Willing

The human being as described has four bodies or sheath: the physical, the etheric, the astral and the soul. The astral is the body of movement of which there are a number of different movements. This short essay and the two that will follow will describe and share a perspective on the three general type of movement that finds their home in the astral body.

The first type of movement is one that we are all very familiar with. It is generally called: will. If we do a quick internet type research on the origin of the word will, we find that it has meanings that imply choice and also imply wish. Will, even as we understand it today, continues to carry this in the background although some of us choose to ignore that choice and wish may be connected to the meaning of will. 

In the human being, there are at least two types of will: conscious will (clearly if you want to make a choice and you wish to achieve something) and unconscious will. Unconscious will means will activities wherein we do not make a choice. The digestion of our food, for example, is a type of will activity that we do not choose or decide on what actually happens. I cannot, for example tell my stomach to digest the apple first before the chicken both of which I ate. In fact, if we were caught up in this willing, we would be unable to think of anything else. Imagine a situation where we would have to will our muscles to contract, then relax, then contract, then relax, just to walk! It is clearly in our best interest, therefore, that some aspects of will better left unseen or unnoticed.

On the other hand, there are will activities, such as typing this blog, that require conscious effort. The physical act of typing is not one of those. The willing for which key on the keyboard to strike for example, or how to spell words correctly and type them correctly is not something I do consciously. This will activity is moved by the memory that lives in a way in my finders and my arms that translate what I am thinking into this text. However, to create the content of this blog, even before it appears in electronic form, required will on my part. To build the argument, think it through, and imagine how I would like to say it was deliberately willed on my part. I choose to write this blog with the wish to share with others, some of the thoughts that come to mind having read various works of Rudolf Steiner. Unlike the actual typing activity, the creation of this blog, consciously willed, required a very specific type of movement. The movement may not have been visible outside of me but something was “moving” within me. 

When I play a game, for example, there are movements that may be called schooled: memory was developed and ingrained into my muscle mass so that my legs and arms would know what to do. This frees me up to strategize what I am going to do during the game. If I had to think about where to move and how to move during the game, I would spend a greater deal of time on this then actually planning my game. 

Effectively, for those will activities that flow from memory, even if I create the memory, requires a close collaboration with the etheric body. As we know, the etheric body has a very specific type of movement: it’s rhythmical. As a consequence, repetitive activities that stream from memory arise in collaboration with the etheric. On the other hand, will activities that arise from choices and hopes within me, take on a different nature. It is ultimately this wish for a specific result, in other words, this wish to create a future that differentiates conscious wiling from unconscious willing.  

Will is about the activities in our lives. Some we are unconscious to; others, we do consciously. The real challenge to us all is: are we doing the conscious ones consciously and the unconscious ones unconsciously? Can we even tell the difference? To succeed in telling the difference would me to understand the nature of will.

Sources: The Study of Man by Rudolf Steiner.