Descriptions:
Video Description
Why does visualization so often end in a pressing headache instead of an open door? Lyam Christopher begins this lesson by drawing a careful line between two very different kinds of will: the personal will, with a small w, and the True Will, with a capital W. The small will pushes from the forehead like a tight beam, the way a student strains to memorize a page by force. The capital Will is less like a laser and more like stepping backward into a story already unfolding.
The remedy is a gentle shift from head to heart. Instead of manufacturing images and throwing them out into the room, he suggests letting the scene rise on its own and allowing yourself to fall into it. When the picture and the one seeing it rise together, the pressure eases. That shared arising is what the Golden Dawn calls the Osiris current, the same quiet force that makes a seed push upward through soil. Science even hints at the surprising order: a famous experiment found that an impulse to move began in the body before the conscious decision arrived, as if the ego were taking credit after the fact.
From here the video widens into a philosophy of wonder. He proposes the magician is not a tyrant pulling plants upward but a patient gardener who creates conditions. Even acceptance becomes a quiet kind of loving: whatever fate arrives is hugged rather than fought. The result is not less will but a freer one. There is no battle to win, only a spell to relax into, and the promised relief is as simple as it is strange: headache-free magic made from flow instead of force.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, it’s that time of the week. Hopefully the microphone is working. This week we’re talking about the power of the will. And the question is, am I using title case here? Or do I really mean will with a capital W? Because as many of you know, people like Aleister Crowley tended to view will with a capital W differently from will with a small w, which we might get into in this video.
Alright, so one of the important things to realize about the will is that there’s something very special about the tree of life, okay, that we need to call into question.
The way that the tree of life is normally taught is that the right-hand pillar is active and the left-handed pillar is passive.
And I would like to change that.
Okay, so an initiated perspective is a bit different from that.
And what you’ll get from teachers like Dion Fortune is more sort of the exoteric view of the Tree of Life,
if there is such a thing as exoteric or external teachings of the Tree of Life.
But people like Dion Fortune and many occultists will tend to view many things in terms of polarity or oppositions.
and from the standpoint the standpoint of an initiate the universe really
doesn’t have any oppositions in it the oppositions are only apparent and we’re
going to get to that so it’s a it’s a very important concept about the will
that we’re going to bring forth here and it pretty much comes as a challenge to
the idea of the active pillar and the passive pillar alright so there are a
bunch of definitions of will. And these come from the dictionary. I pretty much went to
dictionary.com and plucked these off of the page. And what we normally mean by will in magic is that
there are two different wills. There’s the personal will, and then there is divine will. And the whole
thing about becoming an adept is to surrender the personal will to the divine will. And that’s a lot
the that’s why the inner order of the golden dawn is uh regarded as christian okay there’s a lot of
christian symbolism in the inner order of the golden dawn because in the inner order that’s
when you reach the five the five equals sixth grade and that’s the grade of tifareth that is
the grade of the central sphere on the tree of life that center sphere right there which is the
sphere of beauty okay and that’s the also that corresponds to the grade of the adept or the
the first grade of adeptship and you’ll notice that below that there are four spheres and those
correspond to the elemental grades and so the you know candidate proceeds through the neophyte grade
and then he goes through the earth grade air grade water grade fire grade and then lands into
the sphere of beauty. And this is where supposedly the new adept has surrendered his
personal will to the divine will. The important thing about this surrender to bear in mind here
is that one should not take it literally. So yes, it can feel like you’re dying because you no longer
have any personal volition, so to speak, when you sort of learn to let go. But the personal
will still exists. It still arises. The challenge is to not take yourself so seriously anymore,
okay? And what that really means is you don’t take yourself literally, okay? So let’s review that.
