Deceiving the Unwillingness Monster – Part Two

The thought of playing football is one of the few things that makes me excited and very enthusiastic. It’s fun to contemplate what Swami Kriyananda said : “Most people are willing or unwilling according to their likes and dislikes.” If you think about that, you realize how true it is. If somebody asked us to do something that we like, we say “of course, I will do it. Let’s do it energetically and let’s do it joyfully.” And if they asked you to do something you don’t like to do, “Well… you know.” Even if you are willing and say, “okay…fine… I’ll do it,” your energy is not flowing as well.

The importance of what he said was willingness has to be cultivated, because if not, we tend to move more towards unwillingness. Because it’s easier. It demands less from us than being willing. Willingness has to be cultivated to the extent that even for things that we like doing, we have to practice willingness.

When the body is a little tired or you are a little more lethargic, even if people ask you to do something that you usually would like to do, you can more easily start saying “no, not today. It’s okay…” just because of that bias that we may have towards unwillingness; towards not wanting to move.

Swamiji tells us that it is something that must be cultivated consciously. That’s something that we really have to take into heart especially if you feel that you are struggling with unwillingness; that the unwillingness monster is very close to you all the time.

Swamiji said we all have some things for which we are very willing, some things we are medium willing and some things that we are not willing at all to do. It’s a normal thing because it tends to go with our likes and dislikes. Of course, on the spiritual path we try to go beyond likes and dislikes into what needs to be done.

This is a very extreme example but the Masters are just willing to do so much. Let us visualize this – in the astral or causal realm or perhaps even beyond all the universes, God is talking to those souls who are willing to come back down as Avatars. He says, “okay, we need someone to go to Planet Earth once again. In this life, you will live only 33 years. The first 30 years will be fine but then the next three years when you actually come and start sharing my teachings people will be opposed to you and you will be crucified after some time. Who is willing to go?”

Who will be willing to go from perfect bliss all the way down to earth to be crucified after you spread the teachings for three years? The amount of willingness that the Masters take in order just to be on this plane is amazing. We have no idea how much they sacrifice or how much they give to us.

Of course, this is a very extreme example but the example of the Masters is always good because they give us a direction. All the great Saints and wise people are very willing to really do what is needed in life. They don’t care so much whether they like it or not.

Swami Kriyananda, first and foremost, wanted to be a hermit. He also wanted to share the teachings with all but he more than anything wanted to be a hermit. But because he knew that he had to do something different, he was willing to do it. Swamiji wrote that in normal everyday life the will manifests itself less overwhelmingly as willingness. Willingness was above all what Jesus demanded of his disciples. His very teaching said yes to life, especially to a life lived in God.

The magnetism of his presence was a constant affirmation of the rightness of living for God. Willingness on the spiritual path means to say yes to God’s will. By this attitude one attunes himself ever more deeply to God’s Consciousness thereby attracting unceasing blessings and joy.

In the Energization Exercises, Swamiji said: the greater the “willingness”, the greater the flow of energy –  substituting the word “will” for “willingness”.

When we are talking about deceiving the unwillingness monster, that word deceiving is very important to get us started. We all want to do something like “oh I want to get up early but I put the alarm on snooze all the time. My will is lacking” or “I want to energize but my will is lacking.” How can we deceive the unwillingness monster? The best way to do it is to get started. To trick yourself a little bit.

If that unwillingness monster is telling you “I don’t feel like energizing” You say, “that’s okay, we don’t need to energize. But you know we have a Guru and he said we should do the exercises, so let us at least do five exercises.” Then you start doing five exercises and by the end of five exercises you do the whole set because you are deceiving the unwillingness monster.

We have no idea how important this little principle of just get started is, because you open up the flow of energy. If you open up the flow of energy even that much, many more things can happen.

Another thing that can help us is don’t neglect the power or the importance of being physically active. We are in this physical body and sometimes in order to use the will to get a start we need to move the body to get the energy going in whatever way we can. That already is a great power.

I like that idea of Sister Gyanamata of first saying yes . If you feel that you have trouble with unwillingness, practice for a week of saying yes to everything that people ask of you. If your spouse asks you “oh do you want to do this?” Say yes and don’t think about it. Or if your mind asks you to do something positive, say yes.

Practice for a week saying yes to everything that comes to you in order to increase the flow of willingness, say yes to all these new ideas that may come to you. And you will see that your life changes because the flow of energy changes. And when that flow of energy changes within us then the Masters can change us.

And when the Masters can change us then our meditation and everything that we do becomes blessed. The first step is to say yes. The second step is to bring that inner joy and inner awareness into everything we say yes to, so that then it becomes a very blessed activity that will really remind us of that inner joy that is within all of us.