FREE WILL

Orlin Baev

web | Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality

What is Will?

Will - what is its meaning? Does it mean to get angry and impose your will upon undesired emotions and situations? Get angry and force upon your inner feelings or the feelings of someone else? Is this the meaning of will? To what extend such a will is successful, real and worthy?

The themes of will and freedom are closely related. We are free as much as we have will. Will is freedom, liberation. They are true synonyms.

Cognitive will means freedom of the flow of thoughts, thought unsubordinated to time and space, to the trifle limitations and illusions. In this high perspective this is the will of spirit.

Emotional will is a main component and at the same time a result of emotional intelligence. It means ability to recognize and control your emotions; to direct them into an appropriate direction and to satisfy them in the best way possible for them and you. This ability in its upward direction is sublimation and in its downward direction is specific realization. Both are permanently in flow within us - the only thing that is necessary is to watch them and only slightly direct them consciously.

Free will is at its minimum in undeveloped consciousness but it develops together with its extension its role becoming decisive in the processes of mental integrity and self-actualization in a highly evolved individual.

Bipolarity of will. Anima and Animus. Stages of Manifestation of Will. Libido - Mortido (Passion - Attack)

When living automatically as we have been advised, our masculine and feminine aspect get more and more polar and distant. This is a well known fact in transpersonal (esoteric) psychology and each person who has been driven by the rude will of his passions has experienced this - unconsciously, of course. In inner mental aspect this polarity is manifested in the fact that the two living flows within us become rough and distanced - the masculine and the feminine, the Yin and Yang. We are two-polar beings in physical as well as psychological aspect. We have two hemispheres of the brain, as well as two parts of the soul - Anima and Animus, which manifest according to the evolution of our mind. In its rudest form the Anima within manifests as rough libido, passionate lust, while Animus - as attack and hatred and the ruinous drive to destroy - mortido (tanatos). At this level will is reduced to drive-impulses which in man of course manifest through his extended cognitive capacities. Will is wholly obsessed by animal drive. Man is blind and deaf for the humane in himself. His cognition and elevated humane sensitivity are totally control by the beast within. All life activities, the intellect and social interactions of such a man are subordinated to his narcissistic beastly drives. Each of us has moments of such a state of mind, but for quite a big part of humanity it is a permanent stature. This does not automatically mean foolishness. Such a man could be a president or an owner of a chain of banks, but his life aims would be transferring of his beastly instincts and processes in human society - nothing more than that. Since the establishment of human society is at this level of being, all our human organization, aims and purposes suffer and are far distant from harmony. Man could not be happy at this level of being. Polarity keeps him in a permanent inner psychological conflict and dissatisfaction which are being projected in his social life too. His financial status is irrelevant in this respect, because it witnesses to a mental state which can be possessed by all classes of society.

Empathy - Logic

When one broadens his mind to a greater degree, Anima manifests as an ability of empathy and sharing the life and positions of other people, while Animus - as better developed intellect and creativity. The limits of the Self are broadened to encompass family, nation, loved ones, conscientiousness and ethics come into being, which in their purity are connection to the natural principles inherent in man. This is the normal state of human society or at least such is meant to be. Will begins playing an important role now. Even if it has been often wrongly applied and misused as violence, man begins to be aware about his significant essence. The two opposites - the feminine and masculine in us begin a more harmonious co-existence in spite of the frequent contradictions as a result of lack of knowledge of the whole psyche and its functioning. After certain struggle and falling down man begins to understand that the way to succeed in life as a psychological means and as social interactions is not fight, opposition and dissociation but sublimation, integration, understanding and acceptance, inclusion and control. The quality of life gets to be more harmonious and its meaning - somewhat clearer.

Pure Love - Higher Intelligence

At a higher level of evolving of mind, Anima in man is manifested as universal love and constant joy of being, while Animus - as pure conscious will, an insightful vision about life in its totality nd direct insight through higher intelligence. Man penetrates to superior realms of being, strives for non-dual knowledge and liberation. At this level Anima and Animus, Yin and Yang, Shakti and Shiva, get joined together in unseparated unity. Human being becomes a cosmic inhabitant, wise man or sidha, who steps into his role of true intelligent essence.

Will as Energy

In order for the will to be manifested we need enough libido substance, feeding our activities. Behind our cognitive and emotional will there is one and the same libido energy: Eros - Tanatos, Libido - Mortido. This energy is directed into a course determined by our thoughts and feelings, by our souls and spirit. We possess freedom of will to the extent that we possess energy. In order to keep and develop our energy, we need take care of it and reconnect it to its source, to the fine regions wherefrom it flows in us - through constant awareness, prayer, meditation, appropriate nutrition, sleep and sexual life. Wonderful methods of perfecting our inner energy are the Eastern yoga systems, with the help of which there is direct access to knowledge of the state of energy, its movement through the finer channels and its sublimation. Our bodies which manifest our initial essence are being animated by the same two-polar energy, which only changes its frequency of vibrations. But energy is nothing without control.

