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James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience - Willing vs wishing
Identifier
006372
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James
The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam-pressure chronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of ideal excitement transiently acquired.
Given a certain amount of love, indignation, generosity, magnanimity, admiration, loyalty or enthusiasm of self surrender, the result is the same.
That whole raft of cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action, sinks away at once.
Our conventionality, our shyness, laziness and stinginess, our demands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs, where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun.