Magick as a test for thelema
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I can do no better than to appeal to the wisdom of George Carlin:
@George Carlin said
"So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don't pray to the sun. You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.
For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog, Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat.
So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself."
So no, in answer to your question, you can't use your supposed "successes" in magick to gauge whether or not you're getting closer to doing your True Will.
For one thing, it won't work. For another thing, that's precisely falling into the "pit of Because" spoken of in the Book (i.e. "I must be getting closer to doing my will because these coincidences I'm interpreting as successes are happening to me!")...it's paying attention to thoughts, instead of reality.
And for a final thing, that's not the way one discovers the True Will in Thelema.
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"All ordeals are either ordeals of perseverance, or ordeals of discrimination.
The thing is, we never know which.
If we did, it wouldn't be an ordeal" Jim Eshelman
I feel what i'm searching for here has something to do with this.
Jim... does what i quoted from you applies to all grades?
I mean, for instance, is an adept still supposed to deal with such questions?
Any tip on how to get better at this precise... ordeal?!
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@Horus Amin said
"your views feel often counter-intuitive to me and it's great."
They should. Merely wandering around and trusting how everything "subjectively feels" or what "intuitively seems true" is a great way to delude yourself and trap yourself in the prison of your mind.
On the most basic level, since Thelema postulates that pretty much all individuals pay attention to a false image of themselves instead of their Real Selves, paying attention to your self-image and the associated thoughts that build up that self-image (including your beliefs about how reality should work, how it "feels like" reality works, etc.) are leading entirely in the wrong direction.
Recall that many discoveries about the world are counter-intuitive (such as evolution and the earth going around the sun). Simply trusting what it seems is going on is the fastest path to delusion. Our investigations of the world attempt to remove subjective bias from perception as much as possible, and our investigations in our own True Natures should be no less objective. That's the "method of science," by the way.
I'll frame this another way: if you think you're discovering things about your True Self, but you don't feel challenged or don't feel like your "intuitive beliefs" about yourself or reality are running up against cold hard facts that you don't necessarily care for -- it's overwhelmingly likely that you're not doing it right.
"How would you suggest paying attention to "reality" then? Any tips?"
It starts by training up your ability to pay attention. Quiet meditation is a great place to start with this. Just shutting up your thoughts and paying attention to what's out there around you for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Do that as often as you feel. Notice any thoughts that arise, but then put them aside and keep concentrating on the present moment.
Expand this attention into your everyday life, into "mindfulness." Walk down the street mindfully, paying attention to every little detail: the collar on that dog, the way the bag in the corner trash can blows in the wind, the way the sun peeks through the trees. Notice as much as you possibly can, and try to keep your attention focused on the real world, on actual things outside of your head. Notice thoughts, but put them aside, and keep concentrating on stuff that's real.
Eventually, you start to turn this mindfulness onto the contents of your mind. Watch your thoughts: the opinions, the conjectures, the beliefs, the imaginations, the emotions, and other things that your mind overlays on top of the world outside of you.
Learn to differentiate them. It's not that, for example, "I'm so mad at this mofo!" It's, "I am experiencing a feeling of anger at this guy." Or, it's not, "Man, this guy is an idiot." It's, "I am having a thought that this guy is an idiot."
You don't consciously articulate it to yourself that way all the time, of course, but you're aware of these thoughts and emotions and opinions as something external to "you." There's no need to act on them, if you don't want to.
Once you've laid all of that groundwork -- and that's going to take some time -- you can start evaluating your actual reactions to things in your life and start to figure things out about your Self. Remember, at this stage, you're observing your Self and its reactions to things, which is "beneath" (for lack of a better word) all that mental stuff that you learned to observe earlier.
To put it another way, your True Self is part of the world outside of your head, too. It definitely feels like contact with some "Other" (even though your True Self isn't a separate being). This is because the process of self-discovery is a painful one in that it involves stripping away comfortable illusions about yourself. If all you ever "discover" are things you like or things you've always thought about yourself, then you aren't discovering anything at all: you're just validating your usual mental delusions.
Success in this practice is marked by real, detectable change in your everyday life.
So, for example, you may have always told yourself that you love your partner, but after doing this exercise, you'll discover that you actually can't stand being around said partner. Or, alternatively, you may have told yourself that you hate so-and-so, but really you have an authentic desire to be with that person, despite the fact that it goes against everything you've ever believed about yourself. Or you may have always told yourself that you enjoy ____ because cool people do it, but once you peel back the layers of thought you've covered it with, you discover that you don't actually like it.
You start forming tentative conclusions about what your Self actually does and does not prefer, and you start to rearrange your life -- make real, practical, detectable changes to your real, everyday behavior -- so that your Self exercises its preferences and enjoys more fully.
