Living Thelema Chapter 3. The True Will
Author: David Shoemaker Publisher: Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books. Publish Date: 2013 Review Date: 2023-5-1 Status:📚
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I’m sure many of you have some basic familiarity with the term ‘True Will,’ but just in case, I want to define it here briefly. First of all, the ‘will’ in question is the same as the will implied by the word thelema itself, which is the Greek word for will. This is not the simple will of the ego or the whim of the personality. This is not merely “wanting something.” It is a deeper level of life purpose, and the living out of that purpose in an individual lifetime and across multiple incarnations.
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The True Will is the will of the deepest inmost Self—the core of who you really are as a spiritual being. Also, and importantly, it is an expression of the universal will, as particularized and expressed in your individual life. This is why, when we are living in accordance with our True Will, we find that much of the time the universe seems to open up a path right in front of us, as if in sympathy with our aims. Likewise, when we feel as though we are swimming upstream against life it is very often the case that we have veered a bit from the path of our True Will; or perhaps we’re receiving a lesson from the HGA and/or the universe itself that is helping to nudge us back onto the path.
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All too often, the True Will is erroneously conceptualized as a singular choice of a career or a single task to be accomplished in life. This is far too restrictive. The True Will is the essence of your Self. It encompasses you, your actions, your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors; and it pertains to the way you live, moment-to-moment, as well as the entire arc of your life itself—and even beyond one life into other incarnations. As you can see, it’s really much, much more than a choice of career or a single task to complete. There is often, however, a great deal of overlap between the True Will and what one chooses to spend one’s time doing in life—one’s occupation or favorite hobbies, for example.
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The True Will is very likely to overlap with your passions, your interests and your preferences, but not always. On the other hand, we’ve established that this is not the simple will of the ego-personality (or, in the terms of Qabalistic psychology, the ruach.) Sometimes we find that our True Will—which ideally our ego is here to facilitate—is not necessarily something that is going to be comfortable and perfectly harmonious with the ego’s conceptions of itself. You may find yourself, at times, feeling surprised by what you discover about your True Will. But even more frequently, you may find that the discovery of the True Will forces you to make painful choices about lifestyle, priorities, career, relationships, and many other things. Such growth processes are painful precisely because they make us stretch outside our comfort zone; but in this case, it’s all in service of making these egoic choices in our day-to-day lives harmonize with the deeper needs of our soul and the commandments of the HGA. Yes, stretching hurts, but if we can come to experience this pain as a marker of deep growth, we may come to a greater sense of peace about the process. Just as physical pain points us to the area in need of healing, so does this psychological pain inform us about areas in need of growth.
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As I said earlier, the True Will should equally explain your choices in any given moment, and in any given situation, just as well as it explains the overall path that you take in your life. When you contemplate your True Will, you should try to take a step back from your everyday circumstances, career and life choices and think about it this way: the True Will will explain the way you affect the universe, the choices you make and the paths you tend to take, whether you happen to be a stock broker in New York City, a fisherman in Malaysia, or anything else. In other words, this central truth of who you are will express itself in a certain way regardless of the mundane situation in which you find yourself—your place of birth, occupation, family situation, and so on.
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Much of the time, the discovery of the True Will is a slow and gradual process, occasionally punctuated by breakthroughs of insight. For example, you may have been reflecting on your life choices over the past several years and discover that there has been a certain trend that had escaped your notice at the time; but then, in looking back on it, you gain some insight into the True Will. In contrast, there are those moments when you’ll simply be stopped in your tracks when a realization appears as an instantaneous flash, causing you to laugh or cry (or both) with the clarity of the insight.