★will vs mind

I’ll throw one out for you guys to think on. It has to do with with the difference between the will and the mind and which is more powerful. A smart guy a few years ago, his name was Schoppenhauer, said in a much better way that I am about to say from my own memory, that the will is more powerful than the mind. He said some stuff about the will being the true nature of a thing – a human, a rock, a bug, a plant. Everything has a nature. Aristotle said this too. Anyway, forgive me for not being able to say this better, but, I’m going to plod along anyway. Things we think of as being driven by the subconscious – stuff like your heartbeat, for example – can be thought of as really being driven by the will, that is, our heart is being pumped by what is the nature of a heart. Dr’s can describe what it happening, but, the why behind the why of what is happening is the will, which can never be really described. (Maybe you could think of it as God behind the curtain.) Well, when I at least have always thought of the term willpower, I have usually associated that term with “mind over matter” or “determination”. I think when Schoppenhauer was using the term “will” he meant something almost the opposite of what I have always thought of by the term willpower. Again, forgive me for butchering Schoppenhauer, but, he said more or less that the will is more powerful than the mind, and from what I take, it is more powerful than the mind by a great deal. If we think of it in terms of the subconscious, I think most of us would agree that that is true. We are driven more by our subconscious mind than our conscious mind. Our self-talk, for example, is mostly on autopilot. Well, when we dig below the subconscious even further (and also underneath the tapes we have programmed ourselves to run non stop, such as “I’m not good enough”, etc…) I think we could look at the will in Schoppenhauer’s context – with my own spin on it – as being that little voice inside of us that is coming from God, or “source” if you will. Try and struggle as we might, our conscious mind might try to point us to “some thing” that we think we want, but, that conscious desire for that “some thing” – if it is at odds with our source – will never bring us much in terms of happiness. The television screams at us all the time telling all of us what we “should want”, but, only our will can tell us what we really want. Only our will, that inner voice can tell us what we really want and why we are here in the first place. If we can find and listen to that voice, then perhaps we are on the right track for a better life ‘cause we are in alignment with the universe.

How’s that for some bmindful stuff, folks.

Sincerely,
Moonflower

P.s.
Please remember to bring your green crystal, two ounces of garlic and a spring of wolf’s bane to next Tuesday’s meeting.

P.P.S.
Meeting instructions

In response to Smart_Routines_With_Enthusiasm’s post:

If I understand you correctly, you are equating our will to our Spirit. Is it our Spark of life, our God given purpose, our spiritual self? Or did I bring the wrong green crystal for my interpretation?

Yes, Poppy. Schoppenhauer also talked about the will in ways as being primal. The will, to him, applied to the species of man as well as to the individual. He, I think, suggested that the desire to reproduce is so powerful ‘cause it has to do with the survival of the species. (I’m getting beyond my original post, but, I’m butchering the man’s words and think I should go a little further so as not to misrepresent a bigger idea he was getting at.) I, personally, was suggesting that our life purpose as individuals comes from will perhaps. I don’t know. Just a thought I was having. The philosopher suggested that most people are driven by the will, but, he said that some people with the right sort of intellect could override the will. An animal or a plant is driven entirely by will, and those drives are very basic – eat, drink, sleep, reproduce. A human also has reason. We can use reason to override some things. That can be both bad and good. Anyway, I was just throwing some stuff out there for us to think about.