At each step of the way, you constantly keep observing the Self and readjusting based on those observations. You never fully trust your mental formulation of what your True Will is: you just use that as a kind of handy guide, one that you have to keep double-checking against actual observation of your Will.
And that's it -- you just keep that up until you die.
It's a lot of work, but it's defintely do-able in the span of a few years, or maybe less if you apply yourself.
âGive Ear, give Ear attentively; the Will is not lost; though it be buried beneath a life-old Midden of Repressions, for it persisteth vital within thee" -- Aleister Crowley
"For until we become innocent, we are certain to try to judge our Will by some Canon of what seems ârightâ or âwrongâ; in other words, we are apt to criticise our Will from the outside *, whereas True Will should spring, a fountain of Light, from within, and flow unchecked, seething with Love, into the Ocean of Life." -- Aleister Crowley
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@Los said
"..."
Thanks a lot, it makes sense. I'm feeling like a beginner again in psychology.
If i had to sum up what i understood from what you said, i'd say i must do pratyahara on everything, in everyday life. Just thinking about this state of mind calms me down. I feel it strikes the "vacilations of my being" issue accurately, and i will certainly apply.
Could this mean i have entered the mercury sphere in yetzirah?
How can i know if the "obtain control of the foundations of my being" is done? I think that's the ordeal i understand the least. But maybe i have passed it. Because my faith is actually constant and strong. Also i had strong visions of the all, some forms of "dhyanic consciousness", that i manage to anchor in everyday life. My automatic consciousness is way different than in the past. It's mostly my thoughts and what i say that are still out of control, and thus mess up with my actions and will, which again point out the mercury ordeal as described by Crowley...
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@Horus Amin said
"Could this mean i have entered the mercury sphere in yetzirah?
"Trying to figure out what "sphere" you've "entered" is part of the imaginary contents of your mind. Let that go. Language like that is only ever useful when trying to communicate a specific point to someone else, and even then it has very limited applicability. It's certainly not "true" in any real sense. The "spheres" are entirely made up and imaginary. The Tree of Life is, at best, a system for classifying things and getting them straight in your mind.
"How can i know if the "obtain control of the foundations of my being" is done? I think that's the ordeal i understand the least. But maybe i have passed it."
And another thing. All this "ordeal" stuff is more mental fluff. There aren't "ordeals," in the sense that universe is going to test you or something like that.
All people have stuff that their minds tell them is difficult, and I suppose you could call them "ordeals" if you really wanted to communicate a specific point about it to someone else, but the whole thing is just in your head. Insisting on really thinking of them as "ordeals" is just going to distract you.
There's actually no such thing as "difficult circumstances" or "challenges" or "ordeals" or "bad things" out there in the real world: all of those things are value judgments that you project onto stuff.
"Because my faith is actually constant and strong."
Not sure what you mean by "faith," but if you're talking about just blindly trusting stuff, that's anathema to Thelema.
"Also i had strong visions of the all, some forms of "dhyanic consciousness", that i manage to anchor in everyday life. My automatic consciousness is way different than in the past."
Trances aren't the point: the point is what you actually do. True Will is action.
"It's mostly my thoughts and what i say that are still out of control, and thus mess up with my actions and will"
Can you give a specific, practical example of what you mean?
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@Los said
"
"Because my faith is actually constant and strong."
Not sure what you mean by "faith," but if you're talking about just blindly trusting stuff, that's anathema to Thelema.
"It's mostly my thoughts and what i say that are still out of control, and thus mess up with my actions and will"
Can you give a specific, practical example of what you mean?"
By faith, i mean that if i really want something, i can get it. Not 100% of course, but i know i can be very strong and successful in many fields.
The big issue is "what to do?!", "what do i want?!", "what to focus on?!"... i just dont know anymore(for a year or so).
My thoughts are beating each other up, every thought makes its contrary rise equally and i just dont know what to choose, everything feels the same. And no i'm not THAT depressed
But i could become so, soon, if i dont manage to deal with this seriously.By speech, basically is the same thing as thought, except i project it externally. Thus, when talking to someone, i rarely know anymore what do i want from the interaction. I can say a thing and the contrary in a minute, and it doesnt bother me in real time. It bothers me afterwards, when i think "damn, what a pointless interaction". So it's getting difficult socialy also. I'm losing interest in people and that's a sad thing. But how could it be otherwise if i dont have interest in my own thoughts in the first place?
Also there's some procrastination. Again because of those damn thoughts that eat each other up.
