Function of Gratitude in Magick
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"And you were raised in a society where the ethic is to not murder. How do you know that ethics isn't responsible, and that you're not unconsciously repressing a murderous impulse?"
Certainly the influence of society shapes a person's preferences (what we call "True Will"), but I would characterize it as "my upbringing has left me without any desires to murder," not that my upbringing has forced me to repress my murderous desires (which, as far as I can tell, it hasn't because I don't have any such desires at all).
I wouldn't say that "ethics" has influenced my desires -- I would say that society has. There's a big difference.
To give you an example of the difference: if, tomorrow, the ethical belief that "murder is wrong" suddenly and magically vanished, we would still have laws against it. Why? Because (secular) laws aren't based on ethics or morality: they're based on societal health and creating the kind of society we want to live in. We all prefer to live in a society where murder doesn't happen...not because it's "wrong" but because we simply don't want that kind of society.
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@Legis said
"You say, "...any course of action is equally an act of Love -- an act of experiencing possibility..." That definition of love is so abstract and impractical that it is meaningless to me."
Well, in a sense, it is meaningless since any action could qualify as Love. It's Will that gives direction to Love. Hence, "love under will."
[By the same token, "Will" is meaningless without objects toward which to move...Love and Will are two sides of a single coin and complete one another]
"Reason defines love in a way that removes all sense of feeling from it."
In Thelema, "Love" doesn't refer to a feeling: it has a specific definition, the expansion of the individual into Nuit.So, to explain further, from the perspective of Thelema, everything that you do is an act of Love. Everything. Eating a ham sandwich, watching a ballgame, walking in the park, going to the bathroom, behaving like a jerk, feeding a baby, singing a song, cheating on your wife, getting into a streetfight, watching Breaking Bad, writing a short story, having a daydream, going to a party, moving to the mountains to become a hermit, shaving, scratching your balls, turning on a light, reading a book, etc., etc., etc.
Each of those things is an example of "Love," the way that word is defined in Thelema.
So if Love can be anything, what's the point?
The point is that Love is directed by Will ("love under will") -- your experiences are put under the control of your Will so that you choose acts of Love that are in line with your particular nature. Each act expands your Self further.
"Is "Do unto Nuit as you Would have her do unto you" so repugnant a standard through which to gain experience of love and learn from it even temporarily - under the Will of learning to love her?"
You're just way too in your head here. If you're distracting yourself with all this meaningless jibber-jabber, you're really not going to be able to perceive your Will in the moment. Just drop all of it. Stop thinking and just observe yourself.
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Albert Ellis posits three major insights of REBT:
*Insight 1 – People seeing and accepting the reality that their emotional disturbances at point C are only partially caused by the activating events or adversities at point A that precede C. Although A contributes to C, and although disturbed Cs (such as feelings of panic and depression) are much more likely to follow strong negative As (such as being assaulted or raped), than they are to follow weak As (such as being disliked by a stranger), the main or more direct cores of extreme and dysfunctional emotional disturbances (Cs) are people’s irrational beliefs — the "absolutistic" (inflexible) "musts" and their accompanying inferences and attributions that people strongly believe about the activating event.
Insight 2 – No matter how, when, and why people acquire self-defeating or irrational beliefs (i.e. beliefs that are the main cause of their dysfunctional emotional-behavioral consequences), if they are disturbed in the present, they tend to keep holding these irrational beliefs and continue upsetting themselves with these thoughts. They do so not because they held them in the past, but because they still actively hold them in the present (often unconsciously), while continuing to reaffirm their beliefs and act as if they are still valid. In their minds and hearts, the troubled people still follow the core "musturbatory" philosophies they adopted or invented long ago, or ones they recently accepted or constructed.
