Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - selfish?
-
I have never said it to my self, though I have told many people.
-
lol...
Our self is the only one we ever attempt to convince.
-
Is it not said the second to last step is to sacrifice one's personal will to the Greater Will of the cosmos. Also to do ones Will means to have the whole of the universe (Karmic law) to back you up. Then of course the ultimate ends is to destroy all duality between Microcosm of personal Will and Macrocosm of Karmic WILL. "Not my Will but Thine be done"
Is not the essence of Thelema that we are to do ANYthing whatsoever an feel no existential Guilt or shame as all acts are lawful.
Now the fact that it may not be a SIN to be a lying, stealing, gambling, rapist, murdering son of a bitch, does not mean that the social order will appreciate it. And those who plan to run an abbey, a city, or a culture would be best in employ some rules of mutual benefits and reciprocation as customs and laws. That weans something like Liber OZ and Duty would be social contracts, but they do not supersede the absolute freedom of Liber Legis, "There is no law beyond do what thou Wilt". Their is no Law in heaven that says you can't be a no good shit, but our primate human laws on the other hand will put a stop to your behavior when it starts te interfere with other peoples interests.
The only thing is you can sit in a jail cell waiting to be hung, with a clear moral conscious, even if your legal record is full of trespasses.
-
@Froclown said
"Is not the essence of Thelema that we are to do ANYthing whatsoever an feel no existential Guilt or shame as all acts are lawful. "
Well, yeah, guilt and shame don't do much good and tend to get in the way.
But no, not anything whatsoever. We are to discover the ONE THING that is distinctly ours to do, and then do that (and things essential to its undertaking) and nothing else.
-
As for the as you put it RAW experience I had, what that taught we was nothing about the external world or the word of science or whatever. It but rather was a direct experience of how my brain takes raw input data and transforms it into semantic awareness. And that it is possible to alter, had and remove layers of semantic overtones, and contextual meanings from events, that I never know were being unconsciously integrated into my experiences prior to that experience. It seems I learned some degree of direct conscious manipulation of the temporal lobe functions, seems to relate to what Leary and R.A.W. referred to as the 6th neuro-circuit the psycho-semantic circuit, that allows one to consciously imprint the meta-programming ability of the mind, to create and alternate between different reality-tunnels or paradigms. Or I would say to shift semantic contexts in which to interpret perceptions, holding parallel meanings without contradiction. (I don't think I have developed this ability much more than to have opened access in it, mostly as I don't really know how to train it, but I suspect Kabbalah study uses this faculty, to hold practical meanings and tree of life correspondences at the same time.)
-
I understand that any one person at any one time as one thing to which they are pledged, to which their WILL in dedicated, and to nothing else.
What I am saying is that what that one thing might possibly be in general for any person, can be anything. If you as an individual have as your WILL to be a great doctor and heal the sick, it would conflict with your WILL if you are to contract a plague, or go stealing, upon which you risk going to jail and losing your chance to learn and practice medicine.
However what is to prevent some one like a Hannibal Lector from dedicating their life the art of serial killing and cannibalism. To which even his medical training was a means and preparation to his WILL to be a great killer.
Thus his killing, and his medical training were "ever unto me" and he refined his rapture in killing and killed by the "the eight and ninety rules of art".
in any event you see, that Thelema does not set up some happy hippie utopia, it is a means by which an individual may more effectively persue any ends whatsoever, via refinement of his character and his art that art being the general art of Magick which can be specified to anything from writing an opera, to hunting deer, from blowing ones nose to cannibalism.
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"We are to discover the ONE THING that is distinctly ours to do, and then do that (and things essential to its undertaking) and nothing else."
Only ONE thing?
-
As I under stand it , that one thing becomes every thing.
-
@Tornado93 said
"Only ONE thing?"
Yes. But not "things" in the separate sort of way we usually think of them. Perhaps it's easier to think of as "fulfilling a single, central motive."
Every thing of substance and value and enjoyment I do (and, for that matter, have ever done), and most of the fiddling and diddling in between - all the variations and seemingly diverse "things" have done - have really all been one single thing that I can summarize in 10 or 11 words.
-
@Tornado93 said
"I am arguing with a friend about "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." He thinks it's selfish. "
Some thoughts, FWIW:
-
If you look at the context, the "Law" is something given to another, or that another gives to you. The Star Goddess gives it to us in Liber AL, and we are supposed to give it to others. So it's like, as you go through life, you are nodding at every entity you come across and saying "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". It is you granting freedom to others, as the Star goddess granted it to you. Like a baton race, or like the Olympic flame being lit from torch to torch. So that's one thing: in effect, you cease to have a quarrel with the Universe, you are (at least in a metaphysical sense) letting everything be as it is. (The political extension is a social structure in which this situation of letting each other be is reflected in a more or less *laissez-faire *set of social rules, liberalism in the broadest sense. Think of one of those Escher "tiling" drawings, or of "cellular automata": it's like, a pattern arises, that is composed of mutual adjustment between parts following simple rules.)
-
The other thing is, who or what is the "thou" being addressed, and what would "selfish" mean in that context? When the Star Goddess gives the Law to us, what does it mean we are supposed to do? Well, who are you, who is the "I"? Say, normally, we think of ourselves as an etherial somewhat, somewhere in the skull, controlling the bag of flesh and bone that houses it. Is that right? Is that the way it *really *is? Who am I really? Who is it who is really being addressed by this exhortation?
-
Altruism is a tricky blighter. I would say that Thelema is definitely against self-sacrifice to others held as an absolute ideal. In some senses, Thelema is a standard form ethical egoism (in philosophical terms) and a Thelemite have as much abhorrence for absolutist Altruism as Nietzsche or Ayn Rand would. However, as Nietzsche pointed out, the truly great-souled person is not a bully, doesn't prey on the weak - on the contrary, seeks out the strong to contest with, and is usually kind-hearted. So, Thelema isn't after a cruel bloodbath in which the strong exploit the weak, it's after stable, progressive and prosperous social structures (that will enable our future incarnations to get on with the practice of mysticism and magick better, or enable more people to do magick more easily - a synergetic acceleration of our evolution). The fundamental problem with altruism, at the metaphysical level, is that, again, it's not really clear on who the "self" that's either being sacrificed, or benefitted by sacrifice, is. At the end of the day, suffering is illusory, so any form of absolutist Altruism is actually a form of arrogance, denying the other's godhood, denying that they are clever enough to see the truth for themselves. It's not that you *should *help others, it's that when you are strong enough you will *naturally *help others (overflow, abundance). But you will only get that strength if you make yourself your primary moral concern (i.e. the idea would be, in a trope, that the only moral "shoulds" that are coherent relate to what you should be doing wrt yourself; you have no moral obligations to others, you merely have obligations you have undertaken as part of the "social contract".)
-