Question: How can we tell which is our ego's will and which is the soul's will?
Sri Chinmoy: When it is our ego’s will, we try to achieve something by hook or by crook. That is to say, we don’t hesitate to employ foul means. We want to do something and then, if we see that we have not succeeded, immediately we try to get it or achieve it by any means at all. That is our ego’s will. If we don’t achieve our goal even then, we curse the person from whom we expected the thing or else we curse the thing which we wanted to achieve and could not achieve.But when it is the soul’s will, we will see that this will is coming directly from the heart. This divine will has infinitely more intense power than the ego’s will, but it uses its power only because God is inspiring the soul to achieve something divine. This is what makes the soul’s will divine. God’s power is behind it. When we bring the soul’s will to the fore, the first thing we feel is a kind of inner conviction. We feel clearly what we want to be or what we want to achieve. From deep within we will receive the inner conviction that our Inner Pilot wants a certain thing from us. The ego’s will, on the other hand, is not like that. We are not convinced inwardly, but we convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, even when we are adopting foul means, doing something by hook or by crook.
When it is your soul’s will, you are automatically convinced. Why? Because conviction comes from deep within you along with the inspiration. In the ego’s will you are convincing yourself through your mind, through your vital, through your physical with a self-imposed justification. But when it is your soul’s will, you will feel a kind of inner confidence. This inner confidence is accompanied by an inner joy, sometimes an inner ecstasy. In the case of the ego, this does not happen. In the case of the ego, while you are exercising your ego’s will, there will often be some fear in it. “Perhaps I will lose the battle. Perhaps my pride will be smashed. Perhaps I will be outdone by the other party.” A constant battle is going on. Although you may feel that you are stronger, superior, more powerful, more dynamic, you have no security, no confidence. You are afraid that you will be defeated or will not have the capacity to achieve your desire.
But the soul’s will does not care for success or achievement. The soul’s will cares for progress and experience. If God wants the soul to win, to succeed, or to achieve, then He gives indomitable will to the soul. When the soul’s will power is expressed, it is like a huge wave in the sea. Immediately it inundates the entire consciousness. Once the soul’s will is expressed, you are bound to feel that your inner consciousness is inundated with divine energy, inner joy, inner delight, inner power and inner confidence. Everything negative is swept away by the surge of the soul’s force. But when you use the ego’s will, you feel that you are personally building a palace. You have enormous pride, but also fear inside you that, even while you are building it the palace may crack, the building may collapse. With that kind of fear, finally it really does collapse, because power and light cannot exist in fear. With fear comes doubt. When fear and doubt go together, we see frustration and destruction looming large. But the soul’s will is inundated with inner confidence, inner assurance and inner oneness with the Highest. In this inner confidence is true divinity.