Streams of Will Evolution

Cognitive will is connected to the Animus, the masculine aspect of ourselves. The level of manifestation of Animus and its correlation to the Anima - the feminine, emotional aspect of ourselves, determines the quantity and quality of our free will. Will is the essence of our humane being. When we are controlled by our drives, will is in a humiliated state. When intelligence evolves, man has chances to consciously control his life. The right of choice comes into being.

Choice is the essence of human free will. Man makes choices every moment of his life. He decides which path to follow. There is choice always. This freedom is as much a gift as a burden for the unevolved mind. One often wanders and makes wrong decisions, follows other peoples ways, repeats other peoples choices. It is often the case that a trifle choice at some point of life may determine our future destiny. That is why it is good to know what you really want. Such a knowledge founded on penetrating self analysis and synthesis, intuition and emotional intelligence, which are instrumental of connection to the program plan for our present life, give us the map, direction and destination we have to follow. This is our individual direction, and the more intentionally we follow it, the more help we receive. Help under the form of coincidences, meetings and chances - the synchronicity called so by Carl Gustav Jung. At the moment of choice we are as if at a crossroad. We can walk up the mountain and broaden our view of the world, or walk downwards towards the bogs of narrow understanding, emotional mediocrity, conventionality and the dusty boring life of sleeping minds. If we start downwards, which is the easiest way, our vision will get narrow, the boggy evaporations of lower passions would mist our cognition and ability to make the right choice in the future will be less and less. As we walk down the slope of our egotism, listening to our lower nature and turning our backs to the higher one, we limit our possibilities of free will, until it vanishes, drowned in the blind wild passion, the extreme egoistic ignorance and the waste two dimensional logic.

Free will in ourselves is the child of our initial higher nature, and needs to be reconnected with it. If we listened to the quiet voice of our intuition, and walk up the steep slope of self-perfection , the narrow conventional logic turns into logical vision in the expression of Ken Wilber, in a post-conventional logic, which embraces within its vision a scope in proportion to our awareness. This logical vision is more and more closely related to intuition and at a higher stage turns into direct insight. The broadened mind connects us closer to our birth mission and thus the multiple potential for choice are not a burden any more, but are only variants of individual free will.

Each one of us makes choice every second of time. We decide which subject and university to study at, which to a great extend defines the course of our life. We make choice what to accomplish and how we want to act, choosing between the voice of our soul and that of the narrow reasoning, we choose to pull the trigger of a pistol or not, we make efforts or roll into the mud of our drives...

Determination, Flexibility, Rigidity

After having chosen a direction in the cognitive, affective and behavioral sphere, we need to take actions to achieve our goal. It could be specific physical or endogenous psychological but in order to be achieved effort and strife are necessary. Our efforts to reach the goal are a reaffirmation of the choice we have made. On the path towards a long term aim, an emotional intelligence is also necessary to support and inspire the cognitive choices on the way to their accomplishment. The relation between the roles of the emotional and the cognitive intelligence in our inner life is parallel to the roles of the woman and the man in the family structure.

The willful efforts are dynamic manifestation of our free will. They are a kind of mental mountaineering. If one gets to love walking up the steep but beautiful slopes of the strife towards evolvement and knowledge, the effort to climb up will cause him tension but also joy. On the way of satisfying the obsessive drives of his nature, one makes enormous efforts and sacrifices. If the individual chooses correctly in accord with his integral nature and applies the same quantity of efforts to satisfy the needs of his complex being, the results will be optimal both for the unconscious nature of the mammal that is hosting him and for his true essence.

Determination is an attribute of achievement. Even the hardest rock sags under the persistent drop of water. The intelligent persistence is a synonym of success. When a plant grows, it unceasingly divides its cells, until from a plain blade of grass it turns into a powerful tree. The specific feature of man is that he has the right to choose. Man can decide whether he would connect to the harmony of his function and grow in mind or degrade into the ruin of lacking will. The potential of free will of man gives him the chance to be either master of his life, or to choose the wandering ways of mediocrity which inevitably destroy the meaning of his existence.

On the way of achievement of a goal the context often varies and within this varying context one should flexibly adapt. Otherwise determination and persistence become ineffective rigidity.The flexible trunk of a young tree bends under the storm attacks, but it survives and continues to grow even after the storm is over. But the old and rigid tree is easily flung down by the wind. Let have always young minds and make flexible choices, despite the age of our bodies.

