Moral Strength – The Power of Being Willfully Directed

Posted On October 1, 2021 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

Strength is a virtue that’s employed as the means for subduing and bringing your lower, instinctual nature under your control so it can be utilized as a vehicle for higher forms of self-expression. It’s the moral strength and discipline you exercise by using your ‘will’ to control your own emotions, passions, impulses, and unruly desires. It’s only by learning how to manage your own internal processes that you quit allowing yourself to be controlled and determined by others through reactive states. Strength is developed by exercising your ability to not only control your own reactions to everyone and everything else, but also through your ability to use your reactions as a means of examining your own inner nature that’s always operating just below the level of awareness as an unconscious state, and instead remain in full control of yourself.

Strength, like any idea and character trait, has multiple meanings and various applications, yet they all ultimately mean the same thing. Its being able to stand calmly amid controversy and strong emotions being expressed and willfully projected towards you without allowing them to penetrate you and take hold where you begin internalizing and expressing the same emotion. It’s developing a moral code of conduct based on an acute understanding of universal laws where you can clearly see what’s happening in any situation in terms of the energy being willfully directed in a primarily unconscious manner as the means of creating. You learn how to use your will to deflect the emotions and attitude being projected towards you and not allowing them to enter your body and mind where you go unconscious and begin reacting. Anytime you’re reacting, you’re being controlled by whatever it is that you’re reacting to by becoming ‘like it’ in nature.

Every action causes an equal or greater reaction, and the reaction becomes the causal force for intensifying, multiplying, and increasing the shared emotion. Any action we take is creative in nature, and draws direct consequences based on what it causes and sets into motion. Anytime we let another person’s behavior ‘get to us’, and we take on the same attitude and demeanor, we shift and become ‘like them’ in nature. Our entire mental state changes to match theirs and we not only express the same emotions, but we develop the same character traits. This is how our character is developed in a primarily unconscious manner. The energy being projected towards us or that’s actively being expressed around and near us acts to stimulate us, changing our state to match theirs, bringing out in us the same qualities and characteristics, where we use them to express ourselves and create experiences of ‘being that way’. As we create our own experiences based on how we’re being and acting, we ‘sense ourselves’ through those experiences and associate with them as a result. When we’re consistently stimulated by the same type of emotion bringing out in us their correlating characteristics, we produce more and more of the same type of experiences of ourselves, and we accumulate the memory that results, which builds up over time, making those characteristics dominant in us. Whatever we actively express over time, we identify with and use to develop our character.

Emotions, Characteristics, and Dynamics

What you want to allow yourself to notice through self-observation of your own internal processes, is that ’emotions’ are natural forces that operate as ‘instinct’ on the material plane of the subconscious mind. Emotion is an electrical charge that’s freely transmitted through the atmosphere by living beings and is felt internally as a particular type of sensation that’s designed to activate and bring to the forefront the characteristics necessary to respond in an automatic and appropriate way. As we act to unconsciously receive an emotional force, it immediately alters our state, both mentally and physically, and causes us to behave in ways that don’t require a thought process or decision. This is what instinct is. It’s an automated form of consciousness that operates through the unconscious mind to produce correlated behaviors of a group or by being of the same consciousness (energetic state) as your environment. It operates to produce the mindset equivalent to the emotion where we react in a spontaneous way without being directly aware of what we’re doing.

While this process is designed to work through the subconscious, which is the instinctual mind shared by all of Nature, as humans, we are bestowed with a conscious mind capable of thinking, analyzing, reasoning, discriminating, and making our own decisions about what to do and how to respond to whatever situation we find ourselves in. When emotion is freely transmitted and received, and we take them on without a direct awareness of what’s happening, it not only compels an instant reaction designed only for that moment in time, but it’s harbored long afterwards, where we nurture and maintain them by continuing to think about them and we build whole imaginary realities out of them that seem real. Whatever we imagine as an internal reality that’s emotionally charged, acts to regulate our state of mind out of which we create in a corresponding manner.