Maybe the most important help, i think, to start with, could be to find an anchor in the physical world that really motivates me to get better at, like when i had martial arts or psychology as a goal to succeed in. But i dont have any goal anymore except the great work. And yes i know the great work doesnt work this way... I'm just having trouble getting things working together and finding interest in it. I feel pretty lost and alone again. Not in the core of my being. That's why i said i may have obtain control of my "foundations". I cannot fall in melancholy anymore, for instance. But my personality is pretty fucked up.
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@Horus Amin said
"The big issue is "what to do?!", "what do i want?!", "what to focus on?!"... i just dont know anymore(for a year or so).
My thoughts are beating each other up, every thought makes its contrary rise equally and i just dont know what to choose, everything feels the same. And no i'm not THAT depressed
But i could become so, soon, if i dont manage to deal with this seriously."My sense, from reading this, is that you're looking for something to guide you a lot more consciously than the True Will actually does. It's in looking for that guide, or wanting that guide, that you're going wrong.
There's never going to be this splendid Aha! moment where you realize something like, "It's my will to become a licensed massage therapist and practice in Paris for four years!"
The True Will is found right here, right now. For example, right now, shut down your conscious thoughts and just pay attention to what it is that you authentically want to do now -- the real you, underneath your ideas about "who you are" or "where you are on the Tree of Life" or "what ordeal you're undergoing" or "what you should be doing next" etc.
You have to listen, and it takes time to get good at listening because what your Self wants may not be what your thoughts are telling you that you want. You have to listen.
And it's probably not going to be anything world shattering. Maybe you want a sandwich right now. So cool. That's your True Will right now. Get up and make a sandwich. Maybe after that you'll authentically desire to take a walk. Or watch something on Netflix. Or call someone you haven't spoken to in years. Or call someone you saw earlier today. I don't know what your Will is, and neither will you until you pay attention to it, underneath the layers of conscious thoughts and ideas about what you "should" be doing.
Maybe, if you keep this up, a pattern will emerge, and you'll find that your Will is driving you to do X, Y, or Z kind of work. Didn't you mention you're a therapist? So maybe your Will will drive you to start a private practice or try to work for some kind of agency. That would be okay. Or maybe your Will will just involve lots of little things, not doing anything grand in terms of "life goals" for a while but just meeting whatever comes your way for the time being. That's okay, too.
You can't try to make your Will "fit" anything in particular. It doesn't necessarily "have to" be anything.
Just listen. It's there.
"But i dont have any goal anymore except the great work. And yes i know the great work doesnt work this way... I'm just having trouble getting things working together and finding interest in it."
Right. The ultimate end of the Great Work is to give up doing the Great Work because you'll realize that the Great Work was unnecessary to begin with. So saying that all you want to do is the Great Work is indeed counter-productive.
Maybe this will help: True Will is what you do, not what you think about, not what you feel, not who you think you are. So pay attention to what your Self is telling you what it wants to do, and do it. It's in the go-ing that you accomplish the Will, not anything else.
Don't sit around wondering if you have "control of your foundations." I can't help but feel that all this occult lingo is an enormous obstacle for you. If I were in your position, I would do some mindfulness exercises to still the thoughts and then I would act on how I think I'm authentically feeling.
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Granted, Los, that all makes logical sense - and the mindfulness exercises are always a great idea for anyone, but why bother to write parts two and three of Liber ABA if part one was all that really worked? Why chase Enochian pathways also? Just gather your mind about you and use logic and common sense to determine what the current response to life should be? That's it? "The Great Work was unnecessary to begin with."
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@Los said
"....
If I were in your position, I would do some mindfulness exercises to still the thoughts and then I would act on how I think I'm authentically feeling."Thanks. I got it i'm wrong searching for "something" to "anchor" the great work. It may be the best way not to find it if there's such thing to find anyway.
I realise it's a bad habit i always had. Similar to fetichism or addiction mechanism. There's lust for results and mental masturbation about it.
It just feels so bad having nothing to get good at.
Well, maybe i could get good at not having to rely on being good at something for happiness. Even better, onto nothing external. That's such a weird idea for me, i'd rather have a beer with the roswell grey man at the local pub.Also, i feel contradiction with what i thought i had to do to be in the thelemic path. Thelema is what i trust most. That's what i value most. I'd trust the best thelemites before any one else. Crowley is the best man ever for me. When i read his "confessions", i was crying like a little girl watching a romantic drama. It never happened to me with anything else. I felt such a huge empathy and love for the beast. I just wanted to hug him and say thanks for all he's done and shared. Like he was my HGA or something. I know it's the right path. But i might have to forget my first impressions about how to make it my own path.
