Finding my True Will

[Los]

@Takamba said

" Remember, Crowley is the expert we are supposed to defer to in what is and what should never be, because he did in fact "invent Thelema." But also, "he may not have always been right.""

I don't think you grasp my arguments as well as you think you do. Your confusion on this point is addressed here: thelema-and-skepticism.blogspot.com/2013/01/gems-from-forums-crowley-and-his-system.html

[Los]

@Faus said

" Mistakes of emotional nature are deeply rooted in that primitive part of the mind that generate dreams, so they can be affected by imaginary and ritual manipulation. Personify the feeling and deal with it as if it was something external and independent.

After this, just keep the practice of watching and making corrections, and evaluate if the mind is more or less obedient."

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but in this case, the "discovery" of the True Will is still being accomplished by watching the Self in real time and "course correcting" in daily life. Ritual, in this case, is one of the tools that could, potentially, be a tool that the person finds useful as a preparation for the real work of observation.

[Los]

@Los said

"
@Takamba said
" Remember, Crowley is the expert we are supposed to defer to in what is and what should never be, because he did in fact "invent Thelema." But also, "he may not have always been right.""

I don't think you grasp my arguments as well as you think you do. Your confusion on this point is addressed here: thelema-and-skepticism.blogspot.com/2013/01/gems-from-forums-crowley-and-his-system.html"

Hmm, reading over my own post, I realize that it probably doesn't address the specific point you brought up: which is my claim that Crowley was not necessarily correct about the methods by which to discover the True Will. So, okay, I'll address that here.

Crowley invented Thelema, and we can derive a consistent definition of what the True Will is from his writings, one that accords with reality. Crowley proposed a number of potential methods by which individuals could discover this Will.

We today, however, would be totally foolish if we just blindly followed these methods without bothering to investigate how well they actually do work to discover the will. I think that Crowley's ceremonial methods are, as I've been arguing, largely ineffective at accomplishing their own stated goals. I base this on evidence, including evidence of personal experience, but also including evidence such as rationally evaluating the goals (ridding the mind of mental clutter) and the proposed techniques (cluttering the mind further, in many or most cases).

So it's not a contradiction or a "roundabout" or whatnot for me to appeal to Crowley as an authority on what Thelema actually is but to suggest that his proposed methods for reading a goal that he himself proposed weren't the most effective methods.

[Bereshith]

@Los said

"
@Bereshith said
"You claim that one's* experience *of the "preferences of the True Self," an experience literally generated in an altered state of consciousness, is equal to one's True Will."
Yes...I'm labelling an experience with the words "True Will.""

But how do you know it's really your True Will? I mean, it comes from an altered state of consciousness. How can you know you're not just deluding yourself or exciting experiences that just serve to cloud your reasoning?

I'm just giving you an experience of the unfairness of your own argument.

"I'm not in any way claiming that the experience demonstrates any claim about what's causing it."

Except the that what's causing it is the "True Self," not some false sense of self generated during an altered state of consciousness.

"I'm pointing out that there is an experience -- which anyone who practices meditation has experienced -- and I'm giving it a name."

That suggests incredibly important relevance to one's life.

"I further claim that that's the same thing that Crowley called "The True Self" (or the "HGA"), but that claim is supported by appeals to Crowley's wrtings, not the experience."

By selecting some descriptions over others.

@Los said

"
@Bereshith said
"That's experience being explanatory."
No, it's not. The experience, by itself, doesn't explain a thing."

Except everything that Crowley was talking about, even to the point of your suggestion that magic is no longer relevant.

[Takamba]

Los, it appears you get to be the sole authority on what claims Crowley made that are valid and which ones are not valid. As someone else pointed out to you before, you've rigged the argument so that you can't lose.

[Faust]

@Los said

"
@Faus said
" Mistakes of emotional nature are deeply rooted in that primitive part of the mind that generate dreams, so they can be affected by imaginary and ritual manipulation. Personify the feeling and deal with it as if it was something external and independent.

After this, just keep the practice of watching and making corrections, and evaluate if the mind is more or less obedient."

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but in this case, the "discovery" of the True Will is still being accomplished by watching the Self in real time and "course correcting" in daily life. Ritual, in this case, is one of the tools that could, potentially, be a tool that the person finds useful as a preparation for the real work of observation."

Is it this hard to say that we agree?
My experience is that it is a tool of huge power if well used and from the writings of Al it also was useful for him. At least they deserve a more careful look.

