Question on Liber L
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Scarecrow, 93,
It would likely be misleading to say something like "My True Will is to be a farmer," or "Being an astronaut is my True Will." The actual occupation is the end-product in most cases.
The formulae for those TWs could possibly be: "To exist close to the earth" or "To know the glory of the stars." The two occupations would fit these primary phrasings, but not exclusively so. I could see a marathon runner enacting the first formula, and someone who painted visionary images conforming to the second.
How the TW is enacted in life can easily shift from time to time, and decade to decade. As our understanding stretches, it might even need revising after a time, to become more inclusive of what our lives are about.
93 93/93,
EM
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Alright - let's suppose that your idea of the True Will is what Crowley means by the True Will. In such as case do you see how you could possible implement a caste system based on this scheme?
My point is that you couldn't.
What I was trying to get at is that if the True Will of someone isn't as detailed as a profession... then it's impossible to put people into castes.
Castes based around "existing close to the earth" or "knowing the glory of the stars" seem impossible.
On another note... "existing close to the earth" and "knowing the glory of the stars"... really?
True Will discussion are usually very bizzare and this one qualifies. Would you venture to put forth some specific examples of people and what you believe their True Will was, so that I can understand your interpretation better?
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True WILL is not what one wants to do in this sense, its not like I desire in my heart to see the glory of the stars. Rather True WILL is more like what one is designed to do by biology, and the social, emotional, religious, and political environment in which one comes into incarnation.
For example a fish has gills and scales thus its WILL is to swim in the water, a Shark has sharp teeth so its WILL is to eat smaller fish. A bird has nest building instincts, wings, hollow bones and lays eggs thus its WILL is to fly build nests and lay eggs in trees.
A hammer has a large metal head with a flat end and a forked end, thus its proper use is to drive and pull nails, the nail itself being suited to be driven and pulled by hammers, each was created for use by the other.
Thus the TRUE WILL of any individual is what its proper use is, what it was designed by nature to do, and thusly the purpose for which we the sense of self/agency has taken residence in this particular vehicle, rather than some other one.
See "Duty" for elaboration.
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I've heard animals mentioned in relation to the True Will multiple times. And it's always in the sense of, "a bird's instincts are.." or a "a shark's instincts are..."
Why don't we discuss humans in the same way and group the entire species together... "a human's instincts are..."
Or to look at it another way... do different birds have different True Wills?
BTW: I've never heard True Will mentioned in terms of Hammers or any other tool. Boy I need to stop using a hammer to scratch my back... I'm ruining the poor things True Will.
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Yes each bird has its own true Will.
and its not what its instincts are, it is what it is structurally suited to do.
In a similar way that humans create nails to be hammered and hammers to drive nails, so do are for example bees forged to be attracted to flowers and flowers in return are shpaed to attract bees,In one case it is humans acting on both sides, in the other its a feed back between two parts of the eco-system. Really the ecosystem in not bees and flowers, etc but one continuous whole. Each part in a manifestation of the whole entire eco-system. A frog for example is made up entirely of the stuff that makes up the pond it lives in. Thus a frog is a microcosm of the whole swamp, Changes in the swamp change the frogs, and changes in the frogs change the swamp in turn. There is no true distinction Frog from swamp.
Humans being time-binding beings are part of an eco-system called society which includes not only the direct physical matter we use to bind chemicals in our bodies, or the energy and tools we use to bind space, Our eco-system must include the symbols and language which we use to bind time. We are not each of us islands, but we are continuous with our environment. MAN-As-A-WHLOE-IN-HIS-ENVIRONMNET-AS-A-WHOLE.
Thusly we use tools to change the physical environment and we use Magick to shape the symbolic environment. And when we change the myths, the culture, the ritual, the symbols, which is the task of the magician, especially during a transition of aeons, well then we also change the nature of human Identity and our social roles and functions. The ideas is to create a harmonious feed back, so that the individual and the environment are enhancing eachother, like the hammer and the nail.
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@Froclown said
"A bird has nest building instincts, wings, hollow bones and lays eggs thus its WILL is to fly build nests and lay eggs in trees."
