Beginner in the Law(of do what thou wilt)
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I was raised fundamentalist Christian( i e born to die to go to heaven or hell hell if not "saved" from the penalties of Sin by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (accepting, but always had an interest in the Occult aspect of life. I still adhere in fear of hell fire if my conversion be to any other religion, but I cannot quench my desire to understand the philosophy and repurcussions of the law of Thelema.
Ever since my youth I have believed in the possibility of the existence of so-called paranormal phenomena. I have always held an interest in altered states of consciousness and the beings one could possibly communicate with, and the lessons of psychology one may obtain in these voyages of altered state of consciousness.
I want to communicate with the beings who bestowed the knowledge of writing, music, psychic powers(clairvoyance, telepathy, astral projection, divination) exc. exc.
Aleister Crowley seems to have been a success in these fields of knowledge(or science) of magick...
I am eager to communicate with other followers of the Law of Thelema, and the various practices that are within the stages of growth towards the goal of the realization of the True Will. I send most positive energies to all who communicate with me on this forum.
93 Do What Thou Wilt, Shall Be The Whole of The Law, Love is the Law Love under Will.
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Individuals have different spiritual and instructional needs depending on where they begin in life.
If you were a friend of mine, I'd recommend you start with the B.O.T.A. or the F.L.O..
Do what you will with this advice. Just remember that these other organizations exist and that someone once told you that they make it all easier to understand if you are beginning as a more traditional and believing Christian.
However, if you do want to understand Crowley and Thelema, don't let me stop you from trying.
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Welcome to the forum
@ChristalVision said
"I am eager to communicate with other followers of the Law of Thelema, and the various practices that are within the stages of growth towards the goal of the realization of the True Will."
As far as this process goes... there are many different avenues to achieve this realization, whether via an Order or done alone.
Exploring is always good
Seek, and may your thirst be quenched!(p.s. this is post #777 for me!)
93, 93/93.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"I still adhere in fear of hell fire if my conversion be to any other religion, but I cannot quench my desire to understand the philosophy and repurcussions of the law of Thelema."
This will fade with time, believe me. If you have this desire within you, it's probably for the best; "fear not that any God shall deny thee for this"!
"Ever since my youth I have believed in the possibility of the existence of so-called paranormal phenomena. I have always held an interest in altered states of consciousness and the beings one could possibly communicate with, and the lessons of psychology one may obtain in these voyages of altered state of consciousness."
Good stuff. So, despite your "Christian" education, you had this genuine religious aspiration from the start.
"I want to communicate with the beings who bestowed the knowledge of writing, music, psychic powers(clairvoyance, telepathy, astral projection, divination) exc. exc."
Cool. I'd just advise you to not get your head too much into this â that is, communicating with "beings"; it's totally okay to seek what you said they "bestowed"
â now. (Trust me, I know. 
) The thing is, you need experience to go about doing that, and once you have the experience, it probably won't matter as much. At least not in the same way."Aleister Crowley seems to have been a success in these fields of knowledge(or science) of magick..."
You friggin' bet.
"I am eager to communicate with other followers of the Law of Thelema, and the various practices that are within the stages of growth towards the goal of the realization of the True Will. I send most positive energies to all who communicate with me on this forum."
Alright, welcome.
Love is the law, love under will.
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You do not have to stop being Christian to follow the Law.
Though in the process of following the Law you may cease to be one.Enjoy the journey
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Frater Potater wrote so much that was good - and, especially, so much that is in the right spirit and tone - and yet, so much that is likely to give you completely the wrong idea. So he succeeded in drawing me to the front of the room on this topic. I'm very close to advising you to ignore almost everything he told you, except to retain the tone and spirit of it.
But that's not right either, so I'll get tedious.
@ChristalVision said
"I still adhere in fear of hell fire if my conversion be to any other religion, but I cannot quench my desire to understand the philosophy and repurcussions of the law of Thelema."
It's the fear that will do you in. It's understandable, especially because this particular fear is so deeply ingrained in you that it's even deeper that "fear of death." But the fear is unnecessary - a habit to be grown out of and dislodged - because death is an illusion, and all fear is a biological reaction to a fear of death. Unless your physical life is in danger at the moment, fear is wasted energy that keeps you small and off-balance.
Live life (a) large, (b) loud, and (c) real. (Pick three of the above.)
@Frater Potater said
"What you need to first understand here, is that human beings are not flawed creatures in need of redemption."