Insight 3 – No matter how well they have gained insights 1 and 2, insight alone rarely enables people to undo their emotional disturbances. They may feel better when they know, or think they know, how they became disturbed, because insights can feel useful and curative. But it is unlikely that people will actually get better and stay better unless they have and apply insight 3, which is that there is usually no way to get better and stay better except by continual work and practice in looking for and finding one’s core irrational beliefs; actively, energetically, and scientifically disputing them; replacing one’s absolute "musts" (rigid requirements about how things should be) with more flexible preferences; changing one's unhealthy feelings to healthy, self-helping emotions; and firmly acting against one’s dysfunctional fears and compulsions. Only by a combined cognitive, emotive, and behavioral, as well as a quite persistent and forceful attack on one's serious emotional problems, is one likely to significantly ameliorate or remove them, and keep them removed.*
It sounds like Thelema is just a fancy precursor to REBT.
Isn't there more than that? -
@Los said
" In Thelema, "Love" doesn't refer to a feeling: it has a specific definition, the expansion of the individual into Nuit."
If "Love" does not refer to a feeling at all, then Thelema has no business using the word, for it is a feeling word.
I reject your definition of Thelemic love as so overly rationalized as to exclude all sense of feeling from it.
Why all the love poetry provided for study then? Why Liber LXV?
@Los said
"So, to explain further, from the perspective of Thelema, everything that you do is an act of Love. Everything. Eating a ham sandwich, watching a ballgame, walking in the park, going to the bathroom, behaving like a jerk, feeding a baby, singing a song, cheating on your wife, getting into a streetfight, watching Breaking Bad, writing a short story, having a daydream, going to a party, moving to the mountains to become a hermit, shaving, scratching your balls, turning on a light, reading a book, etc., etc., etc.
Each of those things is an example of "Love," the way that word is defined in Thelema."
I notice that you use the word "love" here without any connection to *actually feeling *that love...
@Los said
"So if Love can be anything, what's the point?"
To be able to* actually experience the feeling of that love in the course of the interaction with the Other without self-condemnation or self-conflict. To turn the rational experience of Self interacting with Other into a loving, feeling experience *of Self interacting with Other.
And, here, you step into the "office" of my Will:
"Tell me more of your understanding of the Other (Nuit). Do you have difficulty experiencing the love of the Other? Describe a particular manifestation of this Other for which it is difficult for you to feel love. What symbols, characters, and archetypes do you associate with this particular manifestation of the Other? Tell me your dreams involving such characters, for in them your Will speaks as to its true desires and frustrations regarding such manifestations of the Other (Nuit)."
@Los said
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@Legis said
"Is "Do unto Nuit as you Would have her do unto you" so repugnant a standard through which to gain experience of love and learn from it even temporarily - under the Will of learning to love her?"You're just way too in your head here. If you're distracting yourself with all this meaningless jibber-jabber, you're really not going to be able to perceive your Will in the moment. Just drop all of it. Stop thinking and just observe yourself."
I'm "too in my head" as I say the proper understanding of Thelemic Love includes feelings in contradiction to your entirely abstract, unfeeling, and rational definition of Thelemic love? Interesting...
"Yes... Tell me about your relationship with your mother..."
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@Frater 639 said
"
It sounds like Thelema is just a fancy precursor to REBT. Isn't there more than that?"More like Jungian psychanalysis and his strain of psychological mysticism, in my opinion.
In answer to your question, there is no more to it than that if one works entirely on a materialistic psychological model of understanding magic, its theory, and its gods.
Work from a more monistic psychological perspective, where time, matter, and consciousness have the theoretical possibilities of actually interacting and affecting one another, and it becomes much, much more.
But, in my opinion, people may limit their experience as they Will.
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Checked the link.
Los, at some point, you must either confess to being Erwin or confess that your are his most faithful disciple. If you are Erwin, fine. If not... what do you think?
@Crowley said
"Therefore, must thou seek ever those Things which are to thee poisonous, and that in the highest Degree, and make them thine by Love. That which repels, that which disgusts, must thou assimilate in this Way of Wholeness."
