True Will
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93!
As for my 93rd post on this forum, I'd like to quote uncle Al himself:
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"Well, we go and ask Big Lion; and Big Lion says: 'Do what thou wilt.' 'But, yes,' we say, 'what is that?' He replies rudely, 'Find out.' We ask how to find out; and he says, 'How do you know what is the good of a motor-car?' Well, we think a bit; and then we tell him that we find out the use of a motor-car by examining it, looking at its various parts, comparing it and them with similar machines whose use we already know, such as the bullock wagon and the steam engine. We make up our minds that an automobile is constructed in order to travel along the high road. 'Very good.' says Big Lion, 'go up top. Examine yourself, your faculties and tendencies, the trend of your mind, and the aspirations of your soul. Allow me to assure you that you will find this investigation leaves you very little time to wonder what in the devil to do with yourself.' 'Thank you very much,' we say, 'but suppose our judgment is wrong, suppose that what we have decided is as automobile intended to go, is in reality a coffin intended to contain a corpse?' 'Quite so,' says Big Lion, 'you have to test your judgment; and you don't do that by asking the opinion of people who are probably more ignorant than yourself; you get into the beastly thing and press the proper button, and if it goes it's an automobile, and you've made no mistake. Didn't you read what it says in the Book of the Law: "Success is your proof?" And allow me again to assure you that when you've got yourself going, doing your True Will, you won't find you have any time to get bored.'"
"- Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend
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Great quote, thanks! The analagy of the car brings to mind another question. You can examine a group of cars on the dealer lot and pick a Toyota over the BMW, but either one would work for you equally well. Is there more than one true will for a person? Maybe any number of things could be the person's true will if chosen and worked on, thus MAKING it your true will. It would still have to be in the right catagory though, ie, a car, and not a coffin. Just an idea. Or, is there ONE true will for you, and if you don't find it, you fail? Or one final POV: Anything you do in your life is your true will because that's what you will to do! I don';t knwo what is right, only trying to stir a conversation.
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@DavidH said
"Is there more than one true will for a person? Maybe any number of things could be the person's true will if chosen and worked on, thus MAKING it your true will."
Crowley would say that will must be single - and, agreeing with him, I would say not to confuse diverse things you do with the single motive behind them.
BTW, as long as I've jumped in on this, I'll go ahead and mention that extensive training and application in answering your question is given in the Portal Degree of Temple of Thelema.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"BTW, as long as I've jumped in on this, I'll go ahead and mention that extensive training and application in answering your question is given in the Portal Degree of Temple of Thelema."
Thanks Jim, that's all I need to know! Even more reason to get into gear!
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I guess part of the confusion here is that it's very easy to confuse "will" with "career," but those are two separate entities, aren't they? They may coincide and they may not. Or am I way off base and "will" almost always indicates "career?"
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@Tikun Olam said
"I guess part of the confusion here is that it's very easy to confuse "will" with "career," but those are two separate entities, aren't they? They may coincide and they may not. Or am I way off base and "will" almost always indicates "career?""
It would be an oversimplification to regard True Will as necessarily being one's occupation.
One ideal says that one's employment should be what one loves most - that for which one is best suited. I certianly can't argue with that, and mostly agree with it.
But it doesn't always work that way. And, while I wouldn't impose this standard on anyone else, I have found myself feeling, over the years, that "a gift isn't something you're paid for."
One's well-suited occupation is often called one's "mundane will" in contrast to one's True Will. The former may, of course, be an expression of the latter - and may even embody it fully.
Aleister Crowley's mundane occupation was poet. He trained for it, and practiced it his whole life. His True Will, though, was "To teach the Next Step." Did his poetry serve him in this? Yes! But he wasn't ultimately known primarily as a poet.
Phyllis Seckler's True Will centered around teaching, and her main career was as an English and art teacher in the public school system. She got to express her teaching drive, but it was another kind of teaching in which she expressed her real gift to the world. She was also a producing painter, but that isn't the same as being an art teacher.
My living is not earned by doing what is the core of my True Will. On the other hand, that core does find expression, every day, in my occupation just as it does in most other things I do. I've intentionally set up those things into which I pour the most energy and devotion - the heart of my Work - as things for which I don't get paid. They are all mitzvoth.
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93, Everyone,
Interesting thread. However, I've always had the impression that consideration of one's True Will was premature until an individual has at least had some conscious contact with one's HGA.