Human beings are flawed creatures - terribly fucked up and making mistakes. That's why Leonard Cohen's lyrics strike must people like a truth-knife in the gut.
But we aren't in need to redemption. "Redeem" is what you do with coupons and rainchecks: It means to "buy back." Nobody (no matter how big the cross) is "buying us back" on God's credit card. We aren't spiritual slaves that a "good slave-owning master" can buy back from a "bad slave-owning master." (And that's what those words and metaphors actually mean.)
No, we don't need redemption. We're just children - living in an era that finally understands children - and all we have to do to be less of a mess, less flawed, less involuntarily hurting people we love, is grow up - each of us in our own time, in our own way, and to be our own person.
The human body is hardwired to thrill at tales of heroic courage, and that's what every one of our lives boils down to when lived fully and vibrantly. As a species, we adore the emotional extremes, the highs and lows, of The Great Plot Line. We love a good story. And we'll settle for a bad story before we'll settle for no story. Perhaps, as a species, we don't love soap opera, but we'll happily, energetically live our lives like a soap opera if we don't have a better plot line to enact. We usually like the great heroic tales even more than we like soap opera, if we only had a plot line to act out. The thing is... each of us has a great heroic tale to act out. It's the tale of our own unfolding, and it has unending twists and turns. Life isn't for the lazy: life is for the passionate. And it's always a story of unfolding character, of learning more about the hero act by act.
"There is nothing inherently sinful about us which we need saving from."
Wrong. This is such an un-Thelemic statement. The Book of the Law is quite explicit in its definition of sin.
"The word of Sin is Restriction." Sin is in our smallness, our willingness to be small, our willingness to let others shrink us and define tiny bounds within which we are to live. To repeat something I said above: Live life (a) large, (b) loud, and (c) real. (Pick three of the above.)
"You should not be worried about going to hell, or about the existence of God."
Here's one of the best examples of where I felt so frustrated reading Potater's post, because he has the spirit of it SO right, and is probably driving you down exactly the right alleyways, but it would be so easy to misunderstand.
I totally agree: You should not be worried about the existence of God. Worry is like fear (see above), except that worry is like fear when you don't care enough to give the very best.
On the other hand, a passionately-lived Thelemic life will find itself living, breathing, and embracing God at every turn. Just don't get stuck in what other people have told you about God. Hang out with Him-Her-It (whatever image serves at the moment) and forge your own relationship. (Then don't let anybody take that away from you: It's between you and God.)
"There is really no way of knowing what happens after you die. We have no evidence of an afterlife, or reincarnation. Nothing you experience, or that anyone tells you can change this. These things should not be the focus of your life anyways."
Again, this gives the whole wrong idea. At the moment, it's pop and vogue and hip in some Thelemic circles to take this angle about things, but these sentences are not at all fair or right answers to your inquiry about the nature of Thelema.
Aleister Crowley held reincarnation to be a fact of his own experience, and taught it repeatedly throughout his life. The same is true of Karl Germer, Jane Wolfe, and Phyllis Seckler. And me. Every step of the way from Thelema's source down to and through and including me has been someone who has experienced reincarnation as fundamental to our life-experience and as what we must teach.
Now, that doesn't mean we're right. We could all have a screw loose. But the history I've just given explains why I might say that reincarnation is very much a part of what we embrace and teach. It comes from our experience, not from a priori belief. (Anyone who says we have no evidence of reincarnation or some other form of afterlife is only stating their own lack of evidence.)
Life is continuous. And your life is continuous. That's vitally important to understand in shaking off the slave-shackles of Christianity: You aren't stuck in a one-shot lunge through life with a pass-fail grade at the end. Your passage through existence is a continuing spiral of progressive clarity about yourself, and a progressive awakening to the actuality of deeper realities. Why settle for one life when you can have them all!
"Thelema is about doing your will. Start by doing what you want to do."
Amen! And, ah shit! And, oh, what wisdom!
Thelema is about "doing your Willm" living your life in conscious conformity with your True Will. Your Will may have nothing whatsoever to do with what you want, though. Why? Because we're all screwed up a bit, and inexperienced a bit, and recoiling reactively from this-or-that like a pinball, and so forth. Especially in any period of life when we are painfully breaking away from someone or something that has been so much as part of our lives as your religion has been to yours, we usually don't know what we REALLY want. We don't have our "authenticity instincts" intact. We WILL make choices totally against ourt own natures, and we'll pay ugly consequences for our sinful betrayal of our own truth.