"Great quote. Much like I described my "office" in the above post.
@Los (on Lasthal) said
"It’s in this context that Crowley advises that a student should learn to “love” those things that the student (consciously) hates – it is by means of learning to perceive things as they truly are (underneath the veil that subjective judgments cast over impressions) that one begins to interact with the universe as it actually is and to perceive one’s own will as it actually is.
"Yes, exactly! Yet at no point does "perceiving things as they truly are" contradict feeling love for them. Rather, actually feeling love for them is the goal of the suggested practice.
The idea here is that when see things as they really are, we automatically* feel *love for them.
On the other hand, believing one sees things as they are without automatically loving them indicates that projections still inhibit Manifestation's love for Itself as It Is.
How may I practice this* loving *without a method?
If I use a method for practicing this* love*, then I at least temporarily implement a standard.
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In all these words, you never present the understanding that* while all such acts of "union" may be rationally understood as cosmic, abstract "love," the point of such making such an abstraction in the first place is to connect the rational understanding *of all acts of union as being "love" to the *emotional experience of feeling *that love.
Your argument seems to run along the lines that any invocation of the* feeling *of love regarding Willful action necessarily invokes a corresponding, restrictive morality being imposed on Will.
While this may be a personal association of yours, developed through experiencing the love-demands of others, I am not suggesting any limiting morality whatsoever.
"How may what I have just done unto Nuit be considered love? Does it feel to me like love? In what situation might I want such an action performed toward me? What self-condemnation or self-contradiction prevents me personally from experiencing my action together with the feeling of love? Does that help me understand Nuit's love for me in all its forms when I am on the receiving end of the same action?"
When I meditate along those lines, that's how it comes out.
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93,
I'm sorry Los, I know the reason you posted the article was not to discuss reincartnation but I couldn't let this statement pass.
"Now, since reincarnation isn’t true."
Tell me where is your definitive proof reicartnation does not exist? And don't shoot back at me with the "Where's your proof reincartnation exists?" because I don't claim it does, I also don't claim it doesn't. It is merely one of many possibilities. Until we are all dead none of us will know for sure. You moan about everyone on this forum believing in things and talk about many like they're unscientific fools. I'm afraid what you made above was a reductionist statement and ignoring other factors and the inability to accept the possibilty that the data you have accumulated over the years may be false and that there may be another possibility is a very unscientific thing to do.
93, 93/93.
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While the conversation here has been intriguing, I am confused how this all pertains to "gratitude in magic" as per the OP.
Flora -
@floralfirebird said
"While the conversation here has been intriguing, I am confused how this all pertains to "gratitude in magic" as per the OP.
Flora"I know. It should totally have its own thread.
Alrah tried to point out a moral judgment in the conversation and made a comparison to a Christian ethic.
I pointed out the real Christian teaching on that ethic.
Los said it was a stupid ethic.
Conversation went to "standards."
Nobody complained - that's the key.And then, in a puff of smoke, the conversation was gone...
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@Legis said
"Your argument seems to run along the lines that any invocation of the* feeling *of love regarding Willful action necessarily invokes a corresponding, restrictive morality being imposed on Will."
I have no idea where you're getting this from or even what you're talking about, really. I don't think I've ever said that "any invocation of the feeling of love [...] invokes a corresponding, restrictive morality." To the extent that those words even make sense in that order, it's downright false.
You're criticizing me for discussing love as an "abstraction"...but we're talking on a messageboard. Everything we discuss on a messageboard is an abstraction. The term "Love" is an abstraction, but it doesn't refer to an abstraction: it refers to experience (any and all experience).
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@Legis said
"I was talking about any consideration of the feeling of love in terms of acting in accordance with one's Will."
This is still far too vague to be of any practical use.
True Will isn't a feeling in the sense of being an emotion. If you want a more substantial response, you'll have to be clearer about what you mean, probably with examples.