Will

To will is to wish, desire, sometimes with the implication of intention, to assert, affirm, to determine by the will, to attempt to cause, aim at effecting by exercise of will, to set the mind with conscious intention, to choose or decide to do something, or that something shall be done or happen.


Your soul uses will to function as the Wisdom of God through your brain’s nerve centers and glands. Your will proclaims and executes the idea of the good that is in you. Will is an abstract principle under the Wisdom principle, a law of being and of doing, a soul virtue and a mental and moral faculty.





Edna Lister on Will

Determination is the pipeline from your will power to your future. – Edna Lister, Let’s Fly! "Determination Is the Pipeline," 1933.


The will encased in love is willingness, not willfulness. – Edna Lister, January 31, 1933.


A strong will is one that never changes purpose. A weak will is one that is afraid to change attitudes, tactics, or way at a moment’s notice. – Edna Lister, The Fountain of Youth, December 19, 1934.


Will is the key to the fountain of life in man. What you hold by the will, you crush and thus lose. What you bind on earth is bound in heaven. What you loose on earth, you loose in heaven. – Edna Lister, The High Call, January 2, 1935.


Mere self-centered will is forcing; determination is letting. – Edna Lister, The Foundation of Life, September 29, 1935.


A mental essence forms the will and the intellect. Will is magnetic and intellect is electric. – Edna Lister, January 25, 1936.


The expression of God’s will is good. His will is itself the expression of eternal, absolute, uncreated justice, which His will did not create, but does execute, as your individual will proclaims and executes the idea of the good that is in you. God has given us the law of truth and justice. Justice is inherent in God’s will, because His intelligence, wisdom, very nature and most intimate essence contains it. – Edna Lister, Nine Lesser Mysteries, February 27, 1937.


You are free to choose how you use will, the creator-servant’s tool. Yet the only right use of will is willingness to let God’s Power use you. Unwillingness is a selfish will that pushes against Power, creating force. – Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1941.


You may not force your will on another at any time. – Edna Lister, February 13, 1941.


The soul functions as the law through imagination, will and desire. Imagination extends a line of Light to establish contact with God. Will is determination, acting as if you had it. Desire reaches and presses forth. – Edna Lister, Eternal Youth, the Seven Breaths, November 6, 1946.


The solar plexus is the seat of desire, and the seat of will is in the center of consciousness in the head [as the fully functioning pineal body, pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and optic chiasm]. When will sinks to the seat of desire, the soul lives his life in its lower aspect, with little or no will power. When you cleanse the subconscious mind, desire moves up and mates with will in the head center.

With this first marriage of the Lamb, will becomes illumination in the pineal body, and desire becomes the seat of intuition in the pituitary gland. Light is then released through the higher creative center onto the nerve ganglia called the optic chiasm of the thalamus, which is called the mystic eye. Desire mated to will [Bride and Groom] opens the three "windows of the soul." The Holy Breath as the white Light of the Christ fills the center window of the Mother to mingle its blue ray with the red ray of the right window and the yellow ray of the left window. – Edna Lister, December 9, 1946.


If your desire and will conflict, you cannot agree and adjust. Desire and will must mate. – Edna Lister, July 1949.


The third ventricle of the brain is the seat of will. When the self-will is strong, the third ventricle "window" is so filmy and opaque that Light cannot get through. You must draw back the curtain of will and raise desire to mate with will in the third ventricle to open the pineal body and pituitary gland. – Edna Lister, September 28, 1950.


Your will, expressing as Wisdom, opens the pineal body to illumination. Your desires, expressing as Love, open the pituitary to intuition, and desire added to will becomes the Creator’s Christed I AM consciousness. – Edna Lister, What I Do Have, I Give, October 1, 1950.


The first marriage of the Lamb is the mating of desire and will to create the I AM consciousness. The second marriage of the Lamb is the mating of I AM with Oversoul. – Edna Lister, November 13, 1950.


You make the first marriage of the Lamb when you mate your self with your soul and unify your desire and will. You make the second marriage of the Lamb when you mate your "I AM" super-consciousness with the divine "I AM," and make your soul and Oversoul one again. A Christed One has made the second marriage of the Lamb. – Edna Lister, July 19, 1951.


Your faculties of will and desire will create anything that you permit your self to dictate. – Edna Lister, March 10, 1952.


Wisdom operates in you as illumination in the pineal body, and as your faculty of will. Love becomes Wisdom’s negative pole, seated in the sacrum plexus, dwelling place of the creative fire. Thus, the macrocosm of Mind becomes the microcosm of individual consciousness. The seat of will is in the frontal lobes of the brain; the seat of intellect is at the solar plexus, called the self’s "brain."

Free will is not self-will. You lay your self on the crossbar to crucify self-will. Your personal desire must ascend to mate with personal will; will becomes Wisdom, and desire becomes Love. Thus, desire and will mate and become intuition and illumination, or "I AM" consciousness; this is the birth of the Holy Spirit within you. Love then descends to the sacrum as the creative fire. Will as Wisdom frees itself of intellect and ascends to the pineal body. This is the birth of free will in a Christed One. – Edna Lister, The Gospel of the Cross, October 18, 1953.


You must cleanse your will of self. The danger is that you wish to impose your will on others. They then struggle forever against you, even when you are right. – Edna Lister, The Gospel of the Cross, October 18, 1953.


