And this is the Paradox, that there are Bonds which lead to Slavery, and Bonds which lead to Freedom. All we are bound in many Fetters by Environment, and it is for ourselves in great Part to determine whether they shall enslave us or emancipate us.
Crowley, Liber Aleph, “De Liberatate Juvenum”
About 90% of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline.
Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Chapter 70
Crowley sometimes talks about doing your will in a what-focused fashion. He’ll refer to your one purpose in life or the one thing which you can will truly. Or he’ll speak of doing your will as serving a certain societal function, for example writing good poetry or being a competent banker.
On the other hand, we read in the Book of the Law that the pure will is “unassuaged of purpose” and “delivered from the lust of result”. This is the will understood in and through itself, without reference to anything outside of itself.
One finds a similar notion of action in the Bhagavad Gita. In chapter 3 Krishna says:
The one who rejoices in the Self only,
who is satisfied with the Self,
who is content in the Self alone,
for such a (Self-realized) person there is no duty.Such a person has no interest, whatsoever,
in what is done or what is not done.
A Self-realized person does not depend on anybody for anything.Therefore, always perform your duty efficiently
Bhagavad Gita, ch 3, v.17-19
and without attachment to the results,
because by doing work without attachment one attains the Supreme.
To attain to the “Supreme” or to be “Self-realized” means to be united in oneself. This is a self that understands itself through itself alone and is therefore “content in the Self alone”. This self-unification carries over into the action of such a self. The action characteristic of such a self-unified self is itself also unified. It is carried out without reference to any particular result, as that would make the action dependent upon something other than itself.
In Thelema, the true will is the characteristic action of the true self. As Crowley says in Liber II:
Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with a) one-pointedness, b) detachment, c) peace.
Then, and then only, art thou in harmony with the Movement of Things, thy will part of, and therefore equal to, the Will of God. And since the will is but the dynamic aspect of the self, and since two different selves could not possess identical wills; then, if thy will be God’s will, Thou art That.
Crowley, Liber II: The Message of the Master Therion
Again, we see the priority of unification, both in self and in action, and this time explicitly described as an attribute of God. To be God is to be self-unified to such a degree that one transcends the results of one’s actions, because it is in the very nature of God to transcend being all together.
In other words, the whoness of God is so extreme as to transcend His whatness. As incarnated human beings, we are divine to the extent that our own self-unity and whoness is able to transcend circumstance. Another word for this is freedom.
From these considerations it should be clear that “Do what thou wilt” does not mean “Do what you like.” It is the apotheosis of Freedom; but it is also the strictest possible bond.
Ibid.
So what are some practical implications we can take from this?
If you would like to experience greater joy and freedom in life, you should prioritize who you are over what you are or what circumstances you find yourself in.
For example, rather than setting a goal of losing 50 lbs, you should try instead to be the type of person who weighs 50 lbs less than you currently do. You should start thinking and acting like a fit person. You should extrapolate from that identity how a fit person typically behaves and fulfill that identity by making those habits part of your life.
As author James Clear has said, we don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. If you set a goal of losing 50 lbs without adopting the identity and therefore the habits and mindset of a fit person, it is highly likely that you will either regain the weight after achieving the goal or fail to meet the goal all together. What you need to sustain a healthy body composition is not a discrete set of actions aimed at particular “whats” but rather a healthy lifestyle.
If you do this systematically throughout your life, thinking first about who you are in everything that you do, it becomes a lot easier to identify exactly both who and what you do not want around you, either. It becomes a less personal, less drama-filled ordeal.
How many times have we said, “So-and-so is so toxic” or “I can’t have X around me; he’s just so narcissistic.” This is not to say that people aren’t toxic or narcissistic, but this is approaching the problem backwards. This is starting with the other person and what they do or don’t do.
Instead you want to start with yourself and who you are. What do you stand for as a human being? How do you relate to yourself? In what ways are you toxic or narcissistic toward yourself?
One of the complaints we often have about other people is that they are untrustworthy. This comes from past experiences in which people have betrayed our trust. But in the case of a person who is preoccupied with betrayal, more often than not they are regularly betraying or abandoning themselves. Think about every single time you have ignored or disregarded your own boundaries so that you could please someone else, avoid conflict, or keep the peace.
That’s you manipulating another person or at least a situation, driven by your own lust of result. That doesn’t mean you’re an evil person. It means you’re walking backwards through life. You’re starting from things outside of yourself and reverse-engineering what you have to do from that. But doing your will starts from the recognition of the priority of your divine whoness or individuality.
