Think Feel Will

Why is it always so hard to talk to God, to pray? According to Evelyn Underhill, there are three faculties to which every human being operates; the thinking faculty, the feeling faculty, and the willing faculty.  When we are faced with the world (people and events), we think, we feel, and we will, in that successive order, to obtain or express the desired result or reaction. Thinking, reasoning, logic, seem to be the things at which we are all best at doing, without making any attempt to go deeper, when it comes to God. This thinking part of us leads to a brick wall of unbelief and selfish pride in most instances. What needs to occur is a complete demolition of this wall by the power of our emotion and willpower to reach greater relationship with Him.
    However, there is only so far intellect and thinking can go when it comes to God. We are, after all, created beings with diminutive knowledge and a sinful host of physical and spiritual limitations. Thinking, intellect, knowledge about God is only the first step. As Ruysbroeck said, “Where the intellect must stay without, these may enter in.” These of course meaning emotion and will. We must first feel the need to go deeper, that is the hard part. It is so difficult for us to be in control of our feelings, especially in a wholesome way. Seemingly impossible. But once the feeling to grow closer to God grows, once the emotion is there, unable to be contained any longer, it rubs another brick wall. The will.
    Emotion, not unlike thinking, can only go so far as well. Willing something is the hardest part of all. Unlike God, we cannot will things into being. We cannot breathe out stars or create life without breaking a sweat, we cannot even will ourselves to think or feel something half the time. This is why self-discipline is so difficult for us. Yet the will is the most powerful tool that we have, once trained. Since it is so powerful, so much more does it require. It must be more, because it is so much harder to control than our thinking and feeling.
    My goal, our challenge, would be to not let skeptical intellect, or unconvinced feelings beat around our will. The will needs to be powerful and in charge, it needs to rule over our very thoughts and emotions, which are wholly human. But we must first travel through the trials of our thinking and feeling to get to that point. Because unlike our thinking and feeling that can be almost entirely prideful and self-seeking; our will can be used for the greatest good, and with the most divine motives. And once we cultivate the power of our will, we will no longer hit any brick walls. We will hit mountains. And then we will move them.