Personal Will vs God's Will: When They Are/Aren't In Alignment (EP51, Part 1/2)

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In this episode, we explore the relationship between personal will and divine will—examining what happens when our desires conflict with life's natural unfolding.

Topics Covered:

• Defining personal will and divine will, and how they relate to each other
• Why personal will often works against divine will
• The role of faith and trust in spiritual practice
• How prayer and healing work can align with divine will rather than oppose it
• Surrender as active participation, not passivity
• The Bhagavad Gita perspective on action and attachment to outcomes
• How to release self-blame and resentment when life doesn't follow your plans
• The freedom that comes from accepting life's natural order
• Practical approaches to daily life when you trust in something greater than yourself

This episode examines how aligning your personal will with divine will—rather than fighting against it—can bring acceptance, peace, and genuine spiritual growth.

This is part one of a two-part series. The conversation continues in the next episode.

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This podcast show is for people dedicated to spiritual awakening, spiritual practice, psychology, healing work, collective healing and awakening, and global positive social change. 

For free meditations, private sessions, and the Ground of Love Healing School, see www.thegroundoflove.com

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This podcast show explores meditation, mindfulness, consciousness, spiritual awakening, and spiritual growth, with a strong focus on personal healing, trauma healing, emotional healing, and somatic healing. We dive into nonduality, embodied spirituality, the true self, life purpose, and spiritual practice, while also addressing shadow and integration themes like spiritual bypass, ego-death, root causes, and holistic healing. 