@Froclown said
"Yes each bird has its own true Will.
and its not what its instincts are, it is what it is structurally suited to do."mmmm..."Instincts" and "Structure"... Are not instincts part of structure?
Q1: A hammer's "True Will" (gasp) is to hammer a nail.
If I melt down the hammer does it's true will change?Q2: It's Michael Jordan's "True Will" (gasp) to play Basketball (no not Baseball Mike, nooooo). If I pull off his arms does his True Will change?
Q3: Can True Will change?
@Froclown said
"The ideas is to create a harmonious feed back, so that the individual and the environment are enhancing eachother, like the hammer and the nail."
Q4: Can you point to a disharmonious feedback? Harmony and Disharmony? seem like a human concept to me. There is always going to be feedback - wouldn't it be more accurate to say the idea is to create USEFUL feedback?
Boy this concept of True Will sure is hard to grasp for me. So many people in the occult community are apt to say all Captial T Truth is BS, and it's only lower case t truth that's possible. Why does capital T, True Will get an easy pass without much thought?
Q5: If I say it's my True Will to get people to throw away the idea of True Will... how can you argue with me? How can I prove it? How can it be disproven? If you all dump the idea... and there is no more belief in True Will anymore... what happens to my True Will? Does it go away?
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Scarecrow, 93,
Obviously, Froclown and I are at complete odds here. I think his views are narrow and nonsensical, and he doubtless thinks the same about mine.
We are talking about True Will - not instincts, programming, instilled social conditioning, or some other formed or created thing. We are talking about an enormous dynamism rooted above the Abyss in Chokmah. Form begins in the next sephirah, Binah. Yes, they're on the same level of the Tree, but there is still a reason for the two sephiroth being sequential in number.
TW's intrinsic nature, then, is Supernal - it's beyond human concepts. How it manifests below the Abyss is going to be enormously varied, and will take different forms on different levels. So in its essence, TW doesn't change - in how it is brought out in life, it varies endlessly. This is why this feudalism nonsense is just that - nonsense. It's ludicrously inflexible.
Any given action or statement we make might stem from TW, just as one might chose one's occupation based upon it. But most of us are, in practical terms, compromising all the time. And equally and simultaneously, we aren't - we are working it all out. We are trying our best - instinctively, rationally and intuitively - to figure out just what our Truth is. A human life - an initiated or awakened human life - is mostly about doing precisely that.
But once the TW is grasped reasonably completely, then a person can live according to its terms without conflict. Such a person is a pretty advanced being. You can recognize his or her energy, certainty, serenity, power, warmth .... all of that.
Ultimately, such a being can declare his/her Word, and manifest as a Magus. You don't encounter many of them in on-line forums.
As for proving anything in an objectively verifiable sense, whether it's about Michael Jordan's missing arm or something else, that takes us off into the wrong area. We prove, each of us, our own TW - or more strictly, the HGA guides us through that process. What is an HGA? The HGA itself will show us that, and endeavoring to live according to our ever-evolving concept of TW is a tool in that equally evolving encounter.
Most people find the definitions become much more difficult to verbalize the further into the process we go. At the same time, for the being undergoing the experience, things are actually getting clearer over time - or perhaps it's truer to say, the paradoxes are more easily accepted as time goes by.
93 93/93,
EM
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**WILL ** as defined on the free dictionary:
"will 1 (wl)
n.a. The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action: championed freedom of will against a doctrine of predetermination.
b. The act of exercising the will.
2.
a. Diligent purposefulness; determination: an athlete with the will to win.
b. Self-control; self-discipline: lacked the will to overcome the addiction.
3. A desire, purpose, or determination, especially of one in authority: It is the sovereign's will that the prisoner be spared.
4. Deliberate intention or wish: Let it be known that I took this course of action against my will.
5. Free discretion; inclination or pleasure: wandered about, guided only by will.
6. Bearing or attitude toward others; disposition: full of good will.
7.
a. A legal declaration of how a person wishes his or her possessions to be disposed of after death.
b. A legally executed document containing this declaration."Do any of these hit home with what you are saying about True Will? Perhaps it's like you are saying, Edward Mason, and TW is Supernal beyond human concepts. However, I am very doubtful about anything that someone terms beyond human concepts, them being a human and all...