Animals don’t have the conscious aspect of the mind and don’t have the ability to think in terms of pictures that construct whole inner realities that don’t really exist, only humans have this ability. With animals, once the danger or threat is no longer present, they immediately discharge and release the emotion and go back to their normal state and activity, whereas humans don’t seem to know to release the emotion and continue to think about it long afterwards keeping it alive inside of them as a possible reality that they continue to live out of as if its still present and real. They don’t act to multiply and increase it by internally generating it as a natural response to their own thoughts, sustaining and transmitting it to others and their environment. We use the emotion as the basis for creating our reality and for developing our character by way of that reality as a correlation.

Through self-observation you can easily realize how these invisible forces operate through the atmosphere around you. Many people live consumed with emotions and are always creating their reality out of the emotional states they maintain consistently, while shaping their character from a predominately unconscious state as a delusion. Through close examination of how your own mind-body system works to generate your reality, you can begin forming an awareness around it. This is important to do, because we can only work with what we’re aware of and understand in the practice sense. Understanding is necessary in order to consciously direct unconscious processes. Allow yourself to recognize that there are two basic ways emotions operate within us, and how emotion is always married to thought.

Sit quietly, calm your mind through rhythmic breathing, subdue and set to the side all the impulsive, anxious, and habitual thoughts that run automatically, and form a sense of deepened inner awareness. Once you’ve formed a clear state of mind, choose something to focus on. As you focus your attention on it allow your thoughts about it to form naturally. As you begin thinking about it notice that you steadily develop it into a picture, concept, or scenario in your mind by shaping it with sensory details. The more detailed you make it, the more vivid and alive it becomes, and you begin feeling the sensations of it throughout your body (torso). The more sensationalized it becomes the more you start forming an emotional response to it. An emotion begins culminating in response to it, and it comes alive with activity and animated with the behavior natural to the idea. The emotion becomes the life-force that motivates the behaviors and activities it takes on as it starts playing out in your mind as a possible experience of reality. The thought-form created not only produces a correlating emotion that’s ideally suited for expressing it, but also forms natural behaviors that are formed out of specific characteristics. As these two combine into a single idea, they come alive and form into a reality as a possibility for experiencing as an outer reality of the same kind and type.

Through this process, initiated by a decision in what to focus on and think about, we ‘act on ourselves’ to activate certain parts of our character and use them to form our natural behaviors and how we’re being, and those qualities and characteristics are what express to produce an equivalent experience of our self as our own creation. As we think we’re constantly acting on ourselves to create the outer reality of our thoughts as a way of experiencing them. As we form ideas into pictures while imbuing them with sensation, we’re literally giving our subconscious a directive as a thematic pattern for using to organize and construct an equivalent outer reality of the same kind as a means of producing our own experiences. As we mentally construct and call forth our own experiences, we relate and associate with them, and build our identity out of them as a result.

Reverse the process – now let’s do the same process of self-observation in the reverse role where we act to receive the emotions being expressed by others. This may be difficult to do at first while in a live situation, due to the fact that it usually happens in an automatic fashion and renders us temporarily unconscious, but we can use a memory to achieve the same objective. Once we’re able to form a clear understanding of how this ‘automated process’ works, we can begin using it in live situations as a means of disciplining ourselves and exercising self-control. Once we can refrain from going into a reaction, we can use it as a means of introspection and begin forming a heightened sense of self-awareness.

