Discovering the True Will through Enthusiasm
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I've been musing about those types of occasions where you notice that you are enjoying something that you might otherwise (without the enthusiasm) consider hard work.
Perhaps that's the location of the True Will, where there's enthusiasm to be active, mobile, doing stuff, despite obstacles - where you have joy in doing *difficult *things; the sense of conquering things, of victories, little and large.
"Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god." (Wikipedia)
Something carries you over the obstacles, a well or fount of energy.
People find their enthusiasm in various things of course, that's what makes the world go round.
But it's never something passive, consumerish, always active - it's the joy in work that Freud spoke of. And work means work, something difficult, something stretching, with resolution in victory or defeat.
So what are we to say of the countless millions of people who find no enthusiasm in their work? Sometimes it's a phase in a person's life, sometimes it's the sign of a deeper dis-ease, sometimes one's hand is forced by circumstances, and sometimes one is just simply lazy.
The thing is, are we to imagine that there's some divine conflux where all wills "click together"? It's more like this - everyone has a "basket" of things that they are pretty good at, and have some enthusiasm for. Few people have only one interest in life. So the idea is that, with a bit of luck, while one's primary preference might not be fulfilled, a secondary or tertiary might be, and that's still a win. We can learn and adapt. Likewise, there's a "basket" of various things that need to be done in the world, which also has a ranking (whether objective, as it sometimes is, or variously subjective, as it often is). For most healthy people, there will be a few points of intersection, or at least, there's highly likely to be.
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"So what are we to say of the countless millions of people who find no enthusiasm in their work? Sometimes it's a phase in a person's life, sometimes it's the sign of a deeper dis-ease, sometimes one's hand is forced by circumstances, and sometimes one is just simply lazy."
The first law of thermodynamics, and the concept of conservation of energy comes to mind.
I have a lot of energy, I am naturally enthusiastic.....I know how to recharge myself, and observe my cycles. I stay away from things that deplete me, and I know how push myself to stay strong, yet conserve and rest. I view myself like a rechargeable battery, in a way.With today's mind numbing tv, iPhones, video games, nutritionally depleted foods, polluted air, constant stress, dysfunctional families, addictions, prescriptions, blacktops, cowardly forest, the only wildlife are genius of rodents ect ect ect.....normal .people have the cards stacked against them, what should they get enthusiastic about??
When I try to share my happiness, my joy at a simple thing like hard work....people look at me like I'm nuts. When they see me swinging on the swings or climbing a tree or playing hopscotch......they don't get it.
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Is there a point to waking if we are not going to follow our dreams?
What is it that you do every day - without prompting ?
Never hesitating, all ways seeking?
Whose very doing fills one with ecstasy, a zest for living ? -
I was particularly wanting to make a distinction between pleasure *per se *and joy in work.
This is to get the distinction between intake and output, between consumption and creation. For most of us, it's easy to feel joy in consuming things (just being and enjoying life, a beautiful day, ice-cream), and that's one side of it (subject to error in terms of things like addiction, of course, but normally benign); the other side, though, the output side, is what we are befuddled into missing because of our consumerist society.
IOW, one doesn't want to have the image of the Thelemite as wafting through life enjoying its treats. S/he also has an active side, and it's important to recognize the True Will in the active, the creative, etc.
Also, there's a political side. It is widely agreed on many hands that there's a problem with our society, that it's eating up resources, that it turns us into mindless consumers. The reason why many people work hard at jobs they don't really enjoy, is because they are working to fulfil someone else's dream of making enough money so they don't have to work so hard at something they don't really enjoy. And the usual (and perfectly benign) method of making money is to make what others want - what they are willing to pay for and want to consume.
We are all slaves to each others' greed.
(There are practical reasons for the economic malaise - principally, the problem is collusion between central banks and their corporate fellow-travellers, and governments. The effect of their interaction is to constantly devalue money, thereby making it akin to an elastic ruler. This is done by working a vastly complex system of debt that's really nothing more than an elaborate, officially sanctioned, Ponzi Scheme. This system of debt becomes a sisyphean burden for everyman - who is always working to pay off that debt. The system only works by artificially inflating our wants so that we consume more crap, by means of incurring more debt, thereby using up resources for trivial, often artfully manufactured wants. But the political side is a large and complex issue.)
But there's a possibility of "purifying" this process. If people start to prefer to do only what they enjoy the challenge of, and ease out of the consumerist trance (if we stop stuffing ourselves greedily and living off credit, and become more careful about spending money, which is after all the reward for our hard work), then the free-market will be a mirror reflecting genuine wants (i.e. needs) serviced by happy, productive people.
The key to it all is, as Crowley pointed out, genius. To heal society, we want EVERYONE at the top of their game (nobody really has all the answers, but with *everyone *alert and fit and working on the problems ...). And genius *is *this afflatus, this filled-with-god-ness.
No power in the 'verse can stop me.
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I hear what you are saying, and I agree.
I find comfort in knowing that everything changes.
We are on the cusp of a new aeon and I believe that it will bring this idea (everyone at the top of their game) into fruition.In the previous aeons that idea was impossible to bear fruit.
An analogy used about culture is that it is a current, like a river. As time goes on and the matter which the current moves through changes, the course of the river can and will drastically change, sometimes leaping seemingly throughout the air to plod a course miles away from where the old river bed was.
The slave drivers will possibly end up like an ox-bow, or a swamp, an isolated body that can serve as a reminder.That's why I just keep my pom-pome, shaking, smiling, kicking up my heels as I work. Mary Poppins taught me to take a spoon full of sugar when work needs to be done....it's perks ya up at least.