Another point you make is that you won't find them on on-line forums (which made me laugh hysterically), but then you posit that you can recognize them by their energy, certainty, serenity, power, warmth...
How do you know that? Have you ever met someone like this? Did they have a True Will? Were they a Magus?
I've met some confidence men that seemed to have all those qualities...
I'm very interested in the many parts of Crowley, and deeply interested in the Scientific Crowley, however the concept of the True Will seems like a religious concept such as the Soul... and you might understand that I get off the ferris wheel when that one comes around.
Let me put it another way. Who's authority do we have it on, that there is a True Will that each of us have? Why do we believe him? Please speak up if you've found your TW and can educate me further on this concept, but if you haven't, aren't you dogmatically following someone's position on faith? How is TW different then Soul then, or God for that matter?
Levi has this bit in one of his books where the man of Science is talking to the man of Faith and ultimately he wants the 2 to come together and not take each other's side, but to use each other to further growth/evolution/something like that. I think the man of Faith says something like, I just know, and you'll never convince me otherwise that there is a God. Now many occultists thumb their noses at Christians or other people of beliefs when they pull out statements like this, but how many of us have our own beliefs taken on faith, such as True Will?
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Scarecrow, 93,
Well, the only authority is going to be found in your own consciousness, or coming from behind it. There is no form of words I could offer here that would allay your doubts about the existence of True Will, or the supernal realm. And let's be clear - words like 'supernal' are an attempt to put into words what goes beyond them. We can, though, accept at least the possibility that terms such as True Will or soul have some degree of actual meaning, even if that meaning it doesn't conform to conventional definitions.
I have met a number of people who exhibit(ed) the qualities I listed. I didn't think it either relevant or polite to pin them down to a Grade. I was more interested in seeing what they had to say, and what effect they had on me. I doubt I have met an actual Magus, but then it might take a Magister Templi to spot one.
Beware thinking such 'advanced' people are devoid of a con-artist side, or other reprehensible traits. That's a common error. They are what they are - that's a primary teaching in Thelema. I have a lifelong friend who, I'm convinced, is an Adept - he's half crazy, and hit on another friend's wife some years ago while they were all heading downtown in the same car. He's also one of the most intuitive and aware people I've ever met. Strange and lovely stuff always happens when he's around.
I actually accept all the definitions you quote as being useful. They don't 'define' true will, any of them, but if you take the verbal formula of True Will as equivalent to a 'document' then everything here applies. What's missing is the 'True' bit - the overarching, underlying, wholly interpenetrating aspect to TW. When the first intuitions or indications or revelations or whatever come regarding that, there is usually a spontaneous evocation of the 'other' Tetragrammaton - "SHIT!" -[ which the automatic system for this forum will likely purge and replace with some euphemism]. It will provide food for thought. It will be scary, and exhilarating, and will cry out to be written down in your magical diary so, like a botanical specimen or a stamp in a collection it can be looked at, and thus appear to be safely disconnected from its primal power. For a time, anyway.
Then you can spend a few years negotiating with yourself while it keeps on keeping on until we have to act on what it shows us. There is no objective criterion (that I know of) that can be demonstrated to someone else in this matter. But to the person who has received the intimation about it, it eventually becomes relentless. And at some point, it becomes freedom, because there is no more conflict with it involved.
No, I'm not at that point. But today, I can at least understand being at that point.
Sometimes, I still wonder if Thelema, with its HGAs and True Wills and Holy Books and magick is not about some great truth, but is simply another way of organizing sensory and mental data. But then I get caught up in paradoxes about what prompts the quest, why there is this archetypal concept of order, why certain events synchronized with magical work I did, and so on. I am, frankly, stuck with memories of numerous experiences that contradict my 'rational' analysis of my own condition. Too much skepticism becomes a self-sustaining lie.
Things simply work more productively and more joyfully in my life if I include the 'irrational' and don't try to analyze everything down to neural impulses, hormonally driven instincts, traumas produced by my evil seventh grade biology teacher (restriction be ever unto the snarky creep in the name of Babalon) and my toilet training as a toddler. I can't get past the idea of accepting all this metaphysical and Qabalistic stuff as a necessary postulate for surviving this life as me. Rejecting it as romanticism might appeal to my self-styled 'rational' side but it is also dishonest towards everything else I am.