This is what Crowley talks about in “Duty”. He says:
Find yourself to be the centre of your own Universe. “I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star.” [AL II:6]Crowley, “Duty: A Note no the Chief Rules of Practical Conduct to be Observed by Those Who Accept the Law of Thelema”
Putting yourself at the center of your own universe is not “being self-centered”. It’s not narcissism. It’s actually the exact opposite of narcissism, because it is not what-focused exploitation of others. It’s making who you are—your true self—the center of gravity around which all your “what” concerns revolve.
Narcissists don’t have that. The absence of that sense of who they are is what makes them narcissists. It’s the reason they are constantly focused on externalities like societal expectations, praise, extrinsic rewards, and all the “what” demands that extend to everyone in their sphere. When you’re grounded in your divine individuality, in who you truly are, you’re not placing expectations on other people to fulfill roles, give you praise, or to keep your ego from imploding. Who you are is intelligible in and through yourself, and your actions express that.
Obviously no one is perfect at this. If we were perfect individuals in this sense, we would be completely “secret and ineffable,” terms used to describe the “Lord” in the first article of our Church’s Creed. The Lord’s unity is so great, His individuality so perfect, He transcends being and non-being. He neither is nor is not.
That’s not the position you or I are in.
We have a part of ourselves which is unmanifest, but we also cope with manifest existence. Our job here on earth, in the context of incarnation, is to realize that divine individuality to the greatest extent we can in the context of being. That’s what the magick of Baphomet is for. That means we’re constantly wrestling with whats, and it means we’re constantly running the risk of confusing who we are with what we are.
But the way out of that is to return to your seat of power, your place of unity and whoness. That’s the place of self-identification and individuality. That’s where you’re carrying out actions, not because of what you think you can get out of other people or situations necessarily, but simply because those actions most perfectly express who you are as an individual.
It’s because of the need to constantly return from out of that sense of being lost that Crowley says Thelema is about 90% self-discipline.
But I’ll go out on a limb and disagree with Crowley a little. The amount of time and energy you expend having to discipline yourself is going to be in inverse proportion to how well you have discovered who you are. The better you know yourself, the more time and energy you’re going to put into filling your life up with those activities and people that are truly and deeply fulfilling to you.
But the more of your time and energy that are going into just living your life, the less time and energy are left over to play grab-ass with adult children.
Every person complaining about the toxic people and narcissists in their life is probably also a person who is still getting caught up in drama with these people, and the reason they’re getting caught up in drama is because too much of their time and energy is going into trying to get these people to do or not do things. They’re getting frustrated essentially at their inability to manipulate these people.
I’m not above this. I’m saying this as a person who does and has done it. So I can tell you from experience, if you find yourself surrounded by clowns, chances are good you climbed into a clown car.
But that’s going to be a life where you are constantly having to stop and pull yourself back from that engagement. If you don’t know yourself, if you don’t know your North Star, then Thelema may be 95% or even 100% self-discipline.
But as you get to know yourself on a much deeper level, living authentically becomes a deeply ingrained habit. Self-discipline becomes what the Greeks called “temperance” (σωφροσύνη). Temperance is a virtue, and like all the virtues, it’s not something you have to try to do constantly. It becomes part of your character. Temperance isn’t self-discipline in the sense of having a straight-jacket on. It’s more like having acquired moral sanity after a period of illness.
When you get to that point, doing your will is not going to be experienced as 90% self-discipline. It will be a more natural process like the fluid motion of a river. (A friend of mine I shared this idea with said it brought to mind many of the Taoist concepts that influenced Crowley.)
But there’s a training involved here. If you have spent decades of your life people-pleasing (like many of us have), you are going to have a lot of negative patterns ingrained into you. Self-abandonment, not self-possession, is going to be your characteristic habit. When you’re coming out of that place, it may require a lot of energy, focus, and reinforcement not to reply to the email, not to respond to the text, or not to give the other person a piece of your mind. You’re going to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the big red shoes and wanting to put on the rainbow colored wig.
But as you do the work of getting to know yourself better, you discover the unity characteristic of a true, divine self—which is the self that needs less and less from outside of itself in terms of praise or apologies or recognition or results—the more doing your will becomes like the rushing waters of a river.
That’s the point at which doing your will is like having the inertia of the Universe to assist you.