Finding my True Will
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@Los said
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For the most part, I consider all of this ritual stuff a complete and total distraction, more likely to mislead than help, and I think engaging in it should be primarily because you enjoy performing the rituals and enjoy the feelings they create in you, not because you think they're going to do anything in regards to giving you insight into yourself.""Thou hast no right but to do thy will."
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@Los said
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For the most part, I consider all of this ritual stuff a complete and total distraction, more likely to mislead than help, and I think engaging in it should be primarily because you enjoy performing the rituals and enjoy the feelings they create in you, not because you think they're going to do anything in regards to giving you insight into yourself.""The word of Sin is Restriction."
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I appreciate the extremely selective quotation, guys, but being able to rattle off phrases that you think are relevant isn’t a substitute for understanding those verses in the first place.
For starters, "Restriction" has a specific meaning in Thelema -- restricting the manifestation of one's True Will by following mental illusions instead of attending to reality (Crowley puts it: "This is sin: / To hold thy holy self in"). As part of manifesting the True Will, one needs to have a clear understanding of the terrain through which one is navigating.
It's not "Restriction," then, to recommend that someone have a clear understanding of reality and what's going on. For example, a math teacher isn't "restricting" you by telling you when you've made an incorrect answer, a history teacher isn't "restricting" you by telling you what actually happened in history, and I'm not "restricting" you by telling you that you need to have a clear understanding of what you're doing if you want any of this stuff to work.
Ironically, it would be "Restriction" to insist on trusting one's own precious feelings and "intuitions" instead of bothering to figure out what's really going on.
As far as "thou hast no right but to do thy will" goes, one cannot follow that verse without understanding what True Will actually is, and properly understanding how that term is defined in Thelema isn't "restriction": it's foundational to doing any work at all toward discovering it.
As I was pointing out, if we define True Will as Crowley did, which involves gaining insight into one's Self, then one needs to be asking questions such as "How could doing some ritual or sitting around imagining something possibly give me insight into myself?" Coming up with a critical and serious answer to such a question isn't "Restriction": it's the one possible way to avoid Restriction.
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@Los said
"I appreciate the extremely selective quotation, guys, but being able to rattle off phrases that you think are relevant isn’t a substitute for understanding those verses in the first place.
For starters, "Restriction" has a specific meaning in Thelema -- restricting the manifestation of one's True Will by following mental illusions instead of attending to reality (Crowley puts it: "This is sin: / To hold thy holy self in"). As part of manifesting the True Will, one needs to have a clear understanding of the terrain through which one is navigating.
It's not "Restriction," then, to recommend that someone have a clear understanding of reality and what's going on. For example, a math teacher isn't "restricting" you by telling you when you've made an incorrect answer, a history teacher isn't "restricting" you by telling you what actually happened in history, and I'm not "restricting" you by telling you that you need to have a clear understanding of what you're doing if you want any of this stuff to work.
Ironically, it would be "Restriction" to insist on trusting one's own precious feelings and "intuitions" instead of bothering to figure out what's really going on.
As far as "thou hast no right but to do thy will" goes, one cannot follow that verse without understanding what True Will actually is, and properly understanding how that term is defined in Thelema isn't "restriction": it's foundational to doing any work at all toward discovering it.
As I was pointing out, if we define True Will as Crowley did, which involves gaining insight into one's Self, then one needs to be asking questions such as "How could doing some ritual or sitting around imagining something possibly give me insight into myself?" Coming up with a critical and serious answer to such a question isn't "Restriction": it's the one possible way to avoid Restriction."
If you can answer the question "Why am I doing this" with anything other than "it is my Will," then you aren't doing your Will, you are doing the "why." Why am I doing this? To gain something other than this? That is not "pure will."
[Edit: I'm not responsible for Bereshith's interpretations of what I write]
[Edit: PS. Nowhere in the Book of the Law does it mention "True Will."]
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@Takamba said
"If you can answer the question "Why am I doing this" with anything other than "it is my Will," then you aren't doing your Will, you are doing the "why." Why am I doing this? To gain something other than this? That is not "pure will.""