So, I don't have your answers. Those are some of mine.
93 93/93,
EM -
Well said EM. I'm not buying a word of it mind you... but you have the decency to not be selling it as such.
It seems to me that True Will as explained by Crowley, is his own unique invention. If there are older concepts that exactly the same and not just similar I would be pleased to know them for further insight.
Also it seems to me throughout Crowley's life, at times he was at times at odds with his True Will as he understood it. It didn't bring him, from what I've read, the freedom from conflict you have explained it would.
True Will just seems a lot like the Queen of Cups...
"Her image is of extreme purity and beauty, with infinite subtlety; to see the Truth of her is hardly possible, for she reflects the nature of the observer in great perfection."
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93
Pardon me whilst I interject.
This is good! You are absolutely correct, that in Crowley's context (and many others who share in his particular cosmology) the idea of True Will is a somewhat more esoteric concept. It suffices to say that True Will is NOT:
"
a. Diligent purposefulness; determination: an athlete with the will to win.
b. Self-control; self-discipline: lacked the will to overcome the addiction.- A desire, purpose, or determination, especially of one in authority: It is the sovereign's will that the prisoner be spared.
- Deliberate intention or wish: Let it be known that I took this course of action against my will.
- Free discretion; inclination or pleasure: wandered about, guided only by will.
- Bearing or attitude toward others; disposition: full of good will.
"
However, it is a logical fallacy to attempt to determine the nature of a thing by defining what it is not. The True Will may manifest in expression in many of the above things. In this sense it is approximately Primordial Will. e.g.: When Lance Armstrong gets on his bike and wins seven Tour de France races, that he seems physically and mentally constructed to do so, we might say that he is full of "diligent purposefulness, determination." That may be a result of him doing his True Will. It may not, but it isn't for me to determine.
"I'm very interested in the many parts of Crowley, and deeply interested in the Scientific Crowley, however the concept of the True Will seems like a religious concept such as the Soul... and you might understand that I get off the ferris wheel when that one comes around."
Personally, I have never looked at True Will as being a religious idea. Certainly a little more esoteric than the dictionary definition, granted, but there are plenty of concrete ideas to stand on in a scientific mode. The idea that the dictionary definitions can be seen as an expression of the True Will in some cases gives us a place to begin. It is said that the True Will must be discovered to be done. Now that implies that there is a process of discovery which some may call Magick, and others may call life. There is a set of operators which form a construct which can lead one to the discovery of the True Will.
I would assert that the discovery of that True Will by the individual is at least unmistakable to the individual, and probably recognizable to others.
"Let me put it another way. Who's authority do we have it on, that there is a True Will that each of us have? Why do we believe him? Please speak up if you've found your TW and can educate me further on this concept, but if you haven't, aren't you dogmatically following someone's position on faith?
"I don't believe so. We cite many so called facts and definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias and internet articles often. That doesn't imply "dogmatic following." Science itself requires its own form of dogma in order to provide itself with an axiomatic leg to stand on. Question everything! But in order to do so, one must understand what one is questioning, and the method by which such questioning is done.
" I think the man of Faith says something like, I just know, and you'll never convince me otherwise that there is a God."
"
"True enough. Faith leads invariably to conviction. The scientist or mathematician with his theorem and proof is a variation of this. The True Will of some men leads them toward God and a life of faith... the True Will of other towards science and a life of reason. In either case, awareness of that Will and the strength to do it are great achievements, and the fertile ground in which more great achievements grow.
Just my handful of cents.
93/93
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I appreciate the interjection of a new perspective peregrinus93. Please continue to share.
From your post I didn't learn anything new to help me better understand TW and I believe this is my own fault.
For example, when you say that:
"In this sense it is approximately Primordial Will"
that doesn't add anything to my understanding because I don't know what Primorial Will is and will probably have a tough time understanding that one as well if it's just as esoteric.
You say that you've never looked at TW as a religious idea... how do you look at it? Please explain. I don't understand when you say:
"there are plenty of concrete ideas to stand on in a scientific mode"
Please share some. For example you talk about citing "so called facts"... I guess I missed those. Please share.