So my line of inquiry is this:
Is it relevant to consider one's True Will before such conscious contact with one's HGA?
If so, to what end?
Also:
Wouldn't a person's conception of their True Will be likely to change significantly once such conscious contact occurs?
Wouldn't that conception continue to alter up to, and during, the actual event (or series of events) when Knowledge and Conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel occurs?
To me, until further information on the subject is made available, I would think that the closest one could get to any conception of one's True Will before any of the above occurs is some conception of one's true will. What I mean is that one would be doing 'what's best' for one's 'self' and one's 'universe' in an 'uninitiated', or possibly 'mundane' sense.
Maybe I'm just being perverse, but I really haven't understood all this and haven't felt that I would for quite a while.
Oh well. I'm starting to get hopelssly muddled here! Words!
(Now, now Fr. Zo, words are magick--I hear from the Holy Peanut Gallery--ok, I'll proceed)
I have simply felt that I would just keep my mouth shut about any sort of True Will, hold myself to some pretty rigorous (sp?) goals in my personal, professional, and spiritual lives, cut out as best I can all the self-defeating B$%&Sh*t I can identify, and just smile politely when I hear (for the thousandth time) someone say, 'It is my (True) Will to do this or that'.
Isn't that the best course of action?
You know, do the best you can, couple that with experimental method, and, respect others and their endeavors. Then, just maybe, your HGA can exclaim, 'Finally I might be able to get a word in edgewise!'
(as Steely Dan's Do It Again floats through the room)
So, anyone care to comment?
BTW, I love you guys!
93 93/93,
Frater Zo Telegraphema
Via Est Hodie
Crouched here on Samekh sniffing the dust on my fingers and checking the wind. A stranger in a strange land. -
As I understand it, the direction of one's life doesn't have to change, and if one has been relatively loose and comfortable with one's life up to the point of the K&C, then it just opens up for more; a farther perspective of the road one already walks. The individual was, after all, made to do its true Will, right?
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@Zo Telegraphema said
"Is it relevant to consider one's True Will before such conscious contact with one's HGA?"
Yes. Absolutely.
In fact, the stage of conscius understanding of and articulation of one's True Will commonly comes way before the Knowledge & Conversation of the HGA.
In fact, for some people, the most effectivemeans of invoking the K&C of the HGA is the persistent doing of one's True Will, whatever that may be. OTOH, there are some people who never have a handle on the True Will until after the K&C of the HGA - but it need not be that way at all (and, I think, most naturally isn't that way at all).
Zo, it's a very common misconception to confuse the Discovery of the True Will with the K&C of the HGA. I'm not clear where the idea arose, but it's an idea that is fairly widespread. I'm delighted to have any hand in dispersing it.
One of the few places that Crowley makes any mention at all of these two phenomena and their relationship is in The Heart of the Master. In the section titled "The Mystery of Sin," he wrote (or, in this case, channelled):
"Now did I understand that all men live in sin, being baulked of their True Will, that is, of the free function of their essential nature. This restriction cometh much from their ignorance of what their True Will is, and much from external hindrance, but most of all from the interference of ill-controlled parts of their own instruments, the body and mind. For Freedom is not found in looseness and lack of governance, but in the right ruling of each individual of the common weal so as to assure his own well-being no less than that of the whole. And this effect is to be won by perfect organization under the eye of an Intelligence adequate to comprehend the general and the particular need together. The Way of Perfection is thus twofold: first, the True Will must be consciously grasped by the Mind, and this Work is akin to that called the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Second, as it is written: “thou hast no right but to do thy will,” each particle of energy which the Instrument is able to develop must be directed to the doing of that Will, and this is one fierce lion in the way, that until the second task be already far advanced, the confusion of the instrument is such that it is wholly incapable to accomplish the first."
I have added emphasis (bolding) above. The word "akin" doesn't mean that they are the same but, rather, that they are dufferent but related or analogous. In the last sentence, "the second task" refers not to the K&C but to the doing of the True Will: He is remarking that until one is already well advanced in the doing of the True Will, the internal "confusion of the instrument" seems to preclude the conscious grasping of what that Will might be.
In the injunction "Know & Do Thy True Will," paradoxically doing (in some significant measure) usually will precede knowing. If "Do what thou wilt" is the whole of the Law, then we can say: "Do" is the first word of the Law.
"Wouldn't a person's conception of their True Will be likely to change significantly once such conscious contact occurs?"
It may. This depends on how squarely on track they were before that.
