the use of the will:

one can of course will changes in life situation and that can be really good

the will stuff explicitly in the practice is (obviously? not obvious at all?) intended to largely be in relation to the practice. some of it will be life goal stuff and intention stuff and planning stuff because of how all that is "imminent" in the mind.

indeed, specifically things like "have this resolve without the use of force in a way that I retrospectively endorse" <-- and keep error checking and tweaking the thing behind the words (and refining the words) "have this muscle tension go away in a way that doesn’t fuck up something somewhere else" and there’s a very feely/modulatory quality to it, error checking the willing as feedback starts to come in, ways the willing isn’t achieving or heading towards the right thing, so somehow the "how" or the "endpoint" of the willing has something wrong with it

I’ll usually explicitly will something for brief periods, tweaking it as a I go, and then drop it when I eventually understand how it’s problematic or it’s done enough work that doing something else practice-related is higher-value.

I’ll also examine what I’m already implicitly willing, what I’m already implicitly trying to have happen, because it might be problematic. I might be pushing against something that’s not ready to move, or I might be trying to achieve something problematic out in the world, in the what, how, when, or order. there might be something better to mediately will that gets the same thing or better distally.

>>> Jonathan [8:24 AM]
[...] for better or worse i have distinctions like (quick and nonexhaustive list):

• possibly helpful theoretical distinctions

  • winding vs unwinding (with correlates to tension)
  • practice as global unwinding (in some sense), unification

• practice diaries:

  • tension solves
  • piecing together memories
  • (re-)understanding one's past
  • holding the right things in attention
  • emphasis on somatics
    <<<