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I certainly agree a big step Is to change focus from being a consumer to a creator.
The biggest, in my opinion, is building the confidence to create our own rules for living.
To cease allowing others to determine what has meaning, what is "real."
In a way, to embrace madness, as that is how it appears to a person caught up in "laws"
For, we all know there is only one : Do what thou wilt!
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The Concept of Flow discussed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi seems extremely relevant, and lest I be mistaken, the main point of the topic.
There is also a "documentary" [Examined Life] that touches on this.
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Yeah, I'm a big fan of his. It's very relevant to the topic. You can "make a game" of even the dullest work, and if you have to do dull work because of choices and circumstances forcing your hand (e.g. you've married and produced a rugrat that needs feeding NOW), that's one way of making it tolerable.
But better is to "make a game" of the whole of your life and try not to *accidentally *do things like getting married and producing rugrats
After all, you might not be a Man of Earth, you might be a Lover or a Hermit.
But if you are a Man (or Woman) of Earth, and nurturing rugrats is potentially part of your job description, then it should be done consciously and wholeheartedly, with devotion and inspiration carrying you through.
(Actually the natural inspiration having children gives is one of the main reasons why people do it, but if it's accidental and not willed, it's still problematic. You need to have had that inspiration beforehand, and have enthusiastically prepared the nest with a good job, a search for a good man/woman, etc., for it to be a genuine sign that that's your True Will. OTOH "love what you have" may also be a form of True Will. It's all about enthusiasm - which is indeed "flow". The True Will needn't be fixed, it may change and adapt, anything is possible - some things are just easier, and "flow" better, than others.)
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@gurugeorge said
"I've been musing about those types of occasions where you notice that you are enjoying something that you might otherwise (without the enthusiasm) consider hard work.
Perhaps that's the location of the True Will, where there's enthusiasm to be active, mobile, doing stuff, despite obstacles - where you have joy in doing *difficult *things; the sense of conquering things, of victories, little and large.
"Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god." (Wikipedia)
Something carries you over the obstacles, a well or fount of energy.
People find their enthusiasm in various things of course, that's what makes the world go round.
But it's never something passive, consumerish, always active - it's the joy in work that Freud spoke of. And work means work, something difficult, something stretching, with resolution in victory or defeat.
So what are we to say of the countless millions of people who find no enthusiasm in their work? Sometimes it's a phase in a person's life, sometimes it's the sign of a deeper dis-ease, sometimes one's hand is forced by circumstances, and sometimes one is just simply lazy.
The thing is, are we to imagine that there's some divine conflux where all wills "click together"? It's more like this - everyone has a "basket" of things that they are pretty good at, and have some enthusiasm for. Few people have only one interest in life. So the idea is that, with a bit of luck, while one's primary preference might not be fulfilled, a secondary or tertiary might be, and that's still a win. We can learn and adapt. Likewise, there's a "basket" of various things that need to be done in the world, which also has a ranking (whether objective, as it sometimes is, or variously subjective, as it often is). For most healthy people, there will be a few points of intersection, or at least, there's highly likely to be."
93,
You appear to be describing, fairly accurately, the concept of 'flow'. Take a look at it - there's quite a bit of literature on the subject.
93 93/93
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Louis Pasteur had a lot to say about enthusiasm. I had believed he wrote a whole book on it! But I can only find this quote:
""The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.""
What he's describing sounds real like K&C, didn't that strike you? He was an inflamed man! He had an insurmountable passion for science (and wine). Everyone who knew him would say he had an elemental and religious force flowing through him, certainly, an enthusiasm. His son-in-law had this to say:
"Absolute faith in God and in Eternity, and a conviction that the power for good given to us in this world will be continued beyond it, were feelings which pervaded his whole life; the virtues of the gospel had ever been present to him."
But Pasteur himself said he rejected Christianity. I dunno about you guys, but that all sounds a bit New Aeon to me? Anyway, I'm just saying: here's a man who explored the very depths of enthusiasm, who seems to have touched on a few secrets from that alone. I doubt I'll have Pasteur canonized as a gnostic saint! But I think it's definitely something worth exploring.
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@Laura Marx said
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""The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.""
"I only drop by occasionally to this website, and on checking this my old thread, I only just noticed this beatiful quote from Pasteur. Thanks Laura!
This is also a surreptitious bump of course
I'm still firmly of the opinion that enthusiasm, especially the kind and degree of enthusiasm that's able to push through and override things that one might consider tedious or difficult *without *enthusiasm, is an important key or marker if you're trying to puzzle out what the Hell your True Will is.It's so much a part of the New Aeon that it's even entered popular discourse with Campbell's famous "follow your bliss".
So, *so *important - and so effing beautifully and releasingly *simple *- yet like many really important things, hard to keep in focus as the mind swirls with everyday concerns and stresses.
(Just remembered Liber Tzaddi in this context: "23. Only if ye are sorrowful, or weary, or angry, or discomforted; then ye may know that ye have lost the golden thread, the thread wherewith I guide you to the heart of the groves of Eleusis.")
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Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god." (Wikipedia)
Something carries you over the obstacles, a well or fount of energy.
could not have said it better....
My gosh.....I'm exuberantly enthusiastic.....everything is done with alot of gust and postive energy the hard and easy things...im like happy happy all the time....positive, progressive and forward Happily optimistic...love warm all of it..
And the it is all because of that One....
This is important to me spiritually because it seems it does impact the outcome of many things, wins alot people, it can and does actively manipulate any environment...
And this must also coincide so closely to the true meaning of Genius, that is also attributed to also being divine....
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