The Exercise of Will-Power and the Role of Sincerity in Implementation

Most people have had the experience. They decide to try a new diet or exercise regimen. They stick with it a few days or weeks and then it seems to get overlooked, forgotten or abandoned. Other things got in the way, or else, the impulses caused them to weaken their resolve. How many times people decide to cut out between meal snacks, only to find themselves following the old habit?

Why does this happen? While we tend to believe that once we ‘make up our mind’ about something that we can carry it out, we fail to account for the different parts of our being that have their own needs, desires and pressures to effectuate those desires. The mind may decide on a course of action, but the vital being and the physical being disagree.

It is only when all the parts of the being are in alignment on a particular goal or action that it can be put into practice in a complete way. The Mother calls this ‘sincerity’. Without this type of sincerity, we are pushed and pulled in various directions, we give way to divergent pressures and drives, and we find our good intentions overtu
ed when the vital nature or the body assert their separate directions.

A disciple asks: “Sweet Mother, how can we make our resolution very firm?”

The Mother observes: “By wanting it to be very firm! (Laughter)”

“No, this seems like a joke… but it is absolutely true. One does not want it truly. There is always, if you… It is a lack of sincerity. If you look sincerely, you will see that you have decided that it will be like this, and then, beneath there is something which has not decided at all and is waiting for the second of hesitation in order to rush forward. If you are sincere, if you are sincere and get hold of the part which is hiding, waiting, not showing itself, which knows that there will come a second of indecision when it can rush out and make you do the thing you have decided not to do…”

“But if you really want it, nothing in the world can prevent you from doing what you want. It is because one doesn’t know how to will it. It is because one is divided in one’s will. If you are not divided in your will, I say that nothing, nobody in the world can make you change your will.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter V Will-Power, pp. 48-49