The will
The central teaching of Thelema is that everybody should act in accordance with their own natures, and that everybody in fact would act in accordance with their own natures if they were not restricted from doing so by their minds. This restriction takes one of two forms:
- Ignorance of one's own nature — one may think oneself an artist, but actually be more suited to practising law. Alternatively, one may have had a career in medicine drilled into one by one's parents since an early age to the extent that one believes it oneself, when one may really be happier as a soldier.
- Rejection of one's own nature — one may know one's own nature, but reject it, perhaps in accordance with a particular code of morality on in the belief that one should live for “higher purposes”. Christianity, for instance, declares human nature to be fundamentally “sinful”. Ignorance and rejection of one's nature often overlap, in that a refusal to accept that something could be part of one's nature can blind one to the fact that it is.
The mind can be a complex and extremely opaque veil around one's real nature, presenting both conscious and unconscious obstacles. The mind has a tendency to believe that the universe either does or should work in the way that we would like it to; Thelema teaches us that we should accept and interact with the universe as it actually is, exorcising the mental restrictions that cause us to interact with the world and our selves on a fundamentally misguided basis.
The unrestricted expression of one's real nature is referred to as the “will” in Thelema, often capitalised as “Will” or qualified as “True Will” to distinguish it from the restricted “false” or “conscious” will. The practical objective of the Thelemite is therefore to discover and then to perform his will.
