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True Will Quotes

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True Will Quotes

“Shameful confession, one of my own Chelas (or so it is rather incredibly reported to me) said recently: "Self-discipline is a form of Restriction." (That, you remember, is "The word of Sin.") Of all the utter rubbish! (Anyhow, he was a "centre of pestilence" for discussing the Book at all.) About 90 percent of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline. One is only allowed to do anything and everything so as to have more scope for exercising that virtue. Concentrate on "Thou hast no right but to do thy will." The point is that any possible act is to be performed if it is a necessary factor in that Equation of your Will. Any act that is not such a factor, however harmless, noble, virtuous or what not, is at the best a waste of energy. But there are no artificial barriers on any type of act in general. The standard of conduct has one single touchstone. There may be—there will be—every kind of difficulty in determining whether, by this standard, any given act is 'right' or 'wrong'; but there should be no confusion. No act is righteous in itself, but only in reference to the True Will of the person who proposes to perform it. This is the Doctrine of Relativity applied to the moral sphere.”

“I remember thinking, So this is it then. This is what it's come to for them, the poor bastards. This doing of life. This simple, just living in the world. The laying of plans that hadn't already been laid. The long preparation, ending. And for what? Here's what it amounted to: furniture and teaching. And on the one hand, it seemed like the bravest thing to me: to just go out and do that thing. And on the other, the most depressing: to just go out and do that thing. The thing that you've chosen to do, and by so choosing, shutting out all the other things. It took an awful lot of certainty to make that sort of choice. The choice to spend the time you have doing the thing you want to do.”

“The moral, dear child, is that such powers are never to be considered as the main object; it ought in fact to be obvious from the start that any one's True Will must be deeper and more comprehensive than any mere technical achievement. I will go further and say that any such endeavour must be a magical mistake, like cherishing a gun or a clock or a fishing-rod for its own sake, and not for the use that one can make of it. Indeed, that remark goes to the root of the matter; for all these powers, if we understand them properly, are natural by-products of one's real Great Work. My own experience was very convincing on this point; for one power after another came popping up when it was least wanted, and I saw at once that they represented so many leaks in my boat. And really they are quite a bit of a nuisance. Their possession is so flattering, and their seduction so subtle. One understands at once why all the first-class Teachers insist so sternly that the Siddhi (or Iddhi) must be rejected firmly by the Aspirant, if he is not to be side-tracked and ultimately lost.”

“You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed.”

“We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night ; we come to wish for—or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle—thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose." I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist."—"I know—let's get on!") Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known—and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be. How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law !”

“Every time you use the Dragonflame philosophy, you refine your subtle body and stengthen your will by going through the process of separating the dross from the subtle and putting it back together again. Every time you follow this magical philosophy, you are doing what is know as the Great Work. In other words, every time you work magic using Dragonflame, you get closer to finding the Philosopher's Stone.”

“It is slow, gradual pressure that is the formula for both genius and earthquakes. Life tells us our secrets in these cracks, the way events conspire with each other in hidden grottos. This movement is at times very subtle, over a long time, like plate tectonics. If you don't have the right eyes, you might miss these patterns altogether. Although our lives do not occur in geological scales of time, it is still the gradual pressure and our minute reactions, our habits, that actually speak of our true natures. Our true will and intent is contained in potential within each of us, though in many it is buried very, very deep.”

“In terms of action, Dzogchen is not limited by any rules; therefore, no action is forbidden as such. Rather, Dzogchen practice aims at bringing immediate Awareness into every action, and the manifestation of that Intrinsic Awareness is one's true will. Awareness and intention are not at war with each other but are integrated. In the state of contemplation, the Bodhicitta compassion is natural and spontaneous; it is not contrived or created by mind. But this is true only when we are in the state of contemplation. The state of Rigpa is beyond karma and its consequences, beyond good and evil, but our ordinary dualistic consciousness is most definitely not. Being primordially pure, Rigpa is beyond selfish motivations, and all its actions are spontaneously self-perfected. All this is true of contemplation, but if we merely claim to be a Siddha, announcing proudly, 'I am in a state of Rigpa!' and do as we like, following every impulse and indulging all transient desires, we merely delude ourselves and will suffer the karmic consequences. To think we are in the state is not the same as actually being in the state. The only rule in Dzogchen is to be aware. Dzogchen teaches us to take responsibility for our actions, and this is what awareness means. We are always aware of what we do and also of the consequences that each action entails. Integration with movement is not at all the same as attachment, for the latter represents a lack of awareness.”