But this thread is in the context of someone trying to figure out how to discover his True Will. An aspirant cannot sensibly answer the question "How do I discover my True Will?" with "It's my True Will!" That's a bunch of nonsense.
In order to answer the question "How do I discover my True Will?" a person needs to know at least:
--What the concept "True Will" means
--The steps a person should use to discover True Will
--Why he should think the particular steps in question actually do lead to the discovery of the True Will
--The specific criteria by which he can judge that the steps have actually worked to allow him to discover the True Will.Crystal clear understanding of these things is vital for success: a person can't shrug this off or just declare, as policy, that whatever they do is already their True Will. It makes nonsense out of the whole idea of working to discover the will, and it makes Thelema meaningless.
Discovering the True Will is a task, and there's no reason to suppose that it doesn't require a crystal clear understanding of the subject, like any other task.
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@Takamba said
"[Edit: PS. Nowhere in the Book of the Law does it mention "True Will."]"
Yeah, but the guy who invented Thelema -- Aleister Crowley -- created and defined that term in a very specific way. If one is interested in practicing Thelema, and doing it intelligently, one needs to know what it requires and how to do it. Merely guessing or merely trusting what someone else says isn't going to cut it, unless one is looking for some kind of religion.
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@Los said
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But this thread is in the context of someone trying to figure out how to discover his True Will.""How?" is a great question. I was demonstrating that when one stops and asks, "why?" one has stopped "doing." If one has an answer for "why" other than "it is my nature, it is my self, it is my will," then the "will" is naught. It is certainly not "True."
The belief in a "True Will" has a lot of danger to it. Some seem to view it as some sort of ordained destiny, from on high, previously determined. Instead, I recommend we think in nautical terms, true north, true east. Direct (True) Will. You do not "discover" this, you adhere to it.
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@Takamba said
""How?" is a great question. I was demonstrating that when one stops and asks, "why?" one has stopped "doing." If one has an answer for "why" other than "it is my nature, it is my self, it is my will," then the "will" is naught. It is certainly not "True.""
Well, yeah. A person's will is a person's will. There's no "why" to it. But if someone wants to do something toward a certain end -- such as, for example, discover the True Will in the first place -- then we would expect that the person (if he wants to practice intelligently) would ask critical questions of practices: what they supposedly accomplish, why he would think they actually do accomplish these things, and how he tells.
"The belief in a "True Will" has a lot of danger to it. Some seem to view it as some sort of ordained destiny, from on high, previously determined. Instead, I recommend we think in nautical terms, true north, true east. Direct (True) Will. You do not "discover" this, you adhere to it."
True Will is most definitely not some preordained path. It is -- to oversimplify a bit -- what a person would naturally do if his mind would stop telling him that he "should" be doing something else "because" of some silly reason (such as "because it's the right thing to do" or "because it's for the good of humanity!" or "because you're such-and-such kind of person").
I do think that True Will has to be discovered because our thoughts, emotions, feelings, intuitions, etc. "veil" the True Will from us. We discover (literally dis-cover, remove the covering from) our True Wills by increasing our powers of observation and learning to see "through" the illusions of our minds, exactly as I explained earlier in the thread.
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@Los said
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"The belief in a "True Will" has a lot of danger to it. Some seem to view it as some sort of ordained destiny, from on high, previously determined. Instead, I recommend we think in nautical terms, true north, true east. Direct (True) Will. You do not "discover" this, you adhere to it."
"Exactly. Why ask why? Just a swift "How" on the butt and a stern "Do" on the back. Ask after, when the data is collected, "Did or did not?" and learn from that.
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@Takamba said
"Exactly. Why ask why? Just a swift "How" on the butt and a stern "Do" on the back. Ask after, when the data is collected, "Did or did not?" and learn from that."
Because before a person can "adhere" to the True Will, "discover" it, or do anything with it, that person has to know what it is and how to go about working with it. And the person needs to have specific, intelligent, coherent, and demonstrable answers to those questions if he wants to do an intelligent job of attaining.