Perhaps we should return to what you said earlier in your post:
"However, it is a logical fallacy to attempt to determine the nature of a thing by defining what it is not. "
Maybe you can provide a definition of what it is?
I'm tring to make sense from your cents, so please send more my way.
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Scarecrow, 93,
One last comment from me:
"Also it seems to me throughout Crowley's life, at times he was at times at odds with his True Will as he understood it. It didn't bring him, from what I've read, the freedom from conflict you have explained it would."
Crowley was the *first *Thelemite. I think that is often overlooked. I don't personally see him as the "finished Aeonic product." His job, if you will, was to make every fumble, stumble and blunder, record it, and ensure everyone knew about it. That includes groaners like his recently quoted comments on the joys of being a pre-Civil War slave in the US South. I see his doing all that screwing up as a key part of him fulfilling his TW. What we knowabout him in his later years sounds like he had serenity come over him in his last decade or so. Not everybody gets that.
93 93/93,
EM
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The supernals are a state of awareness, a way or ordering conscious perceptions, specifically it is a state were the categorical distinctions made by the rational mind, that is the symbols of knowledge are not used. The pure raw, data is not divided into parts, it is non-dual. Rather than perceiving as if one is a self apart from and juxtapose to the world of other things, one realizes that all is one continuous process. There is nothing supernatural about this its perfectly physical.
The true Will does derive from this level of physical brain structure, of which the conscious mind is only a sub-layer, a software run on the physical brain hardware, Crossing the abyss is simply the discerning how to influence the hardware of the brain, to reprogram the software of the conscious mind. It is what RAW and Leary called the 6th brain circuit or John Lilly calls Meta-programming the human bio-computer.
Any way the TRUE WILL, is the set hardware of the brain-body-nervous system which is shaped by the environment both by the chemical-genetic make up and the effects upon it from space-time. Where as the whims and conscious Will, is the software of the conscious mind that merely attempts to use symbolic data in the present, to achieve the ends of the unconscious WILL. The conscious mind must however feel that it is free to find a means to achieve the TRUE WILL, bu if for example it is afflicted with the Chrisitan notion of SIN, then one is at conflict with the True WILL, because the conscious mind feels the ones TRUE WILL is sinful and immoral by nature, and thus the mind undermines itself, it becomes a state of many-hood.
Thus their are no moral laws or restrictions in Thelema, which is more concerned with the individuals free expression of under-lying psychology than with the social good of other people. Thus if you possess a Will to hate and kill, then you must be free to rape and murder without moral restriction, guilt or self-loathing. (As the only thing that liber all claims directly is to free one from all fear, guilt and sentimentality that makes on a slave to moral laws and supernatural authority.)
However, we also must realize that as a race we can't have people raping and killing Willy nilly, and we can't just have anyone doing anything at any time. So instead what we need is a social order that discerns atleast in general what sort of WILLs people generally have, and provides a proper role and means to express those WIlls in a productive way for the common good.
For example some one with a murderous WILL, may make an excellent soldier or assassin, working for the good of society. Or say a child who mutilates animals may become a serial killer, or if we discern these tendency early this Child's WILL can produce an a ficst rate veterinary surgeon.
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93
Not sure I have much to add to Froclown's excellent mapping of the concept of True Will onto society. That perspective tends to be somewhat underplayed, especially in certain countries where the illusion of freedom must be maintained, and the mode of improving society is penal rather than progressive.
With regard to a better definition of the True Will, however... look at it like this. We are all constructed and wired slightly differently. Our physical beings and our non-physical beings are not so much bound together as they are intertwined... mated with one another for the duration of a life. It is the form that this union takes that determines the True Will.
The fundamental problem is awareness. How many are acutely (or even peripherally) aware of their own natures? I believe that Crowley gave us a set of tools for discovering this nature, and chose his words carefully along the lines of Rabelais and others to indicate that we must gain a conscious awareness of our innate nature. This makes the idea a philosophical one. The tool used is a spiritual one. The method used is a scientific one.
