QA116 QUESTION: Going back to this self-will, pride, and fear: as long as we’re still involved with our self-will, pride, and fear, and still we’re trying to establish what is God’s will, could you speak a little on that? Because I’ve been working for the last year and a half in trying to establish what is God’s will. I’ve worked according to the advice given back in one of your very early lectures…

ANSWER: My dearest friend, in your case, I advise very strongly – and this may sound perhaps odd coming from me – first establish your own will before you can establish God’s will. For the moment, you do not even know your own will. You do not have the courage to own up to it, out of the fear we discussed before.

The reason you are so frantically concerned with finding God’s will is just because you do not want to know what you want. And that is why you cannot find God’s will. I guarantee you, you will find God’s will after you truly know your own will – or know how split your will is, and come to peace with your own split will.

QUESTION: You mean my inner will or my self-will?

ANSWER: Both! All of them! Man always makes the mistake of thinking that God is one thing, and he is something else. You have to establish yourself before you find God. And you have not established yourself. So forget for the moment God’s will. God’s will is to find yourself as you are now, with blind drives, with ignorant turns, with split will that wants to contradict everything and does not know why it wants it and what it wants. This is your self-love and this is God’s will that you find that now.

You cannot become free unless you do so – and that is God’s will. Therefore, you hope that God will tell you “do this and do that,” and superimposes a will on you without you even knowing what you want. And this is why it cannot work, my child. Do you understand that?

QUESTION: Oh, I know, but I want to be a good and decent human being. And in this Path, one of the things that confuses me is it says that we can use this in many ways – a thousand ways every day. But when it comes to small, little decisions we have to make each and every day in our experience, we’re so apt to use our own self-will, and we never give any thought to what is God’s will. Now that seems confusing to me, because if you truly desire to know what is God’s will…

ANSWER: Did you hear what I said to you?

QUESTION: Yes, I heard what you said.

ANSWER: Find your own will.

QUESTION: Well, it seems to me that the paramount desire within me now is to be able to establish and go to this source of what is Thy will.

ANSWER: Find first your will, as it is now; then you will find God’s will. I cannot say more to you. I have said it all here. And perhaps you can hear this part again and hear it again, and discuss it with friends until you understand what I said to you. You cannot find God’s will, unless you find your own – whatever it may mean. If you now can find in yourself: “I want to kill. I hate. This is my will,” this is what you have to acknowledge in yourself.

Regarding your wanting to be a good person, do you have so little confidence in yourself, in your being a good person basically, that you have to be constantly so worried about it? Accept the fact there is also a lower self in you and own up to it. Then you will truly be able to be the good person you are anyway, without that super concern that makes you run in the wrong direction inwardly.

I’ve given you these words, which are the key for you. It is now up to you to understand them and first establish your own will, your needs, your desires, your impulses, your drives, your aims, your direction. And I promise you, truly you will find God’s will this way, and this is the only way you can find it. But first find your own will.

QA121 QUESTION: In the lecture, you talked of the will to understand. Sometimes it’s very hard to separate the will to understand and the forcing current, “I should understand.”

ANSWER: There is the definite differentiation between the two kinds of will I discussed some time ago in a lecture [Lecture #64 The Outer Will and the Inner Will]. There’s the will that comes from a superficial personality area, which contains, as you said, the forcing current, tension, compulsion.

If this current, this feeling, this tense, compulsive feeling, is analyzed, it will be found that in it is just the opposite of free will. It is much rather the feeling, “I ought to, I should in order to be good or in order to gain approval or because I think it is expected of me.” In other words, this will does not come from a free act, but rather from a feeling of “I should, I must, I ought to.” Therefore it is tense, and it is a superficial current of tension and anxiety and pushing, forcing.

While the will in the sense I mean does not come from the superficial area but from the solar plexus area, and is very relaxed, very free, and completely without the feeling of “I should, it is expected, either by God or some human authority who drives me to it and will scold me or disapprove of me because I do not do it.”

“Because I want to for the sake of truth, for the sake of reality, for the sake of my integrity so that I see myself in truth. I want it freely without force.” – that is a completely different flavor. It is a different kind of energy current. It is a different climate. The current consists of entirely different, almost diametrically opposed, feelings and determinants.

QUESTION: Do we instinctively know when which will is which will?

ANSWER: You can determine that by listening into yourself, by looking and observing the feelings and questioning yourself, “Do I have a feeling of compulsion and must or fear or guilt that if I do not do it then something will happen to me, or do I really want it because I want to for the sake of truth?” And this question can be answered by yourself only.

You see, my dearest friends, it is so very often that you have the answer in you but you do not tackle the issue. You let it just be vague. And the moment you come to terms with a confusion in you and really ask yourself as to that confusion, the guidance that is called forth by such a confrontation of your life issues must show the most amazing result and help.

But this help cannot come other than from your inner forces that you put in motion by questioning yourself, “I am confused about this or that,” and listening into yourself, “What do I really feel?” or “I am confused about a certain issue or decision,” or whatever it is. Look at it fully, asking yourself all pertinent questions without the compulsion that you have to get to the answer immediately. Often one blocks such facing because one is under the erroneous impression that you immediately have to come up with the answer.

Accept the fact that sometimes the answer will remain pending if only you have clarity on the issue itself. This applies, for instance, not only to outer decisions but also to such a question as this. Maybe you cannot immediately come up with the answer to the question, “To what extent is your superimposed, outer will at work?” by confronting yourself.

What fear, what guilt, what false impression of “I should and it is expected of me” are at work? And all this stands in the way to the “I want to; I really want to know the truth. Maybe I will not want to change. I am the sole judge of that. No one can force me to change – no God, no human authority ever does, ever can, nor ever, ever will. I do not have to change. But because I am now uncertain that I want to change, that will not stop me from the healing and liberating influence and effect of wanting to see the truth. That I know I want. I do not know that I want to change.”

If these thoughts are cultivated, an inner freeing, relaxed, transcendent wanting occurs that opens every closed door.

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