[Shadow Self]

I think one can appeal directly to the words in libre samekh

hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib800.html

Several lines sound contradictory to each other, most notably the idea of a god who dwells in the void place of spirit, or a god where there is no god. And how about a woman of whoredom who is also a virgin of both sexes? Logically these things cannot both be true. The result of saying something like that is to shut down the logic, or rather, to stop making sense so that one can shut down that part of the mind.

[Los]

@Bereshith said

"But how do you know it's really your True Will?"
I determine the best label to give it by reasoning about it, exactly as I've been saying to you.

Labelling is a rational process: the experience, by itself, doesn't do any labeling. Reason does the labeling by comparing and contrasting the experienced thing to other experienced things.

Let's use the process of labeling the thing in front of me a "computer" as an example. In the case of the computer, I experience this thing in front of me, but the experience doesn't explain what the thing is: my reason does, by comparing the thing in front of me to other things I've encountered. I've encountered similar things before, and I've (rationally) learned that "computer" is the label we put on that class of thing, so I now can reason about my experience and decide to (rationally) label the thing in front of me "computer."

It's exactly the same with "True Self." I experience it in meditation. When I stop meditating and start reasoning about what the experience was, I contrast the memory of it with my experience of other inner states (which I class as "mental phenomena," including thought, emotion, memory, imagination, etc.). I conclude that the inner state I experienced in meditation is something categorically different from the other ones, and since I know from my study of Thelemic texts that, in Thelema, we label the experience "beneath" these mental phenomena "The True Self," I decide (rationally) to label that experience an experience of "The True Self."

"I mean, it comes from an altered state of consciousness."
"It" (the label) doesn't at all "come from" the experience of it. The label comes from reasoning about the experience.

As I've been trying to get you to understand, experience has no explanatory power: only reason does.

[Takamba]

@Los said

"
@Bereshith said
"But how do you know it's really your True Will?"
I determine the best label to give it by reasoning about it, exactly as I've been saying to you.

Labelling is a rational process: the experience, by itself, doesn't do any labeling. Reason does the labeling by comparing and contrasting the experienced thing to other experienced things.

Let's use the process of labeling the thing in front of me a "computer" as an example. In the case of the computer, I experience this thing in front of me, but the experience doesn't explain what the thing is: my reason does, by comparing the thing in front of me to other things I've encountered. I've encountered similar things before, and I've (rationally) learned that "computer" is the label we put on that class of thing, so I now can reason about my experience and decide to (rationally) label the thing in front of me "computer."

It's exactly the same with "True Self." I experience it in meditation. When I stop meditating and start reasoning about what the experience was, I contrast the memory of it with my experience of other inner states (which I class as "mental phenomena," including thought, emotion, memory, imagination, etc.). I conclude that the inner state I experienced in meditation is something categorically different from the other ones, and since I know from my study of Thelemic texts that, in Thelema, we label the experience "beneath" these mental phenomena "The True Self," I decide (rationally) to label that experience an experience of "The True Self."

"I mean, it comes from an altered state of consciousness."
"It" (the label) doesn't at all "come from" the experience of it. The label comes from reasoning about the experience.

As I've been trying to get you to understand, experience has no explanatory power: only reason does."

haha. You're all so reasonable you've forgotten ART

The True Self (as you call it, I know no "Thelemic" doctrine about this in those words) seems only half present in your description.

Let's take the human computer. Reason alone is not all of it. It has a right hemisphere brain (so they say) and a left hemisphere brain (so they say). You only seem attentive to the left hemisphere. How can you be True if you are not whole?

HOLY LASHTAL BATMAN!

He's not on to anything.

[Los]

@Takamba said

"The True Self (as you call it, I know no "Thelemic" doctrine about this in those words)"

Really, now.

“The True Self is the meaning of the True Will: know Thyself through Thy Way!” – Heart of the Master

“I have never liked the term 'Higher Self'; True Self is more the idea.” – New Comment

“The Angel * the True Self of [the Adept’s] subconscious self, the hidden Life of his physical life." – Liber Samekh

“you must accept everything exactly as it is in itself, as one of the factors which go to make up your True Self.” – Duty

“all conscious Opposition to thy Will, whether in Ignorance, or by Obstinacy, or through Fear of others, may in the end endanger even thy true Self, and bring thy Star into Disaster.” – Liber Aleph

“the Aspirant must well understand that it is no paradox to say that the Annihilation of the Ego in the Abyss is the condition of emancipating the true Self” – New Comment

“The essential Attainment [of an 8=3] is the perfect annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self.” – One Star in Sight

“Spiritual experience soon enables the aspirant to assimilate these ideas, and he can enjoy life to the full, finding his True Self alike in the contemplation of every element of existence.” – New Comment

And the above quotes are just a handful of the ones I know, from memory by the way, that specifically use the term “True Self.” If we were to include the ones that strongly imply “True Self,” the number of Crowley quotes that discuss this idea is vast indeed. [For instance, from Little Essays: "[men] must begin to realise that Self is hidden behind, and independent of, the mental and material instrument in which they apprehend their Point-of-View.")

