If one carefully analyzes your new question, one realizes that both the interpretation of the question, and the answer to the question hinge on the same inherent definition: what are the gods? What are they? I have the beginnings of a blog post on this subject written already, and have it scheduled for publication on this site in the near future. In the meantime, think of this: YOU (as Pure Awareness) are the author of reality. If your reality includes goddesses and gods, then they are your invention. Does this make them illusion? Absolutely, just like everything else, including anything you call “yourself” (as a human). Does this make them not real? Well, they are as real as you are. Actually, more real than you (the human) are, because a human lives only a few decades, while the gods are living personifications of universal principles that are timeless. These personifications (invented by the real you) are alive and aware, have feelings, and care, respond to prayers, inspire people and even actually appear visibly for some people.

I think I’ve confused the issue. This is why the issue require a whole separate explanation of its own. To get to your actual question: yes, they have real power that you have given them through your belief in them. As I have said, attention is the food of all things. By giving them attention, you feed them, and with that food they have the energy and power to respond to you. The universal and timeless principles are inherent in reality, but the living, feeling, thinking, responsive personifications of those principles are made real by your belief and the attention that you feed them with. Other people have also fed the same personifications with their attention, over thousands of years, so they have become far more real and powerful than you could individually make them.

Here’s an example of the above description being applied: The universal principle of the mother of god, the supreme sorceress and ultimate wife is timeless. It is also nameless and formless as a pure principle. Thousands of Egyptians and followers of that culture have invented a personification of that timeless, formless, nameless principle, and thus given it a history, a form, and a name: Isis. During the time of the living temples and priesthood of Egypt, she (Isis) was fed with powerful techniques of attention-giving several times each day for thousands of years without break. This gave that personification the ability to actually appear physically before people, to inspire them to poetry, dance, and medicine, all expressions of the universal principle that She embodies. With all that energy of focused worship, she even incarnated as a human among us, and tried unsuccessfully to establish her cult politically so that it would survive the dark ages into modern times. But like everything else we can be aware of, She is also illusion.

So, back to negative will: one way to circumvent your habitual self-limiting self-opinion, is to give offerings of attention to a goddess or god, with a request of help. Your belief, and the attention (the food of all things) you give, empower the goddess or god to act on your behalf. Since they are the ones performing the act and not you, your limiting self-opinion is not involved. (You might, however doubt your ability to pray, your worthiness, or doubt the existence of the goddess or god, and this doubt is another more difficult manifestation of negative will.) Ultimately though, this is a trick, to get around your negative will, because even if the gods are performing the miracle for you, it is you that invented and empowered the personification that you have fed (with attention and belief), so you are still ultimately the author and the doer of the miracle in the final analysis.

Please do not mistake this description for any kind of denial of the existence and the power of the gods. As I said, they are human-invented personifications of timeless universal principles. Both the personifications and the universal principles are far more real, powerful, aware, and wise, and immortal than the human being that you think you are.

One more question that arises from this is if blaming the spell on a god/goddess and attributing power to them is true then does this mean that they had no part in it at all?

Negative will is simply a habit. Because we are all the authors of our own reality, the way we think of ourselves is what defines us, our lives, our experiences, and our environment. If you have a habit of thinking of your self in a particular way, that habit will keep you living a particular life, and keep you experiencing what is habitually familiar, or “ordinary” to you. If you try to do something out of the ordinary, your “negative will” (habit) will simply over-ride that to keep the status quo.

K. explained it more simply: remember a time when someone gave you a big project or opportunity and you immediately thought or felt like maybe you just weren’t up to it or weren’t good enough to do it. That “knee-jerk” reluctance to push the envelope, that limits what you’re capable of is negative will, plain and simple.

Now, because you are the author of your own reality, that “knee-jerk” negativity coming from your habitual conviction about what you can and cannot accomplish will define what you can and cannot accomplish. If you had no such habitual self-opinion, there would be no limits to what you could accomplish.

So it’s a self-opinion, or self-image you’ve developed over thousands of life-times where you habitually think of yourself as human, that makes you live, experience and act like a human. We are not human. We just think we are human. So we act like humans. This is why I keep harping on about knowing who and what you really are, and learning to act like That. Negative will is your reluctance to do this, out of habitual self-opinion.

As for a separate compartmentalized aspect of a person, with its own dreams and will to live, separate from other aspects of consciousness: what you are describing is a type of psychosis, commonly known as “split personality.” If a person suffered from this type of mental illness, then I suppose one of the split-personalities could act in opposition to your will, and therefore be one of the manifestations of negative will. However, this type of mental illness is extremely rare. Negative will is something we all have, and is not normally associated with a split personality at all.

Negative will is simply a limiting habitual self-opinion of what you are and are not capable of. This is why the way to by-pass negative will is to simply identify with Awareness Itself. With this alternate self-opinion, there are no limits.

Most of us are not convinced of our identity as Pure Awareness. This conviction takes building a new habitual self-identification, one that over-rides a self-opinion built of thousands of lifetimes of habit. So there are other methods for by-passing negative will when trying to cast a spell or otherwise act like the author of your reality. Techniques such as, for instance, blaming the spell on a god or goddess, saying to yourself: “it is They that have the power and actually cast the spell, I didn’t do it at all.” With tricks like this and others, your limiting self-opinion isn’t involved, so can’t get in the way.

Thanks again for the question.