Joining Thelemic Orders != doing ones true will.
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93,
What does it matter to you?
- See thou constantly to it that this be not broken; especially in the Section thereof (if I dare say so) which readeth Mind thine own Business. This is of Application equally to all, and the most dangerous Man (or Woman, as has occurred, or I err) is the Busy-body. Oh how ashamed are we, and moved to Indignation, seeing the Sins and Follies of our Neighbours!
-A.C., Liber Aleph
93 93/93
- See thou constantly to it that this be not broken; especially in the Section thereof (if I dare say so) which readeth Mind thine own Business. This is of Application equally to all, and the most dangerous Man (or Woman, as has occurred, or I err) is the Busy-body. Oh how ashamed are we, and moved to Indignation, seeing the Sins and Follies of our Neighbours!
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"22.
Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt."Now where is the difference between one person and another?
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What does that have anything to do with this topic?
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Would someone else joining orders for unthelemic reasons not in fact be the same as you joining orders for non-thelemic reasons?
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Uh, no?
It's not because ultimately there's no difference between stuff that everyone is the same. Each one has his or her own path. We exist both as individualities and as a whole.
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Well, if they join a Thelemic order, they'll probably be sucked toward doing their Will sooner or later, so it's a net effect of more people not doing their will being turned toward doing their will, than the other way around. So it's a win-win situation.
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Periods of consistent solitary work IS basic to the traditional training methods.
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By definition, things done in private are... private.
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@Patthana Gati said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"By definition, things done in private are... private."Sure, and I wasn't suggesting people talk about their order set homework. But I think there is simply more emphasis about joining orders, going to meetings, cloning rituals etc. around here and it would nice to hear something off script a little more, since that sort of originality and true creative and independent thinking does result from solitary study and practise. So I have to wonder how much time people are really putting aside for it.
General question for order members: how much time do you spend alone without anyone in the house to interrupt you, engaged in solitary study and practise that is not work set for you by the order you've joined?"
Dar, I believe you've gotten yourself a new book or a new course to take. You get on, you do, about things - I've noted. This semester it is "believer scripts." How fascinating. But unfortunately, as has been pointed out to you before, you aren't seeming to be aware of your own believer script and its biased impact on you.
Here's above an example! Your impression of where you are is among a bunch followers. I have a feeling you are going to hear a lot of people in this forum tell you they don't belong to orders or those that do are likely to surprise you at how infrequent orders actually involve themselves in their lives.
You once accused me of being a Masonic attack against you! el oh el! You have no evidence that I have any order affiliations whatsoever. Funny too because you didn't start with Freemasonry, you started by accusing me of gearing the O.T.O. entirely against you! I make it a sworn rule never to talk about any of my affiliations or associations here. It has nothing to do with anything.
I have been quoted as saying 'Badges??? We don't need no stinkin' badges!" and I have been also quoted as saying "Badgers?? We don't need no stinkin' badgers" as has Jim been known to say that - and that's my stance on the whole subject.
I believe (see me owning this?) that you have a believer script about men, groups, hierarchies, society in general, that puts you in the center of the victim's couch and you've never known how to get off that couch. But that's just what I believe.
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@Patthana Gati said
"The tired old 'you've got a believer script too' is routinely levelled at atheists and scientists by creationists (amongst other people with a believer script) and displays a lack of understanding of the difference between subjective and objective thinking."
It displays the correct understanding that disbelief is a variety of belief.
For example, the first dictionary I checked defines atheism as one would expect: "The doctrine or belief that there is no God."
"I am objectively interested in how much time people spend in solitary study. I see a lot of Jews fully engaged with their religion but without adopting a believer script."
A well-designed magick Order that focusses on training doesn't fit the church model. It fits the model of a high-end athletic trainer. When (for example) Olympic-hopeful athletes sign on with a trainer, they certainly do solitary training, but they don't do off-program training. One gets hurt that way (or, at least, runs the risk of undoing much that the selected trainer is trying to accomplish).
It's different after one develops a significant level of expertise. But if you're talking about most members of a training Order, then you're talking prinarily of people in their primary training years.
Whether it's Temple of Thelema or some other group, I give the same counsel I would give to an athlete: Pick your trainer, then stick with it - stick with the program. Otherwise, don't pick the trainer.
This (in different words) is what Crowley adviseed as well.
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@Patthana Gati said
"An atheist withholds belief. i.e.: An atheist or scientist can not prove a negative and thus withholds belief. They do not grant the view in question any validity and continues on until such a time that it is proven (if it ever is)."
An agnostic (literally, "not-knower") withholds belief. An atheist (literally, "not-godist") has a firm belief that there is no god.
"In the case of the Book of the Law there is a great wealth of evidence to disprove the story of the reception and so that is a denial of a belief rather than a withholding of a belief."
Is is a belief against another belief. (And, in this case, it's very much a belief; specifically, an opinion.)
Of course (as you cite), if we frame this in the procedures of contemporary scientific method, the rules change. So far, it doesn't look to me like that's the subject matter of this thread.
"hmmm. I'm wondering to myself if I would consider most members of this forum as people who are in their primary training years. At least to their faces...
"Well, there is that
"Primary training years" does have the last word as a plural
. I'd say that at least 93% of the people here are either in the primary training years, or haven't even started primary education. Since I'm such a no-accomplishment lazyass, it's probably not fair to offer up that I put myself in that "primary training" category for at least the first decade after I formally began directed work (and it would probably be fairer to say that it was for the first 14 years)."As a person who actually trained as a gymnast (which can be extremely dangerous) then I brought a lot into my training that my trainers had never encountered before, as I was simultaneously taking yoga instruction. No-one ever told me to stop introducing my other practises into the Gym class or told me not to go off program, and instead something rather more natural arose. My coaches spent some time watching and validating that it worked and then encouraged me to instruct my peers."
