Growth and Will: In the end, of course, all qualifiers will inevitably fall into the hands of the living God, for the better or the worse under free will.

In some ways we understand much more clearly how people can learn in adulthood by active, deliberate choice.

What we do not understand is why?

We are now confronted with the extraordinary mystery of the human will.

Certain people seem to have been born with a strong will while others seem to be relatively weak willed.

The subject however, however, has never been studied scientifically.

We do not actually know whether there are differences in the strength of will or whether they are genetic or to what extent they are developed or learned.

It is an extremely mysterious matter and represents a wide-open frontier for psychological research.

In any case, it is well believed that a strong will is one of the greatest blessing that can be bestowed upon a human being.

Additionally many believe this not because a strong will necessarily guarantees success - IT MAY BACKFIRE AND CREATE A HITLER, for example - but because a weak will pretty much guarantees failure. 

For instance, it is strong willed people - those with the mysterious will to grow - who do well no matter what their childhood or background was like, no matter what the odds. On the other hand, other people who seem to lack this mysterious will to grow may possess all manner of assets-great ideas and talents - yet they sit on their duffs, getting noplace.


Still, yet, as 'We The People' have redundantly pointed out, all blessing are potential curses, and one downside of a strong will is a bad temper.

It is strong willed people who wrap golf clubs around trees because the damn little ball won't go where they want it to go. Strong-willed people have a lot of learning to do to effectively manage their anger.

In Further along the Road Less Traveled, author wrote that he used to explain to his patients that having a Weak Will is like having a little donkey in your backyard.

It can't hurt you very much; about the worst it can do is chomp some of your tulips. But tit cant help you very much either, and you could end up with a life of regrets for not doing things you thought you should do.

Having a strong will, on the other hand, is like having a dozen Clydesdales in your backyard. Those horses are massive and extremely strong, and if they are not properly trained, disciplined, and harnessed, they will knock your house down.

On the other hand, if they are properly trained, disciplined, and harnessed, then with them you can literally move mountains.

Thus the distinction between the harnessed and unharnessed will is important.

But what to what is the will to be harnessed?



Your will cannot be simply harnessed to yourself. It has to be harnessed to a power higher than yourself. 

In his book Will and Spirit, the first chapter of which is entitled "Willingness and Willfulness," Gerald May writes that willfulness characterizes the unharnessed human will, whereas willingness identifies the strong will of a person who is willing to go where he or she is called or led by a higher power.




Furthermore, given the relationship between willingness and a higher power, it is no coincidence as wrote in The Road Less Traveled that the will to grow is in essence the same phenomenon as love.

Defined Love as the will is to extend selves for ones own spiritual growth or another's.
Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.

It has been spoken throughout the Bible many times how the capacity to love is nurtured in one by loving parents, but also noted that parental nurturing alone fails to account for the existence of this capacity in all people.

Thus, as world community we have to come to believe that peoples capacity to love, hence their will to grow, is nurtured not only during childhood by loving parents but also throughout their lives by grace, or God's Love.

Yet we are left with the question of why some people continue to show a will to grow throughout life, while many shun not only growth but the responsibility that comes with learning.

Mysterious though it is, the choice to actively learn as an Adult and Devote one's will consciously to growth and learning is the most crucial decision one ever makes in life.

But when is this choice made? Again, the issue has not been scientifically studied in the way it should.

Mental health professionals have broadly suggested throughout time, there is no evidence that the choice is made in childhood. But it can be made as early as mid-adolescence. People as young as fifteen and sixteen have written letters in response to topical mental health books that affirmed clearly to have already made that choice.

To enter into knowledge and major in all of  the hard sciences known would be quite difficult or simply recognized the value behind 'whats the point of majoring in something that's easy for you.'

Sometimes it comes during periods of taking stock, as in the middle of a crisis.

In most cases, discerned, the choice is made repeatedly. Decision evolved into an active learner mode that grew stronger and stronger as  remade and remade, till choice recalls the moments that cemented the choice.


Personal style, for the most part of life, is simply defined as having learned from experiences. That is why contemplatives are generally described  as the someones who take a little bit of experience and milks it for all it's worth. It's not simply a matter of how much experience you have in life but what you do with it. 

We all know people who have accomplished many tasks, or done this and that which seems to amount to a broad range of experiences, but whom seem naive or confused as ever.

Just going around having different experiences is worthless if one does not learn something about oneself and the rest of the world from those experiences.

That's why it is important to be alert not only to external but to internal experiences that serve our Spiritual Growth.

Thus a large part of the willingness to learn must include learning by looking within.



Specific to the point is a quote from the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who said: "A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge , and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning."

Ultimately, someone whose will has become devoted to learning and growth is someone whose will is clearly in alignment with God's purpose. That does not mean, however, that such person is conscious of this fact, or the they see themselves as being in "harmony with an unseen order of things." They may consider themselves to be agnostic. Yet even many who do not identify God as their higher power  may show a willingness to submit themselves to something they consider greater than themselves - perhaps the ideas of Love, Light, and Truth.

In the end, of course, all of these qualities have something to do with God. Nonetheless, it has been  within  many an impression over time that such people continue over the years and the decades to devote their will to learning and growth, and almost inevitably will fall into the hands of the living God, and their soul will be in a personal relationship with it's creator and nurturer.
Educational Book Share: The Road Less Traveled and Beyond - Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. M.Scott Peck, M.D.

Ezekiel 28:13 - Commentary & Verse Meaning - Bible

When God's about to Abandon a Nation: It is always instructive how relevantly it speaks to our time and to our lives that will be true.