Again, sit quietly, calm your mind and clear your thoughts by pushing them to the background, and pick a memory of an event where a fairly intense emotional exchange occurred. Focus on how it began, noticing what state you were in before being triggered, and then the behavior displayed by the other person that acted to produce a pronounced stimulus in your body. As you’re being stimulated by it, notice where in your body it’s the strongest, and how it makes you feel as a result. Notice that it acts to instantly change your entire state of mind and physiology. As it enters you, notice that as it takes hold it becomes prominent and causes you to go semi-unconscious where you become lost in the reality of the feeling and can’t seem to direct your own thoughts. As it consumes you, notice that you immediately associate it to an existing memory that made you feel the same way, and you use that memory to interpret the present to be about the same thing as the past, and you not only go into a whole story about what’s happening, but also behave in the same way you did in the past. As you act in an automatic way, you create the same type of experience, and set the same idea in motion. When this happens, you forfeit your conscious mind and reside almost completely in your unconscious mind of instinct, where the outside stimulus is controlling and directing your activities and what kind of reality you create in your imagination.

In both of these processes, allow yourself to notice that what you think about and the emotions that are equivalent to those thoughts act together to activate and bring out qualities and characteristics in you that form the behaviors that result from them. As you think and feel, you stimulate yourself bringing forth certain aspects of your character and use them as the means of creating your experiences. As you form your own experiences, notice how it is that  you shape yourself by way of those experiences. We develop ourselves by consistently employing certain parts of our character as qualities that form consistent type of experiences and natural behaviors. Whatever characteristics we utilize in each situation are developed through the dynamic that ensues out of them. Certain qualities play out in certain dynamics as behavioral patterns that not only strengthen those traits, but also condition us to the dynamics as a certain way of being that acts naturally to express as a correlated myth or story. We’re always acting on ourselves to create ourselves through how we tell a particular type of story by becoming the main character and author of that story. Allow yourself to notice that there’s always ‘one part of you’ talking to ‘another part of you’ and telling a story by how you explain, describe, or justify things.

Passion and Desire

This same idea plays out through our passions and desires, which come as emotions that stimulate our primal, instinctual nature, producing a strong desire as a magnetic force. Our passion comes as a strong emotion or magnetic feeling regarding something that makes it very compelling and attractive. Desire comes as ‘wanting’, wishing, longing, and craving. These are the primal instincts that form the basis for temptation, and often pose our conscious willful mind in direct opposition with our subconscious emotional mind. In this situation, where complementary aspects of ourselves become adversaries, emotion usually wins, because of their motive power in producing a strong physiological effect. On the lower material plane and in relation to our animal body, emotion is equivalent to will on the higher planes of the conscious and creative mind. When we let our emotions run us and we make all our decisions out of them, we utilize our higher will to fulfill physical desires and physical pleasures of some kind, and create ourselves out of our instinctual, primal nature, fashioning ourselves to be equivalent to animals. This doesn’t mean that our lower nature is bad or something we should shun and reject, but rather a part of ourselves that we need to subdue, tame, and bring under the presidency of our higher will so it can be used as a vehicle for consciously creating in the physical world.

By choosing and intentionally using our rational, reasoning mind as the basis for directing all our actions, we can bring our emotional nature under the control of our higher will, where it can be utilized to enhance our ability to express ourselves, and as a means of imposing a direct influence over others and the situation at hand. But to do this we have to bring our own emotions under control by learning how to deflect the ones being transmitted by others instead of absorbing them, while using thought in an intentional way to generate desired emotions. To do this, we not only form a working concept of how emotions as natural forces are transmitted and received, but also by using a visualization process to shield ourselves and deflect them instead. All energy can be directed and utilized through mental means. Mental operations are conducted using the creative faculty of the imagination to form internal (invisible) concepts that function and operate in specific ways. In the same way emotion as energy is invisible and can’t be seen, while producing a pronounced physical effect that sets a whole process in motion, a shield can be produced on the invisible realm of thought that can work to intentionally direct the flow of energy.

