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Willingness and Willfulness
One of the most immediate difficulties in reading Gerald May’s classic, Addiction and Grace is this. He attributes real spiritual damage to indulgence in some of the most ordinary things in life: drinking a soda, watching a favorite TV show, commitment to your favorite team, using your cell phone and a seemingly endless list of other activities. For May, the pathology happens when these activities slide into an addictive behavior. May sees a deeper reality. Any addiction is filling a space in the heart that should be reserved for our pursuit of God. Most people find this hard to understand. They see their spiritual life primarily as a series of religious practices and moral behavior. The more personal connection with God comes later.An example of the physical pathology of a stroke can be helpful here. Before a person has a stroke, there are a series of destructive events that are moving steadily toward the catastrophe that is a stroke. The events leading to the inevitability of the stroke are real. If they are observed with the proper medical knowledge, whether of a professional or the individual, they are a cry for medical intervention so the stroke can be avoided. Ignorance of their presence leads to silence and the devastation of the stroke.
In the spiritual life, addictions are those kinds of spiritual maladies leading to the spiritual equivalent of a stroke. They present a major blockage in the pursuit of God.
May’s teaching on willingness and willfulness is the healthy advice of true spiritual mentor who will protect us from the destructive possibilities of a misguided spiritual life. A true mentor will open a clear path for our heart to pursue our fundamental purpose to be one in God. For May, who is indeed a true spiritual mentor, willingness and willfulness are about one’s basic approach to life. They are tools of clarity or distortion in the wilderness of our spiritual quest. We are going to accept life as a mystery opening to God or as task to master reality for our own personal benefit and control. The proper understanding of willingness and willfulness and the choice they lay before us will be a great help as we try to grapple with the interplay of grace and addiction.
Surrender or Control
In willingness one accepts an openness and dependency leading to the search for union with God. This reduces independence and control. It is a choice of growing surrender to the mystery of life. It is the opening to see oneself, all people and all creation as being one in God. It is a losing of self to find a new self in God.Willfulness is a movement to independence and control. It pursues self-mastery. It is the rugged individualism that is so exalted in a consumer society and so operative in countless personal, economic and political agendas.
A clear example is how these two mindsets approach the environmental crisis. Willingness sees a sense of unity within all creation and the human venture. There is a call for respect and responsibility for all of nature. There is a painful dimension in recognizing the on-going destruction of the environment. On the other hand, willfulness approaches the environment in a totally utilitarian fashion. Creation is there to serve the needs of the individual. Willfulness sees the physical world as a resource for a program of profit, convenience and comfort.
Willingness sees a single ultimate power in the universe. It sees self-surrender and movement toward union as the final and absolute task in life, to let go and let God. On the other hand, willfulness sees many spiritual powers in the universe. For it, life’s task is to get the better of the ultimate spiritual powers to one’s personal benefit.
A major goal of the spiritual life is to create a vision that facilitates true surrender. This kind of submission is only possible when the heart is free of attachment, and particularly, addictions. Prayer and meditation, along with fasting and service, help produce the freedom necessary for the movement from willfulness to willingness. In this new spiritual maturity, there is an interesting development. There is an emptying out of spiritual images and ideas that we held in great esteem. There is a diminishment of what seemed important and necessary and a movement towards emptiness. Our prayer becomes much more a quiet presence than brilliant insights and images. In this surrender and emptiness, we are moving towards true freedom.
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