Are you seriously telling me that you’re unfamiliar with this kind of stuff?

[Los]

@Takamba said

"Let's take the human computer. Reason alone is not all of it."

Well, duh. There are all sorts of non-rational parts of the human, including...wait for it...the True Will (which isn't rational).

But the part that does the labeling and deciding what's what is the rational part. So when we're discussing a matter of procedural knowledge -- such as, for example, how to discover the True Will, which just happens to be the topic of this thread -- then the subject demands that we employ our reason to come to conclusions about how to do it.

That means we need to reach (rational) conclusions about how to label stuff and what to do to the labeled stuff to get the stuff we label as the result. The other alternative would be to randomly guess and hope we're right. I can tell you which option I prefer.

[Bereshith]

@ Los

But how can you know it's not just some false experience, Los?

How can you know?

How can you KNOW?

And that's all there is to your attack on ritual's use - your own doubt and mistrust - perpetually.

See...., doubt of the method can continue forever as long as there's someone to fear and mistrust the method. And what satisfies one individual will not satisfy another.

I'm afraid that it's oh-so-much more individual and subjective than you'd like.

Which is why I've not argued against your own method, but against your predjudicial attempt to exclude others, particularly the stuff that worked for me.

And you are arguing for the exclusion of magic. You've said as much - despite the other things you've also said.

[Simon Iff]

I can't understand how no one in this thread has yet asked this:

Los, would you kindly submit your definitions of True Will and True Self?

Thank you!

[Bereshith]

@Simon Iff said

"I can't understand how no one in this thread has yet asked this:

Los, would you kindly submit your definitions of True Will and True Self?

Thank you!"

Asked and answered thusly.

@Los said

"By the way, you can demonstrate to yourself right now that there's something to what I'm calling the "True Self": sit down and meditate for a few minutes a day, and "shut off" your mind. You will find that even though your thoughts are "off," there is still something that is aware and has preferences. That's what I'm calling the "True Self" (or "Khabs," if you will), and the goal is to manifest its preferences more and more, to get your mind out of its way.

Once the individual has improved the faculty of observation, one has to watch the mind and catch it making mistakes in real time. There's no one way to do this, but we're all familiar with having acted in a certain way on the basis of a mistaken impression of ourselves. It's that distance between the Self and one's idea of the Self. If you catch yourself doing this even once, you know what you're looking for. Whenever you catch yourself doing it, you pay attention to your will instead of the mistakes of your mind and you "course correct."

That's what "discovering the True Will" is, and you basically keep this up, getting better and better at it, until you die. And then that's it."

[Simon Iff]

@Bereshith said

"
@Simon Iff said
"I can't understand how no one in this thread has yet asked this:

Los, would you kindly submit your definitions of True Will and True Self?

Thank you!"

Asked and answered thusly.

@Los said

"By the way, you can demonstrate to yourself right now that there's something to what I'm calling the "True Self": sit down and meditate for a few minutes a day, and "shut off" your mind. You will find that even though your thoughts are "off," there is still something that is aware and has preferences. That's what I'm calling the "True Self" (or "Khabs," if you will), and the goal is to manifest its preferences more and more, to get your mind out of its way.

Once the individual has improved the faculty of observation, one has to watch the mind and catch it making mistakes in real time. There's no one way to do this, but we're all familiar with having acted in a certain way on the basis of a mistaken impression of ourselves. It's that distance between the Self and one's idea of the Self. If you catch yourself doing this even once, you know what you're looking for. Whenever you catch yourself doing it, you pay attention to your will instead of the mistakes of your mind and you "course correct."

That's what "discovering the True Will" is, and you basically keep this up, getting better and better at it, until you die. And then that's it."
"

That is not an answer to my question(s).

The above description is simply an experience that starts to happen shortly before one comes out of what I would term "attempted meditation" and nears a state of Dharana (what I would term "beginner meditation"). A lot more is to come after that. If that is the "True Self", many layers of even "Truer Selves" are going to pop up beneath that.

And the True Will is simply the reduced difference between consciousness and self image? Nice start, but - same as in the above meditation example - a start only imnsho.