The adept doesn’t take himself so seriously anymore, but what we mean by that is he doesn’t
take himself literally and as you might recall before i did a video called the power of non-literal
perception the ability to see the world not in terms of its literal uh appearances not in terms
of WYSIWYG what you see is what you get so uh that’s very important okay we’ll talk about that
in a little bit uh so i guess the important thing to say right now is that that surrender that
happens in the center sphere there of beauty to faris um it isn’t literally like just letting go
of all personal desires it’s more like you see through your personal desires and you no longer
identify with them they still arise you’re still human to some degree uh and that human stuff still
keeps going on but you’ve let go of it and it kind of just goes and it comes up and it’s like
oh that’s interesting where’d that come from but that’s not me yeah so you don’t identify with
these urges anymore okay uh that’s a very important concept um and to all intensive
appearances uh nothing’s really changed nobody really notices very much about what’s happened
to you when you’ve let go like that but for you everything’s different okay everything still
continues to go forward in the same direction you still have the same maybe ambitions and things
like that, but they’re no longer super important to you anymore. They’re still there, but they’re
more like constructs, assemblages. They’re not really, they don’t have any essential or intrinsic
reality to them. All right. Various definitions of the will. Most of these are personal definitions
of the will. And so let’s go to Nietzsche’s definition of the will, because he’s so famous
for the will to power okay uh the urge to shape the world around us okay uh that’s yeah i think
humans have a pretty strong uh urge to do that but i see that in a more in a more soulful way
not necessarily an intellectual way uh the urge to express or to create or even in a more soulful
way uh this is according to james hillman who would describe the the soul aspect of a human
being that the um you have your spirit aspect the intellect and there’s also the soul the soul
loves to be seen the soul is hidden and it loves to put itself on display very much like a dancer
loves to just to express things and to put you can see that a dancer when a dancer is really talented
they are expressing something very deep this is the soul putting itself on display and loving
every minute of it so similar to to the way that women love to be on display for men okay um that’s
more of an instinct really that uh to be on display like that and you can translate that
also into a more soulful level where everybody has this sort of need to express deep aspects
of the soul. That can be seen as the will as well. And I think that gets closer to the nature
of the true will or the divine will with a capital W. All right. So let’s do a little
simple exercise to let go of the personal will and start to engage more with the soulful will
or the divine will as it sort of descends into the body okay um many of you have probably noticed
that when you do visualization work uh it can give you a headache it can cause some head tension
some pain in the head uh and this is because you are attempting to visualize with the brain
or with the mind, the mind that you identify as being up here. Uh, and in order to, uh, let go of
that, uh, it’s very helpful to visualize with the heart. Okay. And there’s a very easy way of
telling you how to do that. Okay. Um, you might think that, um, when, when let’s say if somebody
is trying to succeed in college, uh, the worst advice you could give them is, uh, you just need
to concentrate. You need to focus. And then so you develop this sort of laser beam out of the
forehead mentality and it’s almost like you’re straining on the toilet. I need to concentrate
on this subject so I can master it. No, no, no, no. In order to do well in something like college
or in your studies, it’s not really all about your brain consciousness. It’s more about letting go
and entering imagination. So rather than concentrating on your studies, it is much
more fruitful to just let go and allow the imagination to visualize whatever it is you’re
focusing on. Like if you’re reading stuff, then whatever you’re reading, imagine it. Now don’t
force it into appearance you rather than force the imagery to to be generated out of your head
instead you want to enter into the scenario like fall into it so if you’re reading something you
want to fall into the imaginal scenario that is now arising so you’re descending into the
imaginal world you’re not generating like projecting it from the forehead you are falling
into it or surrendering to it and this can also feel like you’re descending from the head down
into the heart and this is why um in the more uh advanced um golden dawn practices uh the uh
the adepts are given um exercises of like creating god forms and things like that
but they’re not beaming them out of their heads like a camera like a like a video projector
they’re actually like told to generate them from the heart you could say there’s a ray coming out
of the heart that’s fine but um it’s more like when you create images with the heart it’s not
that you’re creating them but it’s more like the images are now arising out there and you are
surrendering to experiencing them. So the heart is now arising along with the image out there.