That's why you ask why. Just telling an aspirant "Go out and do it" tells them absolutely nothing and is incredibly unhelpful.
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@ Los
I find my quotation of "The word of Sin is Restriction" entirely relevant to your motivations in attempting to dissuade others from using ritual to discover their True Will.
To me, you seem to weave your words together in such a way that basically attempts to restrict others from participating in, or even experimenting with, ritual's power to help them discover their True Will unless they *a priori *agree with you that it's all just bullshit anyway.
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@Aleister Crowley in The Book of Lies said
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PILGRIM-TALKO thou that settest out upon The Path, false is the Phantom that thou seekest. When thou hast it thou shalt know all bitterness, thy teeth fixed in the Sodom-Apple. Thus hast thou been lured along That Path, whose terror else had driven thee far away. O thou that stridest upon the middle of The Path, no phantoms mock thee. For the stride's sake thou stridest. Thus art thou lured along That Path, whose fascina- tion else had driven thee far away. O thou that drawest toward the End of The Path, effort is no more. Faster and faster dos thou fall; thy weariness is changed into Ineffable Rest. For there is not Thou upon That Path: thou hast become The Way."
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@Bereshith said
"To me, you seem to weave your words together in such a way that basically attempts to restrict others from participating in, or even experimenting with, ritual's power to help them discover their True Will unless they *a priori *agree with you that it's all just bullshit anyway."
As I just explained, it's not "restriction" to encourage people to ask themselves critical questions about their practice.
For example, I suppose that you think ritual has "power" to "help [people] discover their True Will." So -- since this thread is about discovering the True Will -- how about you tell us exactly why you think that ritual actually does do this?
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@Los said
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@Bereshith said
"To me, you seem to weave your words together in such a way that basically attempts to restrict others from participating in, or even experimenting with, ritual's power to help them discover their True Will unless they *a priori *agree with you that it's all just bullshit anyway."As I just explained, it's not "restriction" to encourage people to ask themselves critical questions about their practice.
For example, I suppose that you think ritual has "power" to "help [people] discover their True Will." So -- since this thread is about discovering the True Will -- how about you tell us exactly why you think that ritual actually does do this?"
In my experience, such intentional symbolic actions consciously stimulate and precisely focus an internal dialogue that carries on beyond the act of the ritual itself.
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@Bereshith said
"In my experience, such intentional symbolic actions consciously stimulate and precisely focus an internal dialogue that carries on beyond the act of the ritual itself."
Ok, and they may well do this, depending on what you mean. If you mean that the ritual summons up certain kinds of thoughts that stay with you during the day and encourage you to think about them, I'd agree that rituals do that. Of course, lots of activities have that result. For example, watching an episode of Breaking Bad also "stimulates" and "focus[es]" an inner dialogue, and it usually stays with the viewer long after the episode is over.
And that brings me to my point: just because something "stimulates" an "inner dialogue" doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the True Will or brings a person any closer to discovering the True Will. So what, precisely, do you think this "inner dialogue" has to do with the True Will and how does it enable you to uncover that Will?
The more specific your answer, the better (especially for you, since answering these questions is primarily going to help you do the work).
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@Los said
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The more specific your answer, the better (especially for you, since answering these questions is primarily going to help you do the work)."
actually, the more you go about searching for this answers intellectually, the more you are mentally masturbating, and it will not help you to DO the work. the thing that does help to do the work is - doing the work, not thinking incessantly about doing it 
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@danica said
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@Los said
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The more specific your answer, the better (especially for you, since answering these questions is primarily going to help you do the work)." actually, the more you go about searching for this answers intellectually, the more you are mentally masturbating, and it will not help you to DO the work. the thing that does help to do the work is - doing the work, not thinking incessantly about doing it "While the actual work itself requires the individual to turn off the mind (temporarily) in order to observe the True Will apart from the distorting influences of the mind, one needs to have a very clear grasp on exactly what one is trying to do and how to do it in the first place (along with the criteria for judging success). Otherwise, one won't know what to do, what to look for, and one won't know how to tell that the work has been a success.