Again, I want a clear definition. Without knowing exactly what we are talking about we don't need to talk at all.

[Bereshith]

@Los said

"Don't take this the wrong way, but what exactly makes you think that performing a ritual is going to enable you to gain insight into yourself, let alone enable you to discover your True Will?

Yes, I understand that you say the goal of the ritual is to "purify the personality and perceptions, prompting the Khabs to flow out" and yada yada yada, but what makes you think that performing a ritual will do this? The fact is that no amount of "ritual work" is going to get an individual even a jot closer to discovering his true will."

Stating personal opinion as fact... and in the context of the original new-poster's questions...

The rest maybe suffices for him, and I have no comment on it.

Hopefully checking out for the day.

[Faust]

@Simon Iff said

"
The above description is simply an experience that starts to happen shortly before one comes out of what I would term "attempted meditation" and nears a state of Dharana (what I would term "beginner meditation"). A lot more is to come after that. If that is the "True Self", many layers of even "Truer Selves" are going to pop up beneath that.

And the True Will is simply the reduced difference between consciousness and self image? Nice start, but - same as in the above meditation example - a start only imnsho."

That is the problem of using labels outside a particular intellectual structure, wrong labels, wrong conclusions and really nasty communication.

The experience of a “observing self” floating above the waves of the mind is quite distinct from experience of a “True Self”. Especially when attention is trained to perceive even more subtle streams of thoughts than can be easily mislabeled True Will if you are confusing the “observing self” with a “true self”.

But there is no problem in the end. Steady practice usually gives new experiences that break wrong conceptions.

[Jim Eshelman]

@kasper81 said

"Btw True Will is the action of our Real Selves isn't it?"

I have no problem with that. (I'd want to pick over and clarifty some iof the words like, say, "action," "real," and "self," but I get your basic meaning.)

I think the immediuate point of the question, though, was what one particular poster means by the term.

My own most concise definition is, "the vector of an infinite being." This, however, also requires a setup of distinguishing word meanings, and relies on points of view that some people on this thread would dismiss. The longer version of the same definition is, "the inmost nature of a being, expressed through its most fundamental course or movement through time, space, and experience."

A core idea in both cases is that being itself is not measurable in its stillness, but only in its motion (doing is the first "delta," or measurement of change, in the variable being); and Will is inherently dynamic and in motion. (a "going," not a "beiomng").

As a way of communicating with people the feel of what I'm talking about, borrowing a phrase from Parker J. Palmer I sometimes say exactly the same thing in describing True Will as "the place where your deep gladness mneets the world's deep need." (The terms need some clarification, such as the word "deep," but the meaning conveys well to most people.)

Within Temple of Thelema, we are most interested in bringing people awake to who they are deeply within the specific context of their current incarnation and the life they choose, so our most common functional definition of True Will within the Order is, "The resultant of all vectors (conditions and characteristics) expressed through the focus of a specific incarnation; nearly synonymous with life-purpose or deepest impulse of self-expression."

I think you can see, Kasper, why I'm comfortable with your definition.

[Takamba]

@Los said

"
Are you seriously telling me that you’re unfamiliar with this kind of stuff?"

My brain did a strange thing to me. For some reason I thought it was "higher self" when yes, True Self is what you were talking about. My mistake.

[Takamba]

@Los said

"
@Takamba said
"Let's take the human computer. Reason alone is not all of it."

Well, duh. There are all sorts of non-rational parts of the human, including...wait for it...the True Will (which isn't rational).

But the part that does the labeling and deciding what's what is the rational part. So when we're discussing a matter of procedural knowledge -- such as, for example, how to discover the True Will, which just happens to be the topic of this thread -- then the subject demands that we employ our reason to come to conclusions about how to do it.

That means we need to reach (rational) conclusions about how to label stuff and what to do to the labeled stuff to get the stuff we label as the result. The other alternative would be to randomly guess and hope we're right. I can tell you which option I prefer."

Now here's the part of you that attracted my attention to this conversation in the first place, your intent to tell us (restrict me?) what we "need." I don't disagree that randomly guessing is a waste of time, but not all conclusions are rational. As has been stated before, it is fine for you if you want to remain uber-rational about all things, and if this helps you, then it helps you. But it is not acceptable to tell me what to do. Ever. Tell me how you feel, then I may change my behavior, but attempt to control me and I will not harken to your plea. My point with you (the mistake regarding higher self & True Self aside) is that you appear to only express the purely mathematical nature of your Self, not your "irrational" (or rather, I'd say, intuitive, imaginative) self.