"Wouldn't that conception continue to alter up to, and during, the actual event (or series of events) when Knowledge and Conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel occurs?"
Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on whether they clearly understood and comprehended this prior.
However - of course! - the K&C will at least add some sort of patina to the understanding.
"To me, until further information on the subject is made available, I would think that the closest one could get to any conception of one's True Will before any of the above occurs is some conception of one's true will. What I mean is that one would be doing 'what's best' for one's 'self' and one's 'universe' in an 'uninitiated', or possibly 'mundane' sense."
I applaud the fact that you are speaking from your best understanding, and willing to have that understanding change and grow - i.e., you are enacting the same formula, with regard to the present question, that you are asserting is true for the Discovery of the True Will.
But I assure you that the two stages are (or, at least, can be) quite distinct. I was gifted with a lucid articulation of my True Will on the final day of a magical retirement in April 1985 (when I was a 2=9) and the full K&C of the HGA eight years later after I had attained to 5=6.
Nor am I alone in this distinction. Every member of the Second Order of Temple of Thelema has attained to full, conscious understanding of their True Will. But the 5° of T.'.O.'.T.'., like the 5-6 Grade of the old G.D., shouldn't be confused at all with the 5=6 Grade of A.'.A.'. (to which it is akin and of which it is analagous
). Rather, this becomes the new platform from which they aspire to the K&C. I think I've never said this, at least in public, before, but I do think it is true: In Temple of Thelema, despite all the other techniques and methods Second Order members learn and employ, the primary technique for attaining to the K&C of the HGA is: Persist in Knowing and Doing your True Will!"Oh well. I'm starting to get hopelssly muddled here! Words! "
Yes. I do wonder if semantics is the real Dweller on the Threshold here. But, as usual, if semantics is the disease then passing deeper into it may be the cure.
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@Tikun Olam said
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@Malaclypse said
"up to the point of the K&C, "
Sorry. Bad with jargon here. (Newbie.) K&C?""Knowledge & Conversation." Short of "K&C of the HGA," i.e., "Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel."
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Riiight. Thanks.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Zo, it's a very common misconception to confuse the Discovery of the True Will with the K&C of the HGA. I'm not clear where the idea arose, but it's an idea that is fairly widespread. I'm delighted to have any hand in dispersing it."
I wonder if it's that part in Liber Samekh (scholion near the end) that says that the HGA is an "intelligible image" of one's True Will. That whole discussion always has seemed to imply such a deep connection to me: i.e., you don't Know one without Knowing the other.
But it's good to know that many people make substantial progress before the K&C!
Back to DavidH's initial question:
"How does one know when he's doing his true will? Is it simply an unmistakable feeling?"
It seems to me from this, and from some of the initial (valuable!) replies, that it's possible to question this too much - i.e., to "micro-manage" one's True Will. Is it the best use of one's time and effort to "test" every little action to see if it's in conformity with the True Will? I always have thought about the True Will as more related to a "top-level" life goal than to a moment-by-moment analysis. The moment-by-moment stuff comes more naturally if the big picture is clearer.
Saying "Will" before a meal seems to be one way of linking back to the big picture while still concentrating on the here and now.
I don't mean to imply that anyone here is doing anything wrong! While I think I'm on the path to knowing my True Will, I certainly am not there yet (and would have a tough time putting any of it into words). Take the above with a grain of earthy salt!
Steve
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@Steven Cranmer said
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Saying "Will" before a meal seems to be one way of linking back to the big picture while still concentrating on the here and now.
Steve"
You know, the more I do Will--ie, consciously 'fortify' myself, consciously state that I am doing so--eating--in order to support my accomplishment of the Great Work, etc.--the more I state this at Every Meal, I feel closer to finding my True Will, and this deep feeling of rightness about being on this path.
I agree with you, Steven, it does link the here and now with the big picture--thanks for bringing up that point.
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93, All,
Thanks guys!
Ok, I got the big picture on this now. Jim, I really appreciate you response. It
really is very close to what I had thought in the first place but couldn't articulate. In fact, I have been quite aware of the distinction between a growing congnizance of one's True Will and K&C of one's HGA. I believe it was you who helped clarify that several months ago in another threadI guess what had thrown me is what goes on before that crucial 'articulation' you described during your retirement as a, is that Zelator? (2=9 A.'.A.'.)
