The Power of WillingnessI’ve been noticing lately the kinds of questions that arise when I’m working with people:
“Would you be willing to accept this experience just as it is?”
“Would you be willing to love yourself for feeling this?”
“Would you be willing to ask your body about this?”
“Would you be willing to live with this question and not know the answer?”
“Would you be willing just to say yes to this moment?”

A lot of the time people respond by wanting to know how, how to do whatever follows the word ‘willing.’ But that’s not the question. We really don’t have to know how. All we have to do is touch into the willingness.

About six years ago, on retreat, I discovered the power of willingness. Our facilitator had asked us to open right up and directly contact our inner experience, the whole spectrum of our feelings and thoughts, without holding back. He asked us to find out how willing we were to do that. I was in a lot of emotional pain at the time, and I realized, when he asked the question, that I wasn’t very willing at all to contact myself in that way. I was deeply discouraged by this, because I could see that without that willingness, I was stuck in a contracted place. I walked around for a while, contemplating my unhappy state, and wondering where I would find the willingness I was looking for. Then I realized something. I saw that I was willing to be unwilling. It seemed so simple, almost like nothing at the time. I simply saw that I was in a place of unwillingness because I was willing to be there.

It reminds me of Jon de Ruiter, a spiritual teacher, who talks about the liberating power of tenderness. He says that all you need to start with is a tiny droplet of tenderness. That’s what happened to me that day-I found a tiny droplet of willingness. And once I found it, it expanded and filled the whole universe. It turned into something much bigger and more potent that I had ever imagined. I realized that willingness is not something my mind produces. It’s an unconditioned quality that comes from the ground of my being.

It’s not always easy to be willing. That doesn’t mean that willingness takes effort and struggle. It just means it’s not something our minds can construct, or even understand. Willingness only exists right now. And its nature is without judgment or manipulation. Sometimes I’ll ask a client or student, “ Are you willing to let go of your resistance to this experience?” They reply, “But I don’t want this experience!” It’s easy to confuse wanting and willingness. But they are not the same. Our unconditioned being, our real heart, is always willing to experience life as it is, this moment as it arises. That is our true nature-just this wide openness that doesn’t even know how to resist. When we call on our willingness, that is what we are accessing-this unconditioned presence that is always here- accepting, welcoming everything.

Wanting and not wanting are movements of our conditioned mind. We can actually be willing to open to something we do not want to acknowledge at all. We’ve all had experiences of this.  It’s really not some mystical, esoteric thing, reserved for special, very advanced people! It happened to me this week. I was talking to my coach on the phone and he said something to me that my mind did not like. It was a bit too close to the bone. It revealed a conditioned pattern of mine that I did not want to look at. But was I willing to look at it? Oh yes. And for the next few days I experienced both sides of me-the mind that wanted to turn away and distract itself, and the willingness which just stayed right there and kept looking.

Eventually the willingness got stronger, and the not wanting just dropped away. That’s what happens with willingness. It’s not static-it’s dynamic and alive. And it’s so easy to overlook, because it’s with us all the time. Willingness doesn’t feel like much- it’s not exciting or dramatic. It’s very much like our unconditioned awareness. Most of the time we ignore it and take it for granted. But when we make the simple choice to acknowledge it, recognize it, open to it, we receive far more than we were expecting.

The very nature of willingness is not conditional. It has nothing to do with belief. It’s not about struggle or manipulation. You cannot ‘try’ to be willing. Have you noticed this?

Willingness is all about showing up, and letting go of our unending struggle to make life behave the way we want it to. As long as we believe that we can control our experience, we will not be willing to open to this moment. We’ll be involved in avoiding our experience, moving from this moment to a better one. And then we never contact ourselves or this moment directly. We see everything through the filter of what ‘should ‘ be or ‘could be’, like Paul expressed it in the New Testament: ‘For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.’

The mind only knows how to resist and avoid. Our heart, our essence is always willing to meet this moment, face to face. All it takes is a tiny droplet of willingness.

with love
Shayla