Function of Gratitude in Magick
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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.
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It was not I who was required to alter the wording of a statement in order to contradict it.
Your blind, irrational loathing of anything associated with Christianity is a constantly resurfacing weakness of mind that interferes with your intepretation of what I am saying.
If you desired to understand what I am actually saying, not only would you be able to do so, but you would have to admit that there is wisdom in the previous Aeon, indeed, even in Christianity, when it is not corrupted and force-fed by those who desire power over your mind.
God forbid that anyone should attempt to see all these things from above, where there seems nothing to choose between Buddha and Mohammed, between Atheism and Theism, Christianity and Thelema.
Indeed, tell me how such an attempt represents a lack of expansion.
Your blocked mind represents a lack of expansion.
This too is love.
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@Takamba said
"Legis, as far as I can see, you are the only one here among you and I using accusation. That enough speaks volumes of your ability to relate to me."
Well, honestly, I experienced you twist my words and then *accuse *me of saying something I have explicitly not said.
Then, I merely pointed to what, knowing my own words and meaning, I can only experience as your projection.
And then I experienced you *accuse *me of a "lack of expansion."Words, words, words...
In fact, I'm tired of them and their inherent lies, and I'm tired of people's reactions to their inherent lies, ..and I'll be done with them for a few days.
I've said my peace anyway.
For anyone else, I hope you maybe understood a piece of what I was trying to say.
But for you, Takamba, you accused me of preaching compassion to suffering humanity. Did I offer you compassion, or did I give you the kind of love you demanded? Did I speak to you as if you were weak or as if you could bear it?
I expressed myself freely, as you claim to desire. I expressed a severe love, which you seemed to prefer. I held back no punches and spoke to you from my own experience and perspective man to man.
And then you say, Behold the Beast!
Was that not what you were seeking from me? Was that not what you have claimed to prefer?
Takamba, no one is willing to suffer a double-minded accuser.
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@Legis said
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But for you, Takamba, you accused me of preaching compassion to suffering humanity. "I accused you not. el oh el (that means "god my god"). I quoted Crowley for you to read. That is all. All else that you've built upon this "theme" of me "accusing you of suffering humanity" is a phantasm of your own fearful thinking.
Rebuild everything else you "doubly" (el oh el) accuse me of.
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@Takamba said
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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."
There it is right there: "So yes, you said" - an accusation made on projection instead of fact. Your addition of words as well the unnecessary association of "suffering humanity" that you've unreflectively allowed Crowley to drive into your head became an unexamined projection and, through that, a false accusation.
It stands.
To the contrary, "suffering humanity" is only necessarily associated with "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" to the exact degree with which an individual would personally show themselves compassion. That is an integral part of the meditation, for the one who understands the pitfalls of compassion has no business "woulding" others to offer it to them. Or, if they "would" such compassion for themselves, let them perform it for others for a while, observe the results, and reconsider whether they really "would" it for themselves based on fact instead of principle.
Then again, compassion is the vice of kings.
What a mixed bag of words Crowley gave us. I believe they are given to ponder, not to parrot.
But beside the point of whether *I *was preaching "suffering humanity," ponder this (along with the supposed consistency with which Crowley spoke on such matters):
"Liber Porta Lucis*":2padhira]First, there are many and diverse conditions of life upon this earth. In all of these is some seed of sorrow. Who can escape from sickness and from old age and from death?
We are come to save our fellows from these things."Interesting, no? ..."to save" from the "sorrow" of "sickness," "old age," and "death."
Why? For love of others? For self-pleasure alone?
Or for what I actually am trying to describe, the combination of both that I understand as True Will?
And now, I *will *be silent for a while.
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The fact that you call it an accusation is taking it out of context. But good on you, have your way with yourself - but as a man who knows many a masochist, to tell them to do unto me as they would have me do unto them is silly. I'm not saying don't be who you are or be generous as you wish, but don't make it a rule for me to follow and be judged by.
Words. Good luck with Understanding.
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Takamba, you accused me of being nothing more than a troll, you accused me of "missing the mark," you accused me of saying things I didn't say... all because of your own projections on what I was actually saying.
If you don't want to be accused, don't accuse, for like attracts like, which is simply another, different application of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I have tried present the concept not as a moral standard, but rather as a reflection on True Will as* loving *action. But the distinction is refused.
The principle itself is so simple, yet so broad in its possible application, that the repeated parroting of Crowley's singular, limited, puerile interpretation of it disgusts me.
"Understanding" is inhibited by the making of differences, thus my goal in removing some of that illusion.
And with that response to the endless accusations from you, I will once again return to my intention to be silent. Indeed, there is no longer a point. Congratulations, you have derailed what you could not stand to hear.
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@Legis said
"I concede that "do unto others..." as a reflection upon past action may be too easily misused as a standard that may inhibit free action. However, in the end, this may be said to be true of any consideration of love whatsoever, in fact of* any reflective consideration on one's actions whatsoever. It may even be said of, "How was what I just did my True Will?" If such a thought is placed before *action, Will is hindered.
"If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought." -* Liber Legis*
But does this mean that there should never be any reflection upon one's actions as to how they may be said to have arisen from True Will?"
It means that the process of discovering the Will requires you to shift your attention away from these thoughts and onto your actual inclinations. The question "How was what I just did my True Will?" -- just like the question "Does this feel like love?" and all questions that you ask yourself whatsoever -- is a creation of the mind.
You can't find your True Will by paying attention to those thoughts because the True Will isn't a thought.
Just try shutting off these thoughts (or, rather, shifting your attention from them) and pay attention to what's underneath them. Focus on your inclinations, without trying to judge them or analyze them. That's your Will in this particular moment.
"And the Will to reflection should be no less hindered than the Will to action; indeed, reflection is action, the important thing is the Will to such action."
It may very well be your authentic inclination (i.e. True Will) to spend some time reflecting for a bit. But you can't discover that through the act of reflecting: you can only discover that by paying attention to your inclinations.
"However, the fact that Will is Love, I will not concede."
Will and Love -- again, using the way that they are defined by Thelema -- contain each other. Will is the direction of motion toward objects, while Love is the drive toward those objects inspired by them. You can't have one without the other.
But once again, "love" in Thelema doesn't mean the emotion, even if that emotion is involved some of the time in Thelemic Love.
If you don't believe me, read what Crowley says on the subject:
@Liber II said
" Lo, while in The Book of the Law is much of Love, there is no word of Sentimentality. Hate itself is almost like Love! “As brothers fight ye!”"
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93,
"Has anybody heard of the Law of Attraction movement? I went to a meeting and it reminded of this thread. Love is the Law (of attraction) in the universe. You can believe it or not but it still works just as you can disbelieve in gravity but that still works.
"I have, I also believe a myriad of books have been written on the subject and I also don't believe I would buy one......simply because they aren't uncovering anything new. I believe the most famous book is called 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne? I read half of it years ago after finding it in the library......she could have summed the whole thing up in the length of an essay, but that wouldn't have made money.
Donald Michael Kraig in his book 'Modern Magick' covers the same material in a sub-chapter I believe and also gives an example of putting it to good use via the use of affirmation and visualisation. Personally I believe for the law of attraction to work it must be in accordance with your true will, which you may or may not know. For example if it is my true will to remain wealthy enough to be comfortable, but not to be rich, then no matter how hard I try that lottery ticket isn't going to be a winner......
I have never linked it to love under will before- the union of yourself with your goal via visualisation and affirmation.....makes sense.
93, 93/93.
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The feeling of gratitude opens the heart. It's worth inducing forf practical reasons,