Vilaven: Was Thelema just another expression of “choose your own path”, in so many ways?

I’d honestly struggle to think of something that is more completely opposite to what Thelema really is about than this idea.

Papanick: If it’s not exactly that, then what is it?

Let’s assume you did fall into “Will, Resh and orienting yourself towards Boleskine, etc” when it was not “appropriate” for you to do so.

Why would you do such a thing? Unless someone was holding a gun to your head, then the one and only reason you would do it was if you “chose your own path”, and that was the choice you made. Making an alternative choice to avoid what everything else is doing is no more likely to be appropriate than choosing to do what you’re told. With all the millions of alternative paths you could take, you face almost impossible odds against the one you “choose” being an appropriate one.

If people concentrated on listening to what the Universe is telling them, instead of going out of their way to “choose their own path”, then they wouldn’t make mistakes like this. The conscious mind makes choices – the self doesn’t. The essence of attainment is precisely to get the conscious mind to shut up, to stop jabbering, and to do what it’s told – not to go along with its frivolous “choices” and to make itself believe that it is “liberated”.

“Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with a) one-pointedness, (b) detachment, (c) peace.” – Liber II

If one could solve (1) by simply “choosing” what one’s Will is, Thelema would be a pretty stupid and pointless philosophy.

“It is the apotheosis of Freedom; but it is also the strictest possible bond. Do what thou wilt–then do nothing else.” – Liber II

It sometimes staggers me that people who like to think they know a thing or two about Thelema can, after all this time, still mistake “Do what thou wilt” for “Do yer own thang”. This isn’t Wicca.

You (being the “conscious self”) don’t “choose” a path to the True Will. You are led to it, or you don’t find it. To be led to it, you have to stop choosing, and start listening. You can indeed choose a path, but the odds are overwhelming against you choosing a path that goes where you think it goes.

I’ll restate my original point, since two people seem to have missed it, now.

As long as you’re choosing, you’re paying attention to what’s in your head. If you are paying attention to what’s in your head, you aren’t going to find your True Will. Simple as that.

It’s a hard lesson for people to learn. This is a prime reason why people can spend a lifetime looking, and never find it.

“Many things I beheld mediate and immediate; but, beholding them no more, I beheld Thee.” – Liber LXV