Because when i read it first, i thought the first thing i have to do is get very good at everything i do. I was like "ok, Crowley was the best in climbing and poetry, i must be the best in two fields also, and also in poetry to honor him". i know it's bullshit. That's watching the finger of Crowley instead of watching what he's pointing at with the finger.
I'm realising i never thought nor acted by myself, and even less by the self. That's like a tsunami coming my way.
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@Takamba said
"Just gather your mind about you and use logic and common sense to determine what the current response to life should be? That's it?"
The True Will isn't "logical" or "rational." There's no "reason" for the True Will to be what it is, so you can't think your way to it: you just have to observe it. [Hence, the curse on Because in the Book of the Law. If you're basing your actions on a path that you've reasoned must be a "good" one, then you're following a thought, not the Will]
It takes a lot of practice to get good at discovering and implementing the Will *
"why bother to write parts two and three of Liber ABA if part one was all that really worked? Why chase Enochian pathways also?"
Because, as Crowley explicitly said, mysticism and magick are two opposite ways to approach the same task. If mysticism stops thought to enable us to look past thought, magick excites thought so as to distract the mind and let us look past it.
See Liber Samekh, where Crowley explicitly states that the purpose of the ritual is to keep the magician physically, mentally, and astrally preoccupied so that he can look past all of it and concentrate on his "deepest Self."
See also the introduction to Magick in Theory and Practice (part 3 of Book 4), where Crowley says, point blank, " The sincere student will discover, behind the symbolic technicalities of this book, a practical method [...] to discriminate between what he actually is, and what he has fondly imagined himself to be."
In other words, the "symbolic technicalities" of ritual magick conceal practical approaches to Thelema.
Whether a student uses magick or mysticism or both, the end result is the same, and it needs to be practiced in daily life, in perceiving and course-correcting for the True Will in day to day matter, producing real practical changes.
If a student doesn't do that, then all the "work" is nothing more than entertainment.
""The Great Work was unnecessary to begin with.""
It takes quite a lot of work to realize how unnecessary it is.
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@Horus Amin said
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Meditating on my experiences with magick, something strikes me. My (stricly magick)power is not consistant, it vaciliates a lot. I had some very intense things happening, which i believe are way above my level. On the other hand, it happened to me to struggle with some basics for a very long time.
So, basically, my point is by observing when the magick is strong, according to context and goal(what the magick is applied onto), it can help a lot to get closer to the true will.
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Interesting observation. I certainly don't think that it applies in my case, because I have done similar spells for the same thing, where the first one did not work, and the second one did. So the reason it did not work must have been some other reason. Also I have done magick to effect change while at my lowest, and I felt that far from dragging me down further, it lifted me up and improved me.
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@Horus Amin said
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@Los said
"....
If I were in your position, I would do some mindfulness exercises to still the thoughts and then I would act on how I think I'm authentically feeling."Thanks. I got it i'm wrong searching for "something" to "anchor" the great work. It may be the best way not to find it if there's such thing to find anyway.
I realise it's a bad habit i always had. Similar to fetichism or addiction mechanism. There's lust for results and mental masturbation about it.
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Well, what I used to do was follow and do what some other person told me to do with my life, this was before I ever got into thelema. That ended in disaster, of course, but just because I no longer followed the course someone else set out for me, didn't mean I suddenly had all the answers. Later on I thought I figured out what I wanted to do, but like Crowley I had, and still to some extent, do not know the best way to go about doing it.
In fact doing this great thing has lead me away from joining the A.A or any thelemic organizations, but still I have my doubts that I am making the best decisions about doing the thing I have determined to do. -
@Horus Amin said
"Jim... does what i quoted from you applies to all grades?"
I think so, yes. (One hesitates ever making "no exceptions" statements, but it seems to me that this is so.)
"I mean, for instance, is an adept still supposed to deal with such questions?"
The cited binary still proves true. That is, when challenged, you need (for example) to decide whether the right course of action is to persist (test of perseverance) or to drop a particular path as untrue to your way (test of discrimination). And, as in earlier stages, there is no problem decided at all if you know, ahead of time, whether it's a "stick with it" or "drop it and get onto your own path" decision.
"Any tip on how to get better at this precise... ordeal?!"
The road to greater happiness is: good choices.
The road to good choices is: learn discrimination.
The road to learning discrimination is: bad choices.Therefore, make all the bad choices you can. They'll eventually set you on the right track.
PS - One of the surest signs of initiation is the development of an increasingly keen "truth sense." The closer one gets to the Angel, the louder and surer are one's inner promptings toward right choices. So the real key is: Just keep on keeping on, move through the grades, and be witness to the consequences of your wrong choices.
