I do voluntary work for half a day per week (2015-2018). 
I support a trainer in his work on a frequent basis, together with another volunteer(s).
Last week, the trainer told me that he had asked several volunteers to support a colleague at another location. His colleague has no volunteers at all, so she has no support in her work. 
The trainer let me know that all the volunteers he had asked reacted in a negative way. Then he asks me if I want to assist his colleague. 
My first impulsive reaction is: 'No, I'm enjoying myself here with the other volunteers, and with one in particular (we have a lot of fun together), and I also just started again after a short period of absence after my daughter died.'

The following day I receive an email from the trainer:
Ha Caroline, 
I understand that you enjoy working with X. But I would like to invite you once again to help my colleague on Friday. Just for once, without obligation, then you can meet each other. Something (intuition?) tells me that it will click well between you two.
With kind regards, 
Y
Well, what do you do in such a situation?
What do you let yourself be led by?

Do you let yourself be guided by your own need, your personal will: 
I like it, fine cooperation with other volunteers and I also contribute in supporting the meeting. 

Or do you allow yourself to be guided by existence itself, by the current that existence takes in the form of a question by the trainer? 

Are you moving where the wind is taking you or do you respond to personal desires, expectations and needs? 
Everything is possible..., nothing is right or wrong. See from which you move, that is what matters.
I recently listened to an awesome satsang by Adyashanti: Beyond the Personal Will (to be found at www.adyashanti.org) and read his book 'Jesus, the mystic', a book in which Adyashanti shows how important events in the life of Jesus run parallel with different phases of spiritual awakening.
Adyashanti indicates in the satsang that after awakening there are years to follow where the personal will gradually dies out... until nothing is left and complete realization takes place. 
He also indicates that this extinction of personal will (the ego) generally takes years..., so strong is the power of personal will and the illusion of a separate self (identity).

I give you an explanatory quotation from his book (Jesus, the mystic) about awakening itself (page 235): 
'We rise above the identification with the ego and the mind, we realize our true nature of being divine. But when you transcend something, this doesn't mean that what you transcended has gone somewhere. 
And so we come into the time of trials, when life gives us (...) situations that help us (…) to embody what we have realized. 
When we have gone through many trials that teaches us to embody spirit (Divine being) - and this stage often takes a few years - we come to a deep and intense sense of calmness, of well-being.'

And that is where I am (autumn 2016): in the years of trials and the extinguishing of personal will. A very big ordeal occurred this summer (2016) when our daughter unexpectedly died at the age of 28.
I will write about that at a different time. 

A very small 'ordeal', I would rather call it a small 'test', is the question that the trainer presented to me. 

I wrote an e-mail to my fellow volunteer, which I enjoy working with every Friday. Below you will read a part of the mail: 
Well..., a great pity that we no longer see each other on a frequent basis, but I can also look at it from the perspective that existence triggers this flow (this explicit request from the trainer), besides the fact that we naturally every now and then can drink a cup of coffee after our meetings that will take place at the same time, only at another location which is close by..., and I also want to contribute where I am needed..., from the heart..., what is beyond personal interests and needs. 
Well, X, I didn't expect that it would unfold the way it unfolds..., talking about expectations... what my previous blog was about..., but I'm flexible enough to move with the flow of life... So I'm going to assist the other trainer next week..., which way it goes..., no idea..., but I'll keep you informed.
Love,
Caroline

And then the time has come. I meet the other trainer on Friday at a new location. And again some small challenges arises: it is initially freezing cold in the room (the air conditioning couldn't be switched of) and the windows are covered with sturdy net curtains so that there is no distraction for the participants, and also no contact with the outside world (with nature) and the lighting of the space leaves much to be desired. In other words: I clearly don't improve on space and atmosphere.

Okay, I say to myself: that's the way it is. Next time I dress on it..., this is where existence brings me. 
I give the support to the trainer that is needed and I clearly feel that the request for help didn't come out of the blue: I am needed here and I feel that I want to give her the back up that she needs. 
The next day I mail the trainer, who asked me to support his colleague, that from now on I will help his colleague.

And so it goes..., if you no longer allow yourself to be led by your personal will, but by the heart, by existence itself…

That's the flow of life..., if you voluntarily hand over the helm..., then you go where the wind takes you... 

For some time there is almost no resistance anymore when life invites me to move with the flow of Life itself.
Yes, I notice the tails of personal will and also the tendency to attach (I liked it to work with the other volunteer, because we had so much fun together), but there isn't much needed to let it go. 

The key is the heart: the heart is open and is touched when the trainer asked me once again to go along with his colleague and that made the movement possible.

In all other cases (if the heart is not open) the 'choice', whether or not to move, comes from the mind or from personal will: let them find another volunteer, I will not leave. 

Or we move along, because religious currents asks us to practice certain virtues such as servitude, charity, calmness. 
Then the movement also doesn't come from the heart, but from the head, the ego: I have to do well, I have to be friendly, I will practice unconditional kindness (as if it can be practiced, who is practicing it: personal will?).

Or we say 'yes', we can't say 'no' because we want to be liked. 
Even then the movement doesn't come from the heart, but from a learned program from our youth. In other words, the personal will remains intact. 

It is therefore not possible to make a project of dismantling the personal will, because the motive from which you then move is the personal will itself (I am now going to break down the slave driver in me, the personal will with all its desires and needs).
Who is the 'I' who intends to do this? 

The only solution I see for the extinguishment of personal will is the opening of the heart. And that is what consciousness coaching is about and is meant for: the transformation from head to heart.

Not my will happens, but Your will..., the will of Life itself, beyond the ego, beyond the imaginary "I" who thinks that she/he can control life (personal will).


www.thehealingcircle.one
LinkedIn: Caroline Ootes