Thoughts on Do what thou wilt

[Mike]

I wanted to share this with everyone and to get thoughts, knowing that no one can interpret the Book of the Law for me except me myself but also knowing that many of you have much more experience and are rather intelligent

I've always had issues understanding Thelema in relation to myself. I have grasped it to be accurate and have time and again come back to see its accuracy after I researched other approaches, but understanding what it meant to me has always been difficult. I've always felt disconnected to it - like it didn't apply to me yet. I felt like a child studying adult matters - they are accurate, and I'm aware of that, but they are of a world that I haven't yet got a foot into, so they will remain separate from me until this changes.

Today something "sparked" in me with little provocation, and I suddenly felt that I understood Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law to some degree that I hadn't before.

My thoughts follow.

My initial, rational analysis of the phrase was that "the key word for your average person is, from what I can tell, the word 'thou,' because most people don't understand what this word means. The rest of it is easier to grasp."
I still stand by that to some degree, but today I realized that there is a better way to express it, and one that I understand much more deeply:

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" is flat out accurate, period, but to the mind of a non-Adept, what it means will be distorted, seeing as how it will be analyzed primarily with logic (or it probably will be). The phrase can only be understood up to a certain point without attaining the K&CHGA - the "joy ineffable" in the "aimless winging" doesn't make any profound sense until one is in a supra-rational state, at which point it does. (Those two quotes come from Liber LXV.)
My evidence for these assertions, being one who is far from the K&C and has little experience (if any) with supra-rational states, is that I think I've glimpsed briefly the understanding I mention here. It's intuitive - I have no rational justification for why I should have the faintest inkling as to how the phrase may appear to an Adept, but I'm pretty sure I'm speaking accurately.

"Love is the Law, love under will" is a phrase that has given me more trouble. My focus when I "received the blast of information" earlier today was on "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," and I had slipped back into a rational mindstate before I got to turn my attention toward its corollary. As such, I don't have anything to say about this phrase except rational thoughts, and, given what I said above, these aren't all that helpful.

I'm sure what I said in this post will appear blatantly obvious to many of you, but it is something new for me.

Edit: I know that I never actually stated what I felt the phrase to mean, only how I reacted to it - but that's because the phrase meant itself when I experienced it, whereas before it was somewhat empty of meaning, if that makes any sense. I suddenly realized the phrase was accurate and why, but the reason why is not something I can easily translate back into words.
My best attempt at that, though, would have to be: "We are One. Every action from a lower, separated perspective is just an expression of the joy of the One. Every action is Its Will being enacted, but those who don't grasp that we are One cannot see this. I can't see it, but I am now aware of that fact and why its so, because I have seen just a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to see this fact from an Enlightened perspective."

[Al Ha-Shemat]

93 Ash,

That's very cool to hear that -- it's always nice to hear others getting similar (if still unique) experiences. I've felt very similar about things, and felt that the whole idea that one should not comment upon Liber AL is for that very reason -- because the Book itself states things very plainly, as in "this is quite simply how it is"; but every person who reads it will have reactions to it that are colored by their own personal sphere of existence, i.e. their reactions to things are colored by personality, experience, individual past, etc. The same goes for your description of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." So in that light it's easy to appreciate Crowley's claim that his "Comment" appended to Liber AL was "inspired by Hadit."

One way to perhaps think of it (and this is purely speculative thinking) is that perhaps the "lower" elements of a person's consciousness/personality are more prone to being reactionary, i.e. "colored" by one's unique perspective. Often when reading Crowley's writings I like to relax my mind as much as I can into a state similar to what you seem to be describing -- a less "personally biased" state that seems less clouded by predispositions toward any given subject. It seems like every time I go back to Liber LXV with this approach I come away with beautifully deeper insights.

93 93/93

Thanks again for sharing your perspective.

Fra. AL H-ShMATh