Now, I believe I get it. Please correct me if needed: There is no real clear starting point in grasping, or becoming aware of one's True Will. A person, especially one such as would be asking these sorts of questions is already on their way. The 'lucid articulation' of that True Will is, of course, not guaranteed. A lot of work still potentially needs to be done, but the paths are already under foot.
Or to put it another way: The ego is attracted to the solar system. The Child experiences birth. The Man or Woman experiences life.
To be perfectly frank: I'm still a godawful mess. However, the pendulum swing has slowed down quite a bit. I've noticed that when a pendulum slows, it starts to circle more widely for a while. Two distinct 'feelings' have started to manifest in the past several months. One, I really have started to feel as if I'm in a gestational period (a lot of planning and waiting, ie. deciding to go back to school and applying for financial aid, etc., a lot of simple meditation and such, but also several prolonged and unplanned bouts of just sleeping--and I mean for days--but without other symptoms of depression) and, two, my thinking patterns have started to change which has led to some surprise and puzzlement by people who have thought they know me (ie. changes in tactics at work and even my scrapping of certain plans wholesale that involve other people. It's almost as if I'm starting to respect people more by caring about them less! )
Things are slowly starting to become clearer. Especially recurring patterns in my life. It aint easy to change, but who the hell said it was!
93 93/93,
Fr Z. T.
Via Est Hodie -
Hi Andie, 93
@Andie said
"You know, the more I do Will--ie, consciously 'fortify' myself, consciously state that I am doing so--eating--in order to support my accomplishment of the Great Work, etc.--the more I state this at Every Meal, I feel closer to finding my True Will, and this deep feeling of rightness about being on this path."
What is this? Where can I find something to read more about it? This is yet another new thing to me.
93 93/93,
Donna -
Will, the Thelemic version of "grace" before meals, is found in a footnote in Book Four, Part III, Chapter XIII:
@Perdurab said
"In an Abbey of Thelema we "say Will" before a meal. The formula is as follows. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." "What is thy Will?" "It is my will to eat and drink." "To what end?" "That my body may be fortified thereby." "To what end?" "That I may accomplish the Great Work." "Love is the law, love under will." "Fall to!" This may be adapted as a monologue. One may also add the inquiry "What is the Great Work?" and answer appropriately, when it seems useful to specify the nature of the operation in progress at the time. The point is to seize every occasion of bringing every available force to bear upon the objective of the assault. It does not matter what the force is (by any standard of judgement) so long as it plays its proper part in securing the success of the general purpose. Thus, even laziness may be used to increase our indifference to interfering impulses, or envy to counteract carelessness. See "Liber 175," The Equinox I(7), p. 37 [and Appendix VII, p. 627]. This is especially true, since the forces are destroyed by the process. That is, one destroys a complex which in itself is "evil," and puts its elements to the one right use."
Rather than saying "fall to" at the end, my sweetie says "B'tay-avone" and I know that some people say "Bon Appétit," either of which I believe to be much prettier than the original.
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Hey, all!
This is slightly off topic, BUT, as this coversation sort of framed my day, I thought I should share. I'd like to recommend the movie The Lady in the Water. It's in theaters right now. Maybe it's just because I was reading this thread today, but when I watched the movie this evening, it struck me as being all about finding your true will.
Of course, I've been known to find meaning in very... odd places. -shrug-
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93 Andie,
Thanks! (Not only for citing it, but even including the full text!)
Using this as a reminder throughout the day is going to be a great help. To me, learning one's True Will seems to be a process of discovery (with a long learning curve for some of us!) But each step is an occasion for joy.
93 93/93,
Donna -
@Tikun Olam said
"Hey, all!
This is slightly off topic, BUT, as this coversation sort of framed my day, I thought I should share. I'd like to recommend the movie The Lady in the Water. It's in theaters right now. Maybe it's just because I was reading this thread today, but when I watched the movie this evening, it struck me as being all about finding your true will.
Of course, I've been known to find meaning in very... odd places. -shrug-"
My sweetie and I noticed the same True Will themes running through the film and it led to much discussion over Greek food after. I came out of it thinking that I would have done so, so much more with it! It was so close to being a good, no, great film, but it just fell short. I like the mythology aspect. The Sweetness said that "Shyamalan was too cowardly to truly pursue the questions of True Will which arose during that godawfully dull film."
snickers
Ok, that's enough. I'm afraid I'm going to give out spoilers if I type any more. However, it might be interesting if more people saw it and we started a new thread of discussion about the Thelemic themes within...with spoilers, of course.