Inner activity

Whenever we wish to be active, we must engage with our will. Whether this action comes about through a personal wish or through a command makes no difference for the nature of willing. When we talk about willing here, we mean becoming active. Willing is force in an even greater measure than feeling. The force of willing condenses itself here to my being, which I call ´I´. I experience every act as my own particular activity. I myself must stir my body to activity, even if it is against my will, if I am forced to work. The result of the activity is always my work. In my willing I live as ‘I’, I experience the reality of my being. Nothing comes into being if I do not become active. Yet it is particularly this area of my being, namely, my will, that lies the most deeply hidden within my consciousness. The results of my willing are concrete, reality, tangible. The willing itself I sleep through completely. I cannot consciously follow how the willing comes about. The mental images of what I want and what I have to do live in my consciousness. There too live the mental images of the feelings which the will does or does not support. But the essential power of the will escapes me entirely. My human powerlessness is characterized by these three areas in consciousness: What I know consciously – thinking - I cannot do. What I do or how I do it – willing – evades my consciousness. Between these two poles live my changing joys and sorrows.

Man can free himself from this powerlessness. In the Bhagavad Gita we find the following lines:
“The senses are great; 
The intellect shows itself to be greater,
“Reason” is yet greater still, 
But above all these stands the spirit”.

Liberation from the above-mentioned powerlessness commences at the moment when we realize that we have only observed the content of consciousness, which is im- mediately and concretely present. We direct our view inwards and observe what lives in our consciousness as that given content which has not arisen through our own activity. Then we ‘see’ our powerlessness, our lack of freedom. Nevertheless, when we observe in this way, the activity itself always escapes our attention, for  the attention – the inner attention – is directed at the observation of the consciousness. It observes that upon which we direct it.

But the activity itself, the directing of the attention itself, the inner observation, the observer himself, escapes the observation.

Quote fom my book 'Seek the light that rises in the West', p. 42 ff.

Inner activity by Mieke Mosmuller