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@Shadow Self said
" Also I have done magick to effect change while at my lowest, and I felt that far from dragging me down further, it lifted me up and improved me."
Dont you think that's the act of magick and not the results of it that made you feel better?
It is conventional to oppose mysticism and magick, but i dont agree totally. Actually, magick is a form of yoga, for me.
For instance, when you perform LBRP, you unite with the elements, with light, and so on.
Also, reciprocaly, i'd say any mysticism is a form of magick, because it creates change within the practicioner.
I always feel magick make me feel better...
And, when i really want to achieve a precise goal, i tend to focus more on yoga than magick
I'll put myself in the most calm state possible, unite with the whole universe, and then just do what i have to do, without thinking about it... not doing spells or something.The best use of triangle of manifestation i found is to change myself, to work on alchemical transmutation, not to change external stuff.
But maybe i should try the more classic way.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
The road to greater happiness is: good choices.
The road to good choices is: learn discrimination.
The road to learning discrimination is: bad choices.Therefore, make all the bad choices you can. They'll eventually set you on the right track.
PS - One of the surest signs of initiation is the development of an increasingly keen "truth sense." The closer one gets to the Angel, the louder and surer are one's inner promptings toward right choices. So the real key is: Just keep on keeping on, move through the grades, and be witness to the consequences of your wrong choices."
Wow...Thanks. I read it like 20 times in a row and contemplated it. Way more subtle than it looks.
Combining this whith what Los said should work very well...
Actually, i already feel a significant difference.It gets clearer concerning what i really feel, and what i really witness. It's just so contradicting logic, my past plans, and what people expect from me, that it is difficult to accept. There are like clouds of thoughts-forms packed with libido that float around me telling me "no ! keep on feeding me ! you have no right letting me down". Well, i have. I think i'm done with them. I realise it's a feeling that was real both before and after initiation. It may be true and i may just have to listen to it, and see for myself the results.
It feels better this way.
I'm realising the external nature of thoughts right now, and how those fucking thought-forms and patterns really feel like vampires feeding on the will, energy, and freedom.
They will even disguise themselves as "initiation stuff" sometimes, but really, they are the same demons. When discrimination is applied on them, they go like "aaaaaaaaaaah"... they get hurt ! When the fake questions start to vanish, it is easier to actually feel and witness.
And then, next action will tell even better.
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@kasper81 said
"don't you slip-up there by quoting from Crowley who, evidently lacked self-awareness for most of his life?"
Kasper,
Los has been conducting himself with civility and respect for others. (Yes, he gets frustrated and exasperated at times like the rest of us. Still, he has kept his commit to approach his participation here graciously.)
There might have been a sardonic grin hidden in your post, a bit of a niggling the needle. Still, it seems advantageous to respond with civility more than sarcasm.
Just a thought.
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@kasper81 said
"don't you slip-up there by quoting from Crowley who, evidently lacked self-awareness for most of his life?"
The implication here is that you think I am of the opinion that Crowley "lacked self-awareness."
I'm not really following you. If I had to guess, I would predict that your implicit argument is something like, "Well, Crowley believed in goblins, and Los thinks that anyone who believes in goblins lacks self-awareness, so Los must think that Crowley lacked self-awareness!"
There are a number of things wrong with that argument, beginning with the fact that I don't think goblin-believers "lack self-awareness" necessarily: I think they are very wrong about at least one of their ideas about the universe (and likely many other ideas), and I think that their false ideas very often hinder them from discovering or fully expressing their True Wills.
But more important, I think it's an open question how much Crowley actually "believed" in this supernatural stuff. To give you a for instance, he's on record as explicitly saying that it doesn't matter whether past life memories are nothing more than fantasies because there is value in fiction (like Aesop's fables, he points out). So he "believes" in reincarnation not in the sense that he thinks it's factually true but in the sense that "Sure this may not be true, but what they hey, I'll accept it because there can be value in fictions."
That's not what most people mean when they say they believe a claim.
I consider it a real possibility that Crowley did not "believe" in many of these supernatural claims in the way that other people do and that Crowley was much more skeptical than many people assume.
But even discounting that and assuming that Crowley just blindly and stupidly accepted all manner of claims for which no one -- not even he -- had sufficient evidence...we still have no way of knowing whether or not Crowley discovered or was following his True Will.
It's both unknowable to us and irrelevant to us.
What we have is Crowley's system, and from that system we can draw sound conclusions about what a True Will is, how one goes about discovering a True Will, and the relationship of that system to skepticism. These points are not affected in the least by Crowley's personal beliefs about the supernatural or the degree to which Crowley himself succeeded in practicing the system that he developed.
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Cool