When desire ascends, it puts the personal will on the crossbar of the cross of crucifixion of the self. Free will is the freedom to use the faculty of will through Wisdom. Free will is the perfection of the Wisdom of God. Your will is free only when you allow Wisdom to use you. "Free will" is the Holy Ghost using you. Give up the vacillation of self and choosing the negative. Self is the only thing you can give up. War is how nations use free will in selfishness and negativity. Force is the negative expression of free will. – Edna Lister, October 19, 1953.


The art of loving is the ability to adjust to others without imposing your will on them. – Edna Lister, October 19, 1953.


To be right, you must lay your self-will on the transverse of the cross. Will is called "free will" or "free choice." Desire is the creative fire in you. You cannot kill desire or eliminate will, nor can you sacrifice will or desire, but you can cleanse the self. You achieve balance when you mate desire with will. As desire ascends, it becomes the flame to purify will, if you have laid it on the transverse of the cross.

The world is torn between giving up will and expressing "free will." The intellectuals argue that God bestowed the gift of free will upon us and we therefore must use it. They fear that by giving up their free will, they will become nonentities, and thus fear nonresistance. To compound this conundrum, Eastern philosophy and puritanical religious sects have advocated killing or suppressing desire, lumping the good with the not-so-good and calling it all "bad," "dirty," or "evil."

You express Love as desire, and Wisdom as will. Yet you can’t truly discover the nature of free will until you know what love is. It is not that "I have" or "I don’t have" free will. Will and desire are functions of the soul indwelling the body. The action of free will is smooth, sweet and rhythmic, but the exercise of personal will rides on a flat tire. – Edna Lister, Righteousness, April 7, 1954.


When you ascend self-desires and self-will to become one with soul desires and the free will of God, they fuse as Love and Wisdom in balance, which we call the I AM consciousness. Your desires and will then express as the faculties of intuition and illumination. – Edna Lister, Your Life’s Plan, May 16, 1954.


Wisdom and Love are always recognizable, although they divide themselves into multiple lesser principles and laws. You can trace everything back to one or the other of these two. Love functions as desire; Wisdom functions as will, and when they move together as one, everything works together for good in your life. – Edna Lister, Eternal Youth, 1955.


You ascend to joy when desire and will join Love and Wisdom. – Edna Lister, Heavenly Manna, August 14, 1955.


"Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it, whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left." – Isaiah 30:21. Intuition is the result of desire and will becoming one as the Christed "I AM" in the tower room of the higher creative center. – Edna Lister, Intuition or Hunch? September 18, 1955.


The subconscious forever tries to drag the conscious mind and will down, and imagination walks away with desire. – Edna Lister, June 4, 1957.


Will holds, but desire wants. – Edna Lister, June 4, 1957.


When desire mates with will, you do not see a problem – what was upsetting just isn’t there. – Edna Lister, June 4, 1957.


Your will must be perfect and without the taint of self. – Edna Lister, October 30, 1957.


Desire ascends and mates with will to become the "I AM" consciousness, begetting intuition and illumination that create the great gift of poise, which consists of equal parts of Love and Wisdom. The firstborn twins of the mating of desire and will are peace and patience, expressions of poise and Power moving through you. – Edna Lister, Soul Integration, December 8, 1957.


You ascend in consciousness through countless crucifixions of our self’s will and desires. – Edna Lister, Jesus’ Seven Last Words, June 7, 1959.


The Father created us to be instruments for His expression. He gave us free will to choose good or evil. However, the only time your will is "free" is when you exercise it to express His wisdom. – Edna Lister, Desire Is Your Glory, June 14, 1959.


You can go no higher than the ballast of self in your will allows you. – Edna Lister, Here and Hereafter, October 9, 1960.


"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." – Matthew 6:10. The will of God is Wisdom expressing as absolute perfection, a principle flowing through the River of Life. Choice is free, but the results of your exercise of free will depend on how you choose, between the love of God or love of self. If you use your will as your great faculty of determination and steadfastness, will stiffens your spine to bear the difficulties of earth life, not like a stiff rod of brittle iron but like a willow that is strong, yet pliable. – Edna Lister, The Ladder of Faith, December 18, 1960.


You are free to choose how you use your will, but there is no free will. You have God’s will and free choice. – Edna Lister, The Key to Integration of Soul and Spirit, June 6, 1961.


The Christed consciousness is the will and desire mated as "I AM" consciousness, ruled by imagination turned upward as vision. – Edna Lister, June 6, 1967.


Will is functioning the Wisdom of God through your brain centers and glands. Every soul coming to earth has freedom of choice. You do not have free will, but you do have free choice as to how you will accept and use the Wisdom of God as will. – Edna Lister, The Path of Destiny, June 13, 1971.

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New Testament on Will

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. – Matthew 6:9-10.


Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. – Matthew 7:21.


Behold, there came a leper and worshiped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. – Matthew 8:2-3. [See Mark 1:40-42].


While [Jesus] yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. – Matthew 12:46-50. [See Mark 3:31-35].


Behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David. And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace: but they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David. And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him. – Matthew 20:30-34.


Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. – Matthew 26:36-42.


To will is present with me but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will, I do not do; but the evil I will not, that I practice. – Romans 7:18-19.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 — 1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of will: Middle English willen, "to intend to," from Old English willan, "to desire."


Will is an abstract principle.
Will is a law of being.
Will is a law of doing.
Will is a soul virtue.
Will is a mental and moral soul faculty.


References

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV). Public Domain.

The Oxford English Dictionary: Compact Edition 2 volumes. Oxford University Press, 1971.


Related Topic

Free Will