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Transcript

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So when we have real faith, we want God's will rather than our own because God's will is something we can actually count on and trust more than our limited perception and our desires that arise from our limited perception. We accept that life has its natural hand and that that natural hand, life's natural hand, is greater than our own. And then we're free. We're not fighting and resenting life all the time or over-efforting because we're in trust towards life. We're trusting that life has its natural order and its natural way. Welcome to the Ground of Love. I'm your host, Olivia Frazao. This is a podcast for people who are deeply dedicated to the spiritual journey. You are here for self-growth care, for others, and being of service to the world. This podcast is in service to you to help you remember who you are and why you are here, you will receive inspiration, clarity, and no BS Love. We are walking each other home. Let's begin. Welcome to part one of a two-part series where we are gonna be talking about personal will and divine will We're gonna define what these are, and we're going to talk about how they relate. Most importantly, I wanna take us through a discourse where at the end, we end up in a place where personal will is not in opposition to divine will, but actually is linked with divine will in a way that deeply supports us. So that's the arc we'll be going through. And before starting, I need to give a disclaimer that in this episode, I'm going to talk about God in what might sound like a personified way. I don't actually think God is a person or a being. It's just much easier to talk about it in this way to try to explain certain things in this episode, okay? To me, God is all beingness, absolutely everything. Everything and nothing and more, the absolute, that which can't even be conceptualized or understood or named. That which is totally beyond us, and that is at the same time us, that is us. We are now already. No distance, no separation. We are God too, because God is all So in this episode, I wanna distinguish between us as the egoic self, the solid, separate self that we think that we are within the illusion of samsara, within the mental concept of our identity in these incarnations. That's the self I'm gonna talk about when I talk about personal will. And then with divine will, that on the other hand, is gonna be what I talk about when I talk about how there's a much greater order to things in the universe than what we can actually see from our tiny eyes and understand from our tiny mind, but that we can trust and surrender to. So that's what I'm gonna be calling divine will or God's will. That's interchangeably divine will or God's will, same thing, okay? So divine will is the concept that things happen for a reason beyond what we can understand, and that whatever happens is ultimately for the highest good, even when it doesn't look or feel like it in the moment So that includes the understanding that everything that happens is fodder for our growth and evolution as an invitation for our spiritual awakening and ultimately enlightenment. So divine will can be understood within the under- understanding of karma, which simply means in this case that things happen in a web of interconnection of seemingly infinite causes and effects that are not as linear as we might like to think. And thus, it's hard to parse out and understand why things are happening, what's happening truly. So we can honor that we don't truly know why things happen, since most of what's going on we can't see. And so by acknowledging our ignorance, we can surrender our attachments to how we want things to go because we can understand that we actually have no idea what's going on. However, we can trust that, let's say, God's plan or the universe or life itself has a bigger order that we are existing within that we can't see the full picture of, but that we can trust. So we're trusting that there's a synchrony happening. There's a, there's a great dance. There's a great universal choreography that's happening, and we are a tiny little molecule in this huge body that's moving in this way where we can't see the full picture And we have trust and faith that it all ultimately has this perfect order to it, this divine beauty to it, this goodness, this benevolence that we can lean into and give ourselves to and offer ourselves to in, in a yielding, in a surrender that allows us to be very intimate with this dance rather than in opposition to it in any way. So now let's compare personal will and God's will, okay? And we'll see how they can relate in different scenarios So personal will To define it very simply, at least in the beginning here, is personal will is I want what I want Divine will is God wants for you what God wants for you. Now, these can be in opposition, yes? I can want one thing and God might want another. Again, I'm personifying God, but I'm just trying to make a point here. So let's give an example of how these might feel in opposition. Okay. Let's say you're married, but your marriage is on the rocks and it looks like your partner wants a divorce and you really don't want that. Okay, so in this case, your personal will would say, "I wanna stay married." And yet, let's say that's not what's in the cards for you. So God's will is now saying, "And you're gonna get a divorce," and that's what ends up happening Life has offered you a scenario that you would not have chosen had you been the one to be able to choose the cards. Let's do another one. We all go through this at some point We're looking at an example now of our personal will saying, "I do not want my loved one to die." We all have this We might be praying for our loved one to heal or to stay alive or to have more time we might be begging God to let them stay. And yet, right now we're going to be looking at a scenario where God's will says, and it's their time to cross over. That's what's in the cards. So we're looking at life events right now. Things happen whether we want them to or not. Ultimately, that's what I'm calling God's hand or God's will. And we can try to force these things to happen or to not happen, depending on whether it's something that we want or don't want so that it goes the way that we want it to go. And that, let's say, tinkering with God's plan or forcing, trying to force God's plan to be different from what it is, that's what I'm calling right now personal will. Personal will is the willpower