I believe there is a lot of confusion regarding what it means to love yourself, free will, and particularly Aleister Crowley's take on it with his infamous declaration: "Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law". I am not claiming to have figured it out, but I would like to share some of what I have learned.
Loving yourself is of course seen as selfish by many. It only seems natural to feel that way. It certainly appears on the surface that submitting your own will to the will of others is the more enlightened path. Take, for example, religious devotees who dedicate their lives to serving others. Certainly they want to help others, but there are many more desires that are greatly subdued or eliminated in order to be more of service to others than the others are to them. Just look at all of the "worldly things" that are rejected by various religious orders who dedicate themselves to their respective causes. So am I saying that these people are not loving themselves? Not necessarily.
Now let's think about an opposite microcosm example. If you haven't read Lord of the Flies(SPOILER ALERT) just imagine a bunch of elementary school kids get dumped on an island in the middle of nowhere with no adults. What do you think happens? Correct, total chaos. It starts with a brief attempt at order, but things quickly spiral out of control as the law of the jungle kicks in, and its every man(schoolboy) for himself as terrible violence ensues. In this case, most of the kids begin to do as our good buddy[cough] Aleister suggested, "Do as thou will". They are doing whatever they want, whatever they feel like. So they are loving themselves, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
They don't know themselves. Poor blokes. If they did they would have been helping each other. See, I'm guessing that most people reading this article already know, at least in their heart, that WE ARE ALL ONE. When you help someone else, you are really helping yourself. It couldn't be more obvious than the example from Lord of the Flies. If the children had co-operated and helped each other they would all have survived the ordeal, and they might even have enjoyed it!
In my opinion, "do as thou will" means do as your ego pleases. The ego does not recognize that we are all connected, and the carnage that can happen when that clever lie is believed is remarkable. One has to look no further than the life of the man who invented the lie, how his life spun out of control and his relationships disintegrated.
So, to be a bit more clear, Crowley's "Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law" is not actually a lie. It's more of a deceptive way of telling the truth. Because, without knowing and truly believing that we are all one, a VERY important piece of the puzzle is missing.
And how does one realize that we are all one? What I believe helps the most is a change in perspective. Rather than looking at things subjectively, here at AirshipIdea.com, we look at them objectively. We imagine all the things we can do from the atmosphere in service to mankind. It's like when we got our first glimpse at planet earth from outer space. That is our little Lord of the Flies island floating in the middle of outer space all by itself. Only in our case, the adults aren't coming to rescue us.
Now, back to those awesome people who devote their lives to others. They are loving themselves when they help other people because we know that we are all one. However, they deny some of their will in order to maintain their positions. So to those folks, and you may be one of them, remember that it works both ways. When we truly love ourselves, we ARE truly loving others. I wish to you peace AND perspective.