They’re co-arising. This is also called co-creating. Okay, so that’s kind of a secret to
the true will, because if the image out there is not being projected from your mind,
it’s simply arising out there, and you as the observer are also arising over here. You arise
together the two of you arise together this is this is how to um you notice that there’s no
longer a beam coming out of you creating the image because that’s going to give you a headache
it’s more like oh the the image out there is simply arising out there and i’m arising over here
and that arising power is the true will that is the true will of the universe that is the will
that you surrender to it’s also known as the osiris the osiris current in the golden dawn
because osiris is a force that arises from the underworld or from the ultimate ground of being
and it’s similar to the force that that causes plants to grow so osiris is very often seen as
a green god because he represents the upward generating um blossoming or blooming of the
plants or the the sprouts coming up from the earth okay so you are arising over here the
imagery is rising over there they both come out of that osiris current and of course as many of
you know osiris is very largely regarded as presiding in the heart yeah he’s actually a
middle pillar type deity so but of course you can see that upward motion of the um of the osiris
current okay that’s the real will so that beam that you project out of your head new now there’s
a different kind of will that goes on it’s the more vertical type of will now the interesting
thing about when you enter imagination is that you’ve got you enter a sort of pagan world where
there are all kinds of powers and characters going on and what happens is uh you enter a world of
multiple wills so that’s why the tree of life has 10 spheroth at least the 10 spheroth so
each one of them represents like a separate will or maybe a even a separate deity and each deity
has a particular will and james hillman the founder of archetypal psychology even said that
the psyche of a human being is polytheistic you are actually many beings in one okay um the
interesting thing about the the ego is that it is the thing that arises with the within you that
sort of takes credit for all of the multiple things that are going on inside and so all the
different um let’s say there’s a tree of life inside you all all of the seroth contributing
to some kind of thing that has happened, like manifesting something that has happened,
those things just sort of happen. They just go on. That’s the divine will.
And then the ego comes along and pretty much takes credit for that. And there’s some evidence
that this is actually what happens, even scientific evidence for that. Libet’s experiment,
he would basically attach electrodes to people’s heads, and then he would ask them to deliberately
do things at some point at some point i would like for you to deliberately um squeeze this
handle or something like that and what he would notice is that the the impulse to do that actually
arose before the uh the person was aware of the conscious decision to do that which is some
evidence that seems to suggest that there are other powers at work that pretty much cause things
to happen and then but your ego quickly steps in and says oh i did that that’s kind of that comic
scenario where like you know somebody screws up royally but they say oh i meant to do that i meant
to do that to teach you a lesson so you know that way you’ll never do that the ego steps in and takes
credit for something accidental that has happened seemingly accidental and so yes the polytheistic
psyche so um uh as many people who practice golden dawn style kabbalah know uh you’re building the
the tree in your aura and that pretty much allows for all these different focuses of will
to coexist and of course uh the ego compulsively takes responsibility for everything that’s
happening whether it’s blaming itself feeling guilty about what’s happened or whether it takes
credit for something really cool that’s happened with which it really had nothing to do with
um eventually uh as you progress the ego collapses dies and all that really exists at that point is
the persona in other words that’s the the life of the adept who no longer takes himself literally
he knows that he doesn’t really exist and yes he can still continue to take credit for things that
he’s done and things that he’s created but he knows that well i didn’t really create that that
was simply all these various focuses of will within me that collaborated and came together
to create that but for all intensive purposes for the uh for the for the purpose of collecting
royalties i will claim credit for creating that uh nichi which is famous or infamous for
um the will to power uh talking about the will um he also uh was famous for the concept of
amor fati which is latin for the love of fate uh this is also um something that’s becoming
um more in vogue right now with uh stoicism stoicism is enjoying a major resurgence
it’s a type of philosophy um and amor fati is uh very important because essentially um
one of this one of the secrets of enlightenment apparently is the surrender uh to whatever’s
happening krishnamurti is famous for saying that well here’s my secret my secret is that i don’t
really mind what happens so whatever’s happening there is a a love of it and an embracing of it
an acceptance of it what is love but really just simply acceptance inclusion okay um so to accept