Emotional Will and Intelligence

Emotional intelligence in the terms of contemporary psychology is the awareness and management of emotional life, so that it leads to wellbeing of the mental life of the individual and his social interactions. This definition is true, but two-dimensional. To define this mental function complexly we need view it through the totality of human psyche.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of your emotional nature, its triggering in the mental organism and to skillfully direct it. On the one hand, emotional intelligence is the art of mental sublimation and on the other hand - of mental specification. Sublimation is the skill to consciously harness the ruinous drives of passion in the chariot of mind, while the bridle of free will direct it toward progressive self-knowledge. Specification is a process of manifestation and applying of the acquired superconscious experience in everyday life through which process it could be said that the snail bites up its tail. The kernel of both processes is will. Will is neither cognitive nor emotional, but is a complete synthesis of both. Will is the essence of man. It is the Logos in him.

Emotional Intelligence as a Process of Sublimation

The art of knowing oneself is great and unlimited - since man is unlimited. It means being brave enough to recognize the most rude manifestations of your beastly nature and to be able to use its energy so that they shovel you into the transpersonal spheres of your mind. Sublimation is a process of broadening the mind in which emotional intelligence is manifested as recognition of the unconscious substantial and their channeling towards the superconsciousness. There is no struggle or opposition in this process. There is an effort as a manifestation of our free will. But this is a joyous effort, since the initial unconscious impulses of attack and lust are being refined and satisfied much better and wholesomely at the higher levels of transpersonal experience. A free and ceaseless flow of mental libido energy from the unconscious goes up to the superconsciousness and the process is controlled by the will of the superconsciousness - the conscious Self. Recognition and practicing this process is a key to understanding and experimental reaching up to the truths given by the depth psychology of all esoteric schools. Sublimation is a universal key to the doors of knowledge, harmony and love. Strong will, emotional and cognitive intelligence are the mental instruments of sublimation.

The great Bulgarian psychologists and sages Peter Dunov and Michail Ivanov compare the process of sublimation to a botanical graft whereby a cultivated fruit tree is being grafted upon a strong wild foundation which guarantees long fruitful years of the whole tree and a rich store of vital energies, protecting the tree from sickness. This is a very appropriate metaphor since similar to a botanical graft the true nature of man in this world is only a guest in this world and should learn to interact with it.

Transformation of sexual passion into pure selfless love, of fear into creative power and of anger into driving creativity is unfaltering necessity on the way of human evolution of mind.

Substantiation of the Mental Motions of Emotional Intelligence

Mental substantiation is the process contrary to sublimation, wherein the transpersonal states of the extended vision and the mental integrity are being "brought down" and put in an earthly frame to be practical application and mental individuation (Jung), self-actualization (Maslow) in everyday life. If an individual does not condense and apply his knowledge, if with the help of free will he does not make it actual at the level of everyday understanding, logic and actions, an insurmountable abyss opens between him and society. In the best case, such an individual will be just an outsider and in the worst - he would be claimed to be a psychotic since he will not be understood. In the narrow understanding of contemporary science, everything outside these frames is proclaimed fantasy... In order to be of help to himself and society, the individual should learn to bring down the knowledge and experience at a formal logical operational level and to interpret his transpersonal emotional states in the everyday social life. What is more, if one only sublimates his unconscious impulses and superconscious transpersonal experience, but cannot or does not want to condense them to a more specific level of application, he would not be able to experience individuation (wholeness, self-accomplishment). He would be like a tree which feeds the branches and the leaves with earthly elements, receives brighter and more shining sun light but it does not allow it to flow down to the roots. Half of the whole process will not be functional which will distort or destroy the plant.

The processes of mental sublimation and substantiation occur at one and the same time and are reciprocal. Immediately when an aspect of the mind strives up to the light of higher experience, another aspect of it comes down in the same proportion but in the opposite direction to the unconscious and lights it up. This natural motion of the mental substantiations reduces the one-sidedness of the process to the minimum. Such one-sided motion is possible only when the will chooses wrongly, led by a distorted connection to its source. In one case, if one strives only to the higher spiritual realms, but denies the specific acts of life, he turns into a tree without root - into an essence trying to escape from life. In the other case which is more frequent if the individual trusts only the rude manifestations of life and his psyche, he is like a plant which has no light available, does not go up through the thick soil of ignorance and soon dies in the darkness of decay brought about by itself. Such is the materialistic approach which is the predominant religion in the contemporary world.

© Orlin Baev
© Galina Markina - translated from bulgarian
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© E-publisher LiterNet, 29.12.2010
Orlin Baev. Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality. Varna: LiterNet, 2010.