To obey truly we must use our wills to yield as well as to act.  Often the greatest strength is gained through persistent yielding, for to yield entirely is the most difficult work a strong will can do, and it is doing the most difficult work that brings the greatest strength.

To take a simple example:  a small boy with a strong will is troubled with stammering.  Every time he stammers it makes him angry, and he pushes and strains and exerts himself with so much effort to speak, that the stammering, in consequence, increases.  If he were told to do something active and very painful, and to persist in it until his stammering were cured, he would set his teeth and go through the work like a soldier, so as to be free from the stammering in the shortest possible time.  But when he is told that he must relax his body and stop pushing, in order to drop the resistance that causes his trouble, he fights against the idea with all his little might.  It is all explained to him, and he understands that it is his only road to smooth speaking; but the inherited tendency to use his will only in resistance is so strong, that at first it seems impossible for him to use it in any other way.

The fact that the will sometimes gains its greatest power by yielding seems such a paradox that it is not strange that it takes us long to realize it.  Indeed, the only possible realization of it is through practice.

The example of the, little stammering boy is an illustration that applies to many other cases of the same need for giving up resistance.

No matter how actively we need to use our wills, it is often, necessary to drop all self-willed resistance first, before we begin an action, if we want to succeed with the least possible effort and the best result.

When we use the will forcibly to resist or to repress, we are simply straining our nerves and muscles, and are exerting ourselves in a way which must eventually be weakening, not only to them, but to the will itself.  We are using the will normally when, without repression or unnecessary effort, we are directing the muscles and nerves in useful work.  We want “training and not straining” as much for the will as for the body, and only in that way does the will get its strength.

The world admires a man for the strength of his will if he can control the appearance of anger, whereas the only strength of will that is not spurious is that which controls the anger itself.  We have had the habit for so long of living in appearances, that it is only by a slow process that we acquire a strong sense of their frailty and lack of genuine value.  In order to bring the will, by training, out of the region of appearances into that of realities, we must learn to find the true causes of weakness and use our wills little by little to remove them.  To remove the external effect does no permanent good and produces an apparent strength which only hides an increasing weakness.