I'd call that working on-program, rather than off-program: The one responsible for your training program validated the practice and adjusted the curriculum.
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What I don´t get of this "school learning" thing is that sort bureaucratic language. I know schools have to make it serious and that, but it still sounds a little.. artificial. The thing is I´ve known so many mediocre and untalented people with the mentality that joining a class of whatever they will to learn to do that thing, when they only learn mere technique, that I´m inclinned to think that the very most part of an school of that kind has to be of that type. And for the master/student relationship.. I don´t know how that goes in a "school" , but from my experiencie I´d say that the only valid relationship between a master and a "student" is usually almost casual and of friendship and collaboration, it has to be a mutual thing and in equal conditions, both have to have something to lose from that, otherwise, pure bullshit.
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@SmokingMonkey said
"...from my experiencie I´d say that the only valid relationship between a master and a "student" is usually almost casual and of friendship and collaboration, it has to be a mutual thing and in equal conditions, both have to have something to lose from that, otherwise, pure bullshit."
That's very narrow view. For most places through most of history, there has been a dedicated studenship - ashram environments being an example. People leaving home and dedicating years of their lives to study and drill under close observation.
In modern times, we've gained some things and lost some things by endeavoring to do the same thing mostly in non-monastic contexts.
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Yes, it's an old observation, one that I first read in high school in Mein Kampf. Hitler argued effectively for youth have energy and idealism in abundance without yet having the skill or power to put it in place; and that the more aged that had the skill and power to put it in place were no longer blessed with the abundance of energy and idealism.
I have always found this a fascinating characteristic of the eternal generatiional hand-off.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@SmokingMonkey said
"...from my experiencie I´d say that the only valid relationship between a master and a "student" is usually almost casual and of friendship and collaboration, it has to be a mutual thing and in equal conditions, both have to have something to lose from that, otherwise, pure bullshit."That's very narrow view. For most places through most of history, there has been a dedicated studenship - ashram environments being an example. People leaving home and dedicating years of their lives to study and drill under close observation.
In modern times, we've gained some things and lost some things by endeavoring to do the same thing mostly in non-monastic contexts."
Well one thing is a master as a personal mentor or something, and another a teacher. I was referring rather to the first one. Of course one can learn from a teacher or a variety of them in an school environment, the same way as one can learn from books and practice and mixing with people of the environtment in a freelance way. The important thing in any case is aside, in it´s most part.
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@SmokingMonkey said
"Well one thing is a master as a personal mentor or something, and another a teacher. I was referring rather to the first one. Of course one can learn from a teacher or a variety of them in an school environment, the same way as one can learn from books and practice and mixing with people of the environtment in a freelance way."
One learns, hopefully, from everybody.
BTW, you do know (don't you?) that the word "master" most fundamentally means "teacher," yes? Only in modern time does it have the implication of boss, slave-owner, or the like. In addition to the secondary (associated) meaning of "someone with great skill," etc., the Latin magister (the sense in which we use the word) means "teacher." (This has only tended to survive in modern times in the term "headmaster," or "head teacher.")
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@SmokingMonkey said
"Well one thing is a master as a personal mentor or something, and another a teacher. I was referring rather to the first one. Of course one can learn from a teacher or a variety of them in an school environment, the same way as one can learn from books and practice and mixing with people of the environtment in a freelance way."One learns, hopefully, from everybody.
BTW, you do know (don't you?) that the word "master" most fundamentally means "teacher," yes? Only in modern time does it have the implication of boss, slave-owner, or the like. In addition to the secondary (associated) meaning of "someone with great skill," etc., the Latin magister (the sense in which we use the word) means "teacher." (This has only tended to survive in modern times in the term "headmaster," or "head teacher.")"
In theory it could be, but "master" always sound much more high than teacher. At least, when someone refers to a "master of painting" or whatever, you know already what they are talking about.
Btw, refering to the technique that was on target before, a quote of Plato I think every student of whatever should have to have stuck in over it´s head bed:
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"He who approaches to the temple of the muses without inspiration, believing that mere technical it´s enough, will always be a thief and his poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs"" -
So true. (The Plato quote.)
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"An agnostic (literally, "not-knower") withholds belief. An atheist (literally, "not-godist") has a firm belief that there is no god."
I think there's a common or vernacular understanding of what the terms mean, and then there are somewhat different definitions used in philosophy.
In strong atheism, there's a positive claim: "There is no god, or gods".
In weak atheism, there's a negative claim, or simple absence of belief: "I don't believe in a god or gods"."Strong", "weak", "positive" and "negative" here are technical terms, not value judgements.
Agnosticism is simply the position that, to quote Wikipedia, "claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity... are unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable". It's a claim about knowledge, not belief.
Thus it's possible to be an agnostic atheist, a gnostic theist, an agnostic theist or a gnostic atheist. The theist-atheist scale is about belief; the gnostic-agnostic scale is about knowledge.
In the vernacular, "agnostic" usually is the equivalent of "weak atheist".
At least that's how the atheists explained it to me over beer...
(edit): Yikes, the thread has moved on since then, my apologies for going off-track there.
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@sozos said
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"An agnostic (literally, "not-knower") withholds belief. An atheist (literally, "not-godist") has a firm belief that there is no god."I think there's a common or vernacular understanding of what the terms mean, and then there are somewhat different definitions used in philosophy.
In strong atheism, there's a positive claim: "There is no god, or gods".
In weak atheism, there's a negative claim, or simple absence of belief: "I don't believe in a god or gods".""this is the law of the strong"
"Be strong, o man!"
"Wisdom says: be strong!"