that the egoic self has. That would be a more, that would be a, a definition with longevity across this episode. Personal will is the willpower that the egoic self has. And in the context that I'm currently talking about it in, right now personal will is working on behalf of the egoic self's desires, fears, and aversions So the egoic self experiences grasping and aversion And when personal will is still linked with the egoic self's grasping and aversion, it will be in opposition to divine will. So this is a scenario where the ego is still trying to be a little mini me God. The ego is not fully trusting God yet, or even at all. This is where the ego is trying to fight for what I want or what I don't want to be able to control what's happening because there isn't yet surrender So in this scenario, there would be a desperation, depending on the level of whatever is going on, to force things to change or to resist at all costs what's happening So now instead, we're going to look at what is it like to link our personal will with God's will in the form of prayer and healership. Because it doesn't mean that we don't try. It doesn't mean that if we say, "Oh, everything is God's will," then we're going to sit there and not try to help our loved one heal or not try to improve our relationship if that's what our heart really desires, right? I'm using the examples from before around the death of a loved one or a divorce Surrender does not mean passivity. So let's look at what prayer and healing work can look like in the case of being active and aligned with God's will. Okay? So let's look at the two ways of prayer and healing work. The first way would be we're praying as basically we're petitioning God with our personal will. We're saying, "Please help my marriage work out. Please heal this person. Let this person live." This bid, this, let's say, petition to the big boss is a powerful and important act of creatorship that we have access to. This is a beautiful capacity of life force and focused intention that can truly create highest outcome This is not something we want to just throw away and say, "Oh, I'm supposed to be passive. What's the difference? What, what God wants is gonna happen anyway." We have an active participation in reality, so we don't wanna throw that away. We don't wanna minimize or dismiss that, and at the same time, we don't want to become, let's say, arrogant in it, where we feel so alone that we think we are the only ones running the show here, and that we don't have trust in any greater order, where we think we're seeing the full picture, and we're, we are convinced that we know what needs to happen and it has to be our way. We're gonna find a middle ground Which is we need to remember that we don't see the full picture. We need to remember that there is a greater order of things than we understand, and that is faith and trust. So when we have this faith, when we pray or do healing work, we do so, we hold this power and we exercise this power, but we do so always with God at the helm, not ourselves at the helm. We are no longer playing God, making ourselves the masters of the universe. We are exercising our capacity for creatorship, but God is still the big boss. So again, I'm personifying God here. Ultimately, we are all God. What I'm trying to say here is what we are able to perceive from the limited egoic self, we need to honor and acknowledge that, that it's limited So we, we put in our petition to the big boss. We say, "As long as this is your will too, I give it my all. I ask you for highest grace. Because when we have real faith, what does faith mean? It means I know that there's something bigger than what I can see, and I trust that more than what I can see. I trust the great order of the universe more than the little paradigm or narrative that I've created for myself around who I think I am, what I think reality is, and how I think things work, and thus what I think should happen within that basically limited understanding of all that is. So when we have real faith, we want God's will rather than our own because God's will is something we can actually count on and trust more than our limited perception and our desires that arise from our limited perception. So we want God's will even if it's not what we want in the moment, even if it means pain, because we trust that everything happens for a reason in a greater synchrony of life's mysterious workings, and we don't want to interfere with that if it's not what is truly in the highest path for all, even if we don't understand why things have to be the way they end up So how do we do prayer and healing work? I read a book about the Aboriginal people of Australia. This is a great example. The book is called Mutant Message Down Under. Fantastic book, highly recommended And they talk about how when they pray, when the Aboriginal people pray for something to happen, in their prayer, they always say, "If it's in the highest and best for everyone involved." What does that mean? We're basically saying, "Here's my petition. This is what I want from my vantage point. This is what I feel would benefit me, but I can't see the greater order of everything that is." So I'm gonna give a little caveat, a little disclaimer that says, "As long as this fits with the great order of the universe. I'm not here to disturb the universe. I'm here to be a creator within it. I'm here to call forth what I feel is truly in the highest and best, and I'm also deferring to the great infinite knowing and seeing and love of what I'm calling God right now So we actually want God's will more than we want our own will if they're not a match. So we pray for what we want, but with the caveat that we want God to override it if it's not going to lead to the highest good for everyone. That's faith. That is hardcore faith, and that can be very tough. This can be very tough to do if we don't actually have That trust that ultimately the great order of things is goodness, is bringing us to our greatest realization, is ultimately benevolent, even if it-- there-- what we see looks terrible The faith to give ourselves, to, to, to give our will over or to allow it to be, let's say, less powerful, which it already is, but at least to actually want it to be less powerful than God's will, it requires faith and trust in what God's will even is So there's like a prerequisite to all of this, which is faith and trust in, in greater reality If we don't have faith, we're gonna be more attached to the outcome that we want than to our trust in the divine plan. So which one