We can do this by first realizing that we all have an invisible field of energy that surrounds, permeates, and envelops our body, that’s like an egg or spherical shape. Some call this the aura which appears on the inner planes as a cloud-like essence vitalized with colors, which is being emanated by the mind. The mind itself is an invisible field of energy that can be pictured as a glass sphere that we look through as a means of shaping our outer world. We can visualize this etheric egg shaped field as being made of a crystalline substance, similar to glass, where any energy directed onto it from an outside source, instead of penetrating and blending into it, is reflected off the surface like a mirror and sent back to the person projecting it.

What we call ‘light’ is basically invisible and only becomes illuminated when reflected off the surface of a material substance of some kind. Colors are contained within the clear light as its hidden, inner nature, and become fragmented when they come into contact with a material (solid) object, where some of the qualities (frequencies) are absorbed and integrated as the inner state of the object, while others are reflected into the space around it, forming it’s outer appearance. Whatever color an object appears as is formed by the rays its reflecting off the surface, which are complementary to the ones absorbed and integrated to form the objects inner nature as its energetic state. This is a metaphor for the fact that whatever energy we act to unknowingly absorb, we integrate into our inner nature, allowing it to determine our state of being to match the frequency, and whatever we reflect forms how we appear to others as a mirror image of themselves. Whatever constitutes our inner nature determines what we attract outwardly as our complementary opposite. This will become easier to understand through practice where you’ll come to realize that when you maintain a state of inner calm around someone expressing strong emotions, you act to neutralize them, allowing the person to realize them as their own and see them in a different light as a result.

Picture the energy field of your mind-aura as a solid outer shield that’s crystallized glass, while telling yourself (setting the intention) that any energy being projected by others can’t penetrate your sphere, and instead spreads out on the surface, much like a movie being projected onto a screen, where it doesn’t affect you, but you can still watch the movie its impregnated with as it plays out in a distant and neutral fashion. This allows you to understand what the person is feeling without combining with them mentally and reshaping them on the inner planes of your mind to be like you. As you act to reflect their own story back to them in a neutral fashion, they get to see it in a different way, and gain new insights as a result. Practice doing this as a mental concept and visualization until it becomes intuitive, where you do it naturally. If you allow their emotional energy to penetrate you, where you feel it as a stimulation in your body, become aware of it, and mentally push it back out until its resides completely outside of your energy field, and then reseal it, telling yourself it can no longer penetrate it, and refocus your attention on managing your internal state returning it to a peaceful calm.

Subduing Your own Lower Nature

Subduing your lower nature and bringing it under the command of your conscious mind is accomplished by forming a practical understanding of the universal laws of the mind that forms an awareness of what you’re actually doing when impulses naturally occur. When you remain unaware of what’s happening energetically between you and what’s around you, you willingly engage in a participatory manner with whatever activities and behaviors are being openly displayed by others. Whatever we blend with mentally, emotionally, or physically, we become like in nature. Our morality is formed through the activities of our mind in terms of how it is we present ideas to ourselves internally. When we give into our primal urges and emotional reactions, we allow our lower nature to take control of our thoughts and higher will, and we create ourselves to be like others and of an animal nature. We create from an unconscious or semi-unconscious state without being aware of the consequences that result from it.

Once we’re able to understand what’s happening in terms of the natural interaction that takes place between our thoughts and emotions as our conscious and subconscious mind, and we’re able to use our conscious thoughts to direct and utilize our emotions as a means of expressing ourselves, we’re able to use our physical body as an instrument for creating in a willful and self-aware manner. When we cultivate the ability to not be affected by other peoples emotions and instead learn how to internally generate them as the motivating force that gives life to our thoughts, we can begin creating ourselves from a primarily conscious state and in a much more intentional and precise manner. Moral strength comes as our ability to discipline ourselves in emotionally intense situations or where we’re tempted somehow with our own weaknesses to give in and compromise our own integrity. We exercise it in remaining calm and focused, where we can make conscious decisions through a realization of the consequences they’ll render and then initiate and direct the activities that will produce the reality of our decisions.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Mind-Body Medicine Consultant, and Spiritual Teacher