Since man moves through his experiential universe, that nature is not static, but possessed with a momentum and an evolution. This motion is also part of the True Will, at the very least from the perspective of the individual. Which leads us into the realm of relativistic physics, and I could very easily see professor Einstein being possessed of his own sort of enlightened adepthood through his disciplines as well.
It isn't the language "True Will", or the tool used, or the method invoked that is critical... it is the unmistakable experience of working in concert with one's own nature and the universe.
93/93
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This has been such an interesting thread to me that I was hoping someone would share another post to keep it rolling. I'm going to try to... sorry if everyone else has moved on. True Will just seems like something not worth accepting on faith to me, and I appreciate the different perspectives.
Peregrinus93 said this:
"it is the unmistakable experience of working in concert with one's own nature and the universe."
Which I find very nice, poetic, and romantic. I like it as an idea. But as a practical explanation of reality, my scarecrow brain begs me to question:
- This implies that the universe has a True Will. Which implies a unity, which we might call God. So we're saying if you follow God's will, and your own nature (which I assume from Peregrinus93's comments to be our physical and non-physical (soul???)) you will be following your True Will.
- It will be unmistakable.
I can't believe the Universe has 1 Will.
I can't believe in a non-physical (soul like) quality that we all possess.
I can't believe that "it will be unmistakable" is the measure of success, since I've known the feeling of being absolutely sure of something only to be proved incorrect later.In this debate of True Will it just seems we're assuming sooooo much.
What would it take away from AC's methods to say that we each of us have Wills; why do we have to tie it into something cosmic? What does that get us?
You've told me what you think True Will is. Can it be shown? Can it be proven? Or do you just "know it" and can maybe recognize it in other people in which case we must ultimately take it on FAITH?
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Scarecrow, 93,
"You've told me what you think True Will is. Can it be shown? Can it be proven? Or do you just "know it" and can maybe recognize it in other people in which case we must ultimately take it on FAITH?"
Have you taken this too far? True will is a term that sums up the essence of a person. In saying that, we assume we humans are not here simply to be, but to act.
But you seem to be striving for a metaphysical concept first. In fact, I could switch around some of your phrasing here, and comment that you are asking if God exists.
Keep this on a level in which you can believe. Do you feel you have an individuality? That in some respects you are unique? That there are things you want to achieve that others don't, and which are important to you? If so, then you'll see the idea of True Will isn't some invention of Aleister Crowley's, it's commonsense. Sure, (most) Thelemites extend TW into the metaphysical realm, because they have a metaphysical belief or perspective. But that has to be something that is real to the person, not a borrowed concept that strains one's credulity.
If I take myself as an example, I see TW as a vital means on the road toward the mystical state we call the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. I have very little patience with using Thelema to form political philosophies or indeed, philosophies or any kind. Philosophy, to my mind, is any temporary mental resting place that keeps the intellect reasonably happy and busy while the real work of dissolving fixed ideas about life is done.
Other people here are the opposite - they cannot even stomach the idea of an HGA or a non-physical realm of any kind. For them, philosophy, along with concrete values, is the vital need and the vital goal.
So, such a person and myself have very different True Wills. But insofar as we are both living, conscious expressions of a dynamic universe, there is no inherent conflict in this.
I think you remarked in one post that True Will is a concept unique to Thelema. I disagree. Christians are urged by their scriptures, "To thine own self be true." A Zen Buddhist discovers his/her Original Face. Hindus may see themselves working out their karma on the road to Liberation. A classic Sartrean existentialist would be striving to be authentic. And so on and so on. The difference in Thelema is its recognition of the <b>dynamism</b> of the essential self, especially once it's freed from Old Aeon dogmas and guilt.
Understanding True Will does not mean reaching some inflexible state of unchanging illumination, It's a process, subject to endless revision. If you are ever offered the final, fixed formula for defining True Will, if you follow that you are probably just getting yourself stuck.
93 93/93,
EM
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EM: you make the case, if I'm hearing you right, that TW is a path and not a goal. I love this concept.
In the case of Crowley and Thelemites in general, I've heard it discussed that a person discovers their TW (ie, final results attained).
If I heard more "I'm discovering my TW", as in, I'm on the path, I think I wouldn't get stuck on the label.
Anyway, thanks for the input. Your perspective helps me to see another color from the prism.