While I have never considered myself to be a strong personality type I also recognize that there have been times in my life when I was extremely strong willed. If there is indeed a cosmic truth to be revealed in the qualities of the horoscope than I am for sure a classic Taurus. There have been more than a few situations in my life in which I have felt compelled to really dig my heels in.
I remember being a four year child and refusing to eat the yams my mother put on my plate for dinner. My mother was formidable, and she decided I would sit at the table with those yams until I ate them. I decided I was not going to eat those disgusting things. When they got cold I told her I couldn’t eat them at that temperature. She reheated them. I sat and stared at them until they once again got cold. She was not going to be outdone by a four year old. Added salt. An additional glass of milk. I wasn’t having it. As the eleven o’clock news came on the yams were tossed in the trash and I was tossed in bed. I had won.
With many years of spiritual practice and a strong dose of recovery and emotional fluency my relationship to will and to willfulness has changed for sure.
I remember early in my twelve step work becoming paralyzed by the desire to know and to follow the will of God. I had a deep and a compelling desire to turn my will and my life over to the care and to the will of my Source, as prompted by the third of those twelve steps. At that time I was very confused as to what that greater will might be. I didn’t want to be willful as I had been in the past. I wanted to clearly know what I now call the Will of the One.
I agonized over it. I searched my mind, fearful that I would do something that would be out of alignment with God’s will. I often discounted my wants and desires, putting them aside as if my desires couldn’t possibly be the desires of the Universe coming forth in me. I was at times paralyzed.
I hold a deep appreciation for that time in my emergence. It taught me so much, and was an instrumental part of my acquiring what amounts to a totally God-experience.
I now live in the awareness that God’s Will is always What God is. God’s Will is love in all of its expressions. God’s Will is kindness and compassion, justice and equality. It doesn’t matter so much where I live, what I do, or what kind of car I drive. It does matter how I live, how I do what I do, and how I behave while I am driving.
I am clear that there are feminine and masculine aspects to will, and both are within me. I pray each morning to be willing to will the will of the One. I am soft and open in willingness, and strong and convicted in what I know the will to be for me. I balance them throughout my day. I no longer see willfulness as an enemy to be conquered. It is a force to be harnessed. I am indeed stubborn for what I know to be right for me. I am unwavering in my values. I will go to the mat to hold the line for what is right and true and just.
I also no longer make my desires or wants wrong. There is an Infinite Universe of Goodness to be experienced. I seek every day to expand my personal goodness quotient. I now know life is for me. The One Will is for my highest good. That is what I seek to open to.
And I still refuse to eat yams. So there