one’s fate to embrace one’s fate it doesn’t mean that you believe that everything’s faded
but whatever’s happening is simply embraced as oh that’s what’s happening right now
i accept it and then to engage with it in a loving way okay amor fati a love of one’s fate or destiny
and so we combine the concept of amor fati with the idea of will but remember this i’ve just
introduced the concept of will that is more vertical than horizontal it’s not me projecting
something out of my head which is going to give me a headache it’s more like me accepting that
this thing over here is coming up and uh that i am also forming a perspective now in relation to
that thing we are co-arising we are coming up together this is called co-creating with the
divine okay that’s the true definition of co-creating so now that that creates the image
of the gardener so a gardener uh does apparently exert his will over his plants or her plants but
the gardener doesn’t go out into the gardener into the garden and then pull on his plants
but you like pull up on his plants to get them to grow that’s that would be insane right um but he
does cultivate them he provides conditions under which they can grow healthily okay and so this
comes this now with that comes the concept of becoming a gardener for your own life okay so
you begin to create conditions that cultivate virtues the different virtues of the tree of life
each sphere on the tree of life has a virtue and a vice okay and so you can see that the the real
will uh of the magician is not the kind that forces things to happen the kind that goes out
into the garden and pulls up on the plants to try to get them to grow or you you know trying to get
the plants to grow by screaming at them no um you can see that’s sort of the will of the tyrant
which is oppressive and very problematic and then there is a will that is more in line with
the divine will which is more like that of a cultivator or gardener and this brings us to
the alchemical saying that nature unassisted cannot achieve her ultimate apotheosis something
like that uh so in other words the nature without humans is not quite complete this is sort of a
humanistic philosophy as well that humans are very important not that this is true but it certainly
is an interesting concept that um nature needs us to cultivate it in some kind of way so that
the great work can be completed. Some kind of ultimate realization or ultimate enlightenment
can only be achieved if there is a human being to cultivate something, to exert some kind of
personal will. But remember, the personal will is not one that is horizontal. It’s more like
the acceptance of things that are happening and creating conditions in which that vertical
will can thrive so the magician seems as though he’s exerting this sort of personal will upon
things and this is a great way to to discern whether um any you know magician that you meet
is really truly an initiate you know if they really seem to be proceeding as though i’m exerting
my will upon something um you know they’re not an initiate they don’t seem to be aware of the
osiris current that vertical divine will the co-arising current okay um however a magician
who’s an initiate can proceed as if he’s exerting will upon something uh but it’s more like a will
that is a cultivating type thing a sort of massaging type will that is um is helping things
along in a catalyst sort of way you might think of you know gandalf and the lord of the rings
he doesn’t really force anybody to do anything but he makes helpful suggestions and he tries
to bring out the best in people he’s cultivating virtues in people and he would say some things
like uh your your fingers would know their strength better if they grasp their sword
Notice he doesn’t force Theoden to grab his sword.
He makes suggestions to try to wake him up,
you know, to reestablish his virility and his youth and his power.
This is Gandalf the gardener, Gandalf the true magician.
So there’s something about the Tree of Life that I was going to challenge,
and that is the idea that the right-hand pillar is active
and the left-hand pillar is passive.
That’s fine viewed from the outside.
I would like you to consider now that there’s another way of looking at it,
and that is that the right-handed pillar is reactive and the left-hand pillar is passive.
The right-handed pillar is not active, it is reactive, and the left-handed pillar is passive.
They’re both kind of reactive.
In other words, the left-handed pillar and the right-handed pillar are both passive.
The only truly active pillar is the middle pillar.
Okay, so this sort of like dynamism and forcefulness and power of the right-handed pillar is really a reaction to the impetus of Kether and the middle pillar activities.
Okay, and the passivity of the left pillar is also a reaction, secondary reaction.
You could say maybe the right-handed pillar’s primary reaction and this left pillar is a secondary reaction, and they’re both pretty much reacting to or spiraling around, you know, that central pillar.
How this all arose and came into being is very mysterious, but that’s worth considering as you adopt your various spheroth in your aura and you begin to maybe reconceptualize the tree of life.
the way an adept tends to see it where the only truly active force is down the middle down the
center all right i hope this was helpful i hope it was clear and until next time it seems to be
that i am releasing videos every sunday let’s see if i can keep doing that
Source: Lyam Christopher