What you're suggesting is that not knowing what you're doing is actually beneficial. I can't think of an approach more backwards or counterproductive. While I'm sure this egalitarian approach is very appealing to people who don't know anything about the subject -- since the approach implies that they don't have to learn anything, and it actually puts them on a higher level than people who actually do know something about the subject -- I dispute that it's true.
Imagine if we taught any other subject by discouraging people from learning about how to do it. What if we trained new and upcoming engineers by telling them to stop "mentally masturbating" and just start building bridges already! Enouraging people not to think too hard about their chosen subject of study is just a bad idea, regardless of the subject.
And -- just to be clear -- I'm criticizing ideas, not attacking any individual.
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@Los said
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@danica said
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@Los said
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The more specific your answer, the better (especially for you, since answering these questions is primarily going to help you do the work)." actually, the more you go about searching for this answers intellectually, the more you are mentally masturbating, and it will not help you to DO the work. the thing that does help to do the work is - doing the work, not thinking incessantly about doing it "... the actual work itself requires the individual to turn off the mind (temporarily) in order to observe the True Will apart from the distorting influences of the mind.."
no, not necessarily turn it of, but simply don't allow it to lead.
just being there and observing is fine enough task for the mind in mystical and magickal practices.@Los said
"What you're suggesting is that not knowing what you're doing is actually beneficial. "
I'm not suggesting that. I simply say that there's a difference between knowing and doing, and you can substantially enhance your knowing by engaging in the doing, while by thinking alone you can get only - a thought-result. (it's not a good or bad thing per se, but it's partial regarding the whole of the nature of human being)
@Los said
"And -- just to be clear -- I'm criticizing ideas, not attacking any individual."
yes, yes, I gathered that much -
@Los said
"One needs to have a very clear grasp on exactly what one is trying to do and how to do it in the first place (along with the criteria for judging success). Otherwise, one won't know what to do, what to look for, and one won't know how to tell that the work has been a success.
What you're suggesting is that not knowing what you're doing is actually beneficial. I can't think of an approach more backwards or counterproductive. While I'm sure this egalitarian approach is very appealing to people who don't know anything about the subject -- since the approach implies that they don't have to learn anything, and it actually puts them on a higher level than people who actually do know something about the subject -- I dispute that it's true.
Imagine if we taught any other subject by discouraging people from learning about how to do it. What if we trained new and upcoming engineers by telling them to stop "mentally masturbating" and just start building bridges already! Enouraging people not to think too hard about their chosen subject of study is just a bad idea, regardless of the subject.
And -- just to be clear -- I'm criticizing ideas, not attacking any individual."
The real point is whether you're using your intellect as a tool to engage in more, better experiments with your life; or whether your molding your experiments and analysis to serve your intellect.
If you don't start with an unknown, it's not learning.
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@danica said
" I simply say that there's a difference between knowing and doing, and you can substantially enhance your knowing by engaging in the doing, while by thinking alone you can get only - a thought-result. (it's not a good or bad thing per se, but it's partial regarding the whole of the nature of human being)"
Well, obviously I agree with this. I'm not arguing that one should just think about doing the work and nothing more. The work involves...wait for it...actually working.
But some of those "thought-results," as you put it, are incredibly useful for doing the work. You would agree, I assume, that it can only help one do the work to know what one is trying to do and how to accomplish these goals, right?
The point I'm trying to get at with Bereshith is that I strongly suspect that these rituals do close to nothing to enable a person to discover the True Will. That being the case, getting him to address these questions will bring the issue out into the open: if these rituals actually do work, then he should be able to explain simply and directly why he thinks so, and we can all evaluate his evidence and reasoning process and conclude how correct he is.
However, if these rituals don't actually work...don't you think it would be very useful to know this? And if they don't actually work, then either practitioners won't be able to explain why they think they work, or they will give incredibly vague, half-baked, and flawed reasons for thinking that they work.
Once more, I claim that it is useful to know these things, and in my experience, it's the people who aren't serious about the work who try to dismiss important questions like the ones I'm asking.