is gonna win out? When our trust in the divine plan is greater than our desire for what we want Now something is gonna happen. Something becomes possible here our personal will is no longer in opposition with divine will. Our personal will has linked itself with divine will. I'm gonna say that again. When our trust in God's will and the divine plan and the great order of things is greater, when that trust, that faith is greater than our desire to get what we want Because what we want ultimately is union with that which is greater. We want union with that which is greater because we trust it so much and we trust where it's taking us. We want that more than whatever circumstantial thing we want in this moment in our life. That's where there's this inward turn where personal will is now rerouting itself Our personal will now says, "I want what you want, God. What I want to happen is what you want to happen." So all of a sudden, there's this different way of operating in life. We are, we're no longer operating from a place of expectation and planning, kind of creating a little mini life for ourselves for how we want it. Yes, we can of course make plans. We can be diligent. We can be responsible. We can save our money for the future and prepare whatever life circumstances we need to make sure the kids are gonna get their needs met and et cetera. I'm not saying we're going rogue here, and we're just flying by the seat of our pants. It's like in the Bhagavad Gita, it talks about how we take action, we show up, but what we surrender, it's not action itself, but it's the fruit of the action. It's our expectations for what the action will lead to. So we're still showing up fully. We're showing up even more fully because we're not afraid of life. We're leaning into it, and at the same time, we're letting go of Thinking that we know what the outcome should look like. So we let God take our life where it's meant to go rather than trying to force it into a certain direction or resisting its natural movement. We're not forcing things to go a certain way. We're not trying to push life into a certain direction. We're not blaming ourselves as a failure for having gotten a divorce or as flawed for not having found a partner already or guilty and incomplete for not having had kids or thinking we're a failure of a parent because our grown children have had life paths that we didn't want for them. This is all thinking that our life should go a certain way, the way we've been conditioned for it to go or the way we personally wanted it to go. And we feel all this self-blame and all of this blame towards life itself whenever we feel like we've deviated from the apparent cultural norm or whatever the expectations are for how our life is supposed to look. That is us being in a victim position towards life. That's also us being in an arrogant, controlling position towards life and then resenting life or ourselves or other people for things not having turned out the way we wanted things to look or we were told things were supposed to look. So now we're allowing God to take us forward. We're like, I think this is where I'm going, but I don't know where I'm going. I don't know how my life will unfold. I don't know why what's happening is happening. And I'm going to stop drawing conclusions about things that I don't know. I'm no longer going to blame myself for something happening or not happening. I'm no longer going to blame you for something happening or not happening. I'm no longer going to blame God for something happening or not happening. I'm going to trust that things happen in ways that are mysterious to our current vantage point, but that ultimately have an order and an understanding that maybe from a different level of self, we will finally understand, but it's not right now. And it doesn't need to be right now. We don't need to have the understanding in order to have the acceptance. We can have the acceptance of mystery itself. And we can defer to mystery itself, trusting that it is good. And so as I said, this doesn't mean that we don't make effort. It just means that we're not forcing life where it's simply not naturally going. We're not pretending to ourselves that we're straight when we're gay. We're not forcing ourselves to try to love building a career as a doctor because that's what our parents wanted for us when really we want to be a musician. We're not forcing life. We're not pretending to be what we're not. And we're not forcing someone else's hand at something either. We're not trying to make our kids like playing piano because we wish that we could have, but actually all they want to do is play soccer. We're not trying to force someone to be what they're not. We accept that life has its natural hand and that that natural hand, life's natural hand, is greater than our own. And then we're free. We're not fighting and resenting life all the time or blaming ourselves, being hard on ourselves, over-efforting when actually it's just time to actually let go So instead we can actually finally be in acceptance, in self-acceptance and acceptance of others because we're in acceptance of life, because we're in trust towards life. We're trusting that life has its natural order and its natural way So we don't force life in a certain direction, and as I said, we don't resist life where it takes us either. We neither push nor pull. We're neither forcing a yes, nor are we trying to change a no. We let yes be where it is, and we let no be where it is. We let life reveal to us what the banks of the river are that are gonna turn us this way and that, and we are the water flowing down the river of life, and it takes us in the direction that it takes us in. So we're going to pause this conversation here. This is the end of part one, and in the next episode, we will continue this conversation in part two. thank you for being with me in The Ground of Love. You can follow this podcast to receive the next episodes, and who is it that comes to mind to share this episode with? Please go ahead and pass this along to them and go ahead and leave a review or a rating if you wish. I thank you for that. For one-on-one healing sessions and a group membership. you can go to www.thegroundoflove.com Blessings to you. May you be protected, held, regenerated centered. And taken forward with all light, love, truth and highest and best health and wellbeing on all levels and taken forward to make the greatest, most beautiful impact doing exactly what you're here to do. God bless you. Protection, grace, protection, grace. So it is.