Function of Gratitude in Magick
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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.
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@Los (on Lashtal) said
"In closing, let me add that it’s common in so-called “Thelemic” circles to find people yammering on and on about their precious feelings and being nice to others when the subject of “love” comes up, but we can now see that such reactions are, at best, misguided. “Love,” in the context of Thelema, is emphatically not a sentimental feeling or an injunction to be kind to others. In fact, in many situations, it is precisely the opposite: it is an injunction to rid oneself of the delusory ideas of “good” and “evil” that taint one’s ability to perceive and carry out the true will and to cease to restrict one’s experience by imposing arbitrary restrictions upon it."
In both links you presented, any reference to the feeling kind of love is always in reference to how it restricts Will or is subject to false value judgements of "good" or "evil."
@Los (on Lashtal) said
"So if all experience is love, and everything that happens to you is experience, then how is it possible not to love? Why even bother talking about love?"
Personally, I think it's too easy to simply discount feeling-love from the equation. If one chooses only the love of the experience one may generate for oneself (calling that Nuit) and leaves out the factor of actually feeling love for the things and people that are a part of that experience (also Nuit), then one chooses only partially to love Nuit.
In my opinion, one's will-power may only appropriately be understood as True Will when it finds its expression in an attempt to actively love Nuit, both in her experiences and in her people. Until then, in my opinion, it is only a partially understood Will.
Without some sense of* feeling*-love as a goal, this is impossible.
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@Legis said
"In both links you presented, any reference to the feeling kind of love is always in reference to how it restricts Will or is subject to false value judgements of "good" or "evil.""
Right, because in those instances I'm talking about "love" in the common, everyday, sentimental sense. That kind of "love" is distinct from what Thelema terms Love and Will, and blindly following that kind of love will indeed distract you from your True Will.
" If one chooses only the love of the experience one may generate for oneself (calling that Nuit) and leaves out the factor of actually feeling love for the things and people that are a part of that experience (also Nuit), then one chooses only partially to love Nuit."
I didn't say "leave out [...] feeling love for things and people," as if a person should never feel love for things and people. I said that those feelings should not guide action (according to Thelema, anyway)
Obviously, you're likely going to feel love for your family or pets or whatever, and those feelings are part of the totality, but you don't discover your Will by paying attention to those feelings, and you definitely don't discover your Will by paying attention to ideas like "loving your neighbor" or "being nice to all people" or "let's all have a group hug because Thelema's about Love! Hurray!"
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In support of Los on this point (cough, spit, ahem)
All this talk about "suffering humanity" is principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's own psychology to one's neighbor. The Golden Rule is silly. If Lord Alfred Douglas (for example) did to others what he would like them to do to him, many would resent his actions.
The development of the Adept is by Expansion - out to Nuit - in all directions equally. The small man has little experience, little capacity for either pain or pleasure. The bourgeois is a clod. I know better (at least) than to suppose that to torture him is either beneficial or amusing to myselfy.
This thesis concerning compassion is of the most palmary importance to the ethics of Thelema. It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business.
- Crowley's comment on Chapter I, Verse 31
...further...
But we of Thelema, like the artist, the true lover of Love, shameless and fearless, seeing God face to face alike in our own souls within and in all Nature without, though we use, as the bourgeois does, the word Love, we hold not the word "too often profaned for us to profane it"; it burns inviolate in its sanctuary, being reborn immaculate with every breath of life. But by "Love" we mean a thing which the eye of the bourgeois hath not seen, nor his ear heard; neither hath his heart conceived it.
= Crowley's comment on Chapter I, Verse 52.
Further, my own comment on the word "bourgeois." It means not today what it meant when Crowley wrote of it. In his time, and in the movement of Marx, it meant the "middle class." Your average business owner, middle management education level person (me and, I am assuming, most of you) are this class.
Take that what you think it means.
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"I said that those feelings should not guide action (according to Thelema, anyway) "
I would say those feelings (as they are in the process of being perfected) should not* limit *any action.
I would also say those feelings (as they are in the process of being perfected) should motivate every action.
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@Legis said
"Takamba, I said nothing of suffering humanity.
To hell with them all. I will master this love."
"Do unto others (for their sake) as you would have them do unto you" is "Suffering humanity." So yes, you said. And I was only quoting Crowley in his most human examination of the Liber Legis.