The point, though, is that we then survive and move on. We're children figuring out who we are. And, yeah, at this juncture the best advice anyone could give you is probably to act out, smash limits, go to extremes, be angry and frightened and fearless and noisy and explosive... until you've broken enough guitars around you and then, with a sigh, you look up and think, "Wow, I kinda would have liked to have had a couple of those guitars." So you go out and buy or make a new one and start playing your music.
Or whatever. If you live it, you get it.
"What you want" is often far removed from the choices that are most authentically YOU. But the only way I know to learn how to make good choices is to make a whole lot of bad ones. Get started!
I don't know if there is a forgiving God (though I intimately know a very loving one; forgiveness never really seems to be the issue). I do know, though, that LIFE is forgiving. We're elastic and resilient. There is a lot of "give" in the fabric (and a lot of room in life for give-and-take with each other).
Go forth, live, love, and light up the sky.
"Most importantly, don't be afraid of what other people think... and don't have fun at the expense of others."
Damn straight fabulous life advice.
"Make smart choices and you might enjoy your earthly life. Poor decisions will limit your freedom and compromise your liberties."
And there it is! (Good stuff.)
PS - That "supernatural" stuff you're interested in is ALL real. Every last whit of it. - It's just not supernatural. It's entirely natural - entirely within our natures. But that's all for another time. (Just one hint: Don't mistake the error of atheistic materialism for the strength and clarity of agnostic scepticism. Humanity needs belief as much as logic. It is equally un-sceptical to disbelieve something based on inadequate evidence as it is to believe something based on inadequate evidence. Disbelief is just another belief.)
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Dear Christian,
It's so very hard to know what to say to you. I was raised a fundamentalist in America's Bible Belt. I was a sincere Christian and a minister (in some form or other) for most of my life. For several years, I ran a forum like this for "Esoteric Christians" as I began to explore the very things it sounds like you are beginning to explore.
People tend to act like Christianity is simply a set of beliefs to be discarded like belief in Santa Claus. For some, that may be true - especially for those who never experienced anything of its spiritual life and reality. For those who have experienced the vitality of Christianity, the journey toward the bigger picture is more difficult.
As you ponder all that has been written above, I can only say to you that in my experience of attempting to follow Jesus, experience over time just kept making Christ bigger and bigger and more all-encompassing, until what I learned to know as the Christ overshadowed the doctrines of Christianity. It grew larger and larger still, until "Christ" just became the first name I learned for something that is Universal and Eternal and ultimately has no name. It was only after reaching this point that I was able to consider the legitimacy of the other names given to the Eternal Presence and other stories that gave instruction and emphasis about other aspects of its Eternal nature.
In the end, "Perfect love casts out fear."
Until then, as always, be true to the Presence within you, wherever it may lead.
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@Frater Potater said
" In all likelihood, Jesus never existed. Neither did Moses, or Abraham, or Krishna, or Shiva, or Buddha. It doesn't matter. Essentially, the christian god which you have been raised on is make believe.
"I disagree!
they all did and DO exist, if we don't want to denigrate the concept of existence to* only* physical plane, and that in the human form!
they do exist - although not necessarily as living humans - and their impact on living humans and their life is huge!the important question is, for every one of us personally : with whom of all the possible (and impossible
) gods/divine ideas do You will/love to connect? -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I disagree with that statement, too. And, at the very least, you'd have to give Buddha a pass.
Love is the law, love under will.
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93
@ChristalVision said
"I was raised fundamentalist Christian( i e born to die to go to heaven or hell hell if not "saved" from the penalties of Sin by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (accepting, but always had an interest in the Occult aspect of life. I still adhere in fear of hell fire if my conversion be to any other religion, but I cannot quench my desire to understand the philosophy and repurcussions of the law of Thelema.
Ever since my youth I have believed in the possibility of the existence of so-called paranormal phenomena. I have always held an interest in altered states of consciousness and the beings one could possibly communicate with, and the lessons of psychology one may obtain in these voyages of altered state of consciousness."
Me too. Except the whole "fear of hell" bit -- don't have that at all anymore. But, early on, it was definitely a fear.
Good luck with your exploration.
Three quotes:
"Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."
"It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up, it is the biggest of all plants. It becomes a tree, so that birds come and make their nests in its branches."
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
Everything will work out beautifully.
Welcome!!!
93 93/93