will of God is the power which can direct and control your thought Exercise it; call it into activity. Sit in the silence and hold your soul on the will to do the will of God. When you cannot or do not wish to concentrate longer, arise and go out Do this every day or twice a day; and whenever your thinker gets beyond your control for an instant, will to do the will of God. You will find yourself in the way of power and life; you will draw spiritual power from God in the silence by day as you draw vital energy from Him in the silence of night. “For I do not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” “Not my will, but thine.” “I do always His will.”
That, beloved, is the way to get will power; and will power is the spiritual ability to control and direct yourself in thought and deed, internal and external. And now, here are the conclusions: Never eat unless you are hungry. If you are a hard worker or a young person, eat two moderate meals a day. If a brain worker, an invalid or an old person, eat only one meal and not much at that. Sleep in pure air. Think good thoughts. And acquire power to do all these things by willing to do the will of God.