Will Power

How do we imagine the power of our will?  Typically as some sort of transcendent force that stands above or outside our thoughts and actions and guides them (or doesn't, as the case may be).  We also go the extra step of taking ownership of this force, or identifying our self with it.  It is, after all, "our" willpower.  For example, if I am sitting and meditating I might think of myself as using "my" will's "power" to "control" the focus of my attention. 

Naturally, the obnoxious quotes in that last sentence are meant to suggest that perhaps none of those concepts really apply.  Maybe it is not my will.  Maybe there is will, but I am not the owner of it.  And maybe it doesn't have some magical power to control anything the way a driver steers a car or a maker imparts a form, but maybe there is still power associated with this will.  

What if we thought of a "will" as a real thing, with real power, but a thing which is sort of free floating (relative to the individual) and a power which consists solely in engendering it's own repetition.  One way to think about this would be to say that each moment of intention -- say, the intention to focus on my breathing -- is a kind of atom of will.  This is the type of temporal atomism I was earlier attributing to Whitehead.  This instance of will would not be "mine".  It would be more accurate to observe that "there is some willing going on".  And the effect of this instance of will would not be to control or dictate any sort of future in which I am, in fact, focusing on my breathing.  Its real power is in being able to bring about a new state of willing that is "the same" as the first.  Here the quotes are to indicate that it's clearly not the same will, since we're treating each moment as a separate entity.  In other words, the real power of the will is in the ability to repeat itself, and thus string together a type of identity over time, just the way a seed has the power to shape the environment into a a tree which (hopefully) produces another seed.  Another way to put this would be to say that the will acts like a sort of "lure" that leads the world in a certain direction, though when the world catches up to the lure, it has created a new lure that continues the direction, and so on ...  A bit like a fella leading a horse on by sitting in the saddle and dangling a carrot in front of it.  Which is what a meditation often feels like.