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If there is one quality that might bring us closer to the truth about what we are, it might be willingness. Because the truth about what we actually are is subject to exploration from our own selves. Exploration of our very own meaning to the lives we live, our purpose for existence, and the type of person we aspire to be in these moments of living and existing. To explore to such depth, a certain level of willingness is required to take a hard look at what we think about these things. Without the will to see, backing the inward reflection that is required to find clarity and not just take things at face value, we end up allowing the world to define us. We end up, in many ways, fated to a certain destiny. To a specific belief system, an ideology, and method, a culture, a religious, a practice... you name it. Perhaps we become defined by the very thing which has promised to liberate us.
What about the willing One within, that is still able to let go of these definitions? To continue to escape labeling, and to find that even when a label is assumed or stamped onto our identity like a barcode on a packaged commodity, we are able to rise up and be the fluid and dynamic truth that we really are. Because if there is an Absolute Truth, then that would mean that it is true everywhere at all times for all things. Which would imply that It is entirely dynamic, totally fluid, interchangeable, and formless. Yet it still remains capable of the ability to take on the precise form needed at the time of definition - only to dissolve back into the formless potential from which all things arise.
Is willingness the human quality that connects us to such an Absolute? If we are willing to let go of any identity we have assumed for any length of time, then we are able to adapt to a new identity in the length of a moment. With each moment being entirely new and invariably different, perhaps this 'willingness' is the only thing required for constant adaptation and evolution of our Self, in all situations. Without vigilant attention to the willing One inside of us, we crystallize, become brittle, rigid around some idea, and risk being broken. Yet it is in this experience of being broken that we are asked to (and maybe are required to) reassume a role of some sort to carry onward. Even if that role or identity is the most general one of all, of being a human. Yes, identifying as a human is as much of a role and identity as identifying as a white American male yoga practitioner. But it is my choice to be able to let go of that in a moment's notice when life offers me a chance to step into something beyond it.
Maybe I am being asked to let go of everything, all at once, so that I can assume some ultimate responsibility. Maybe I am just being asked to let go, because if I hold on, it will be forcibly ripped from me by the natural flow of life. I face death, as all things with embodied life do, and it is this mortality that is the root of all fear that I could ever experience. Establishing a connection to the quality of willingness that allows me to move forward despite the loss of whatever it was that seemed to be important to me is essential if I am to live in a place beyond fear. If I am unable to enter into this space, then therein lies the risk of this unconscious fear plaguing my heart and continuing to keep me from entering into unconditional love. A divine space.
Am I willing? Is it willingness that which is needed from my being to want what life wants? To be willing to let go of any of Grant's preconceived notions about how life should be and instead accept fully what is unfolding? Am I willing??