Keeping up Appearances

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

We all get tired of keeping up appearances. We play-act to keep our jobs, to win approval from parents who don’t even pay attention anymore, to make the hoi-poloi give us likes on Facebook. We say and do things that we aren’t really feeling in the moment, just to make other people happy, or at times, to keep them from being sad.

Inside we rage, despair, or surrender to the ever-present temptation to just not give a shit anymore. Inside, we are honest. Inside, we are clean about what we really think, want, and do. We filter that out of our regular interactive communications with our fellow incarnate stars for various reasons. Good reasons sometimes, but always reasons that make sense to us on the inside.

Once in a while, something happens that cracks the veneer, removing the filters, eliminating even that part of ourselves that cares enough to filter our true selves, and we just drop it all. We drop the armor, the jokes, the rationality, the irony, and we just let ourselves be ourselves. Usually it’s something traumatic that brings us these moments of clarity, when we are stripped bare of all our compassionate predicates, and in a moment of anguish, we reveal our true selves in all our weakness, pain, and anguish.

Question: Is this true?

I submit for your consideration that, in fact, it is not true.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

What if you actually are what you do? What if what you do is actually your Will? Some of the strongest among us feel broken inside. Some of the smartest feel like they have done the stupidest things. Some of the most beautiful see only their own ugliness. So many of us feel like we are putting on the face, putting on the show, doing what needs to be done for the sake of others, but what if… what if we are actually the people we pretend to be on the outside?

What if it’s ok, and we’re doing what we Will? And we’re not lying or pretending or faking it? What if we’re as awesome as we are trying to be?

Suppose for a moment that the Law is a real universal thing. That there is a thing that dictates how things are, and what we all must do, and that no one in any incarnation in any form were able to do anything other than the Law. Suppose that the Law is for All, and for the All-thing, and for all aspects of the One that manifest temporarily as if they were not part and parcel of everyone and everything else, for a minute.

Suppose it is not a proscribed thing, that states that you do it, or if you don’t, and if you don’t then you are a failure in need of punishment.

Suppose the Law that we all operate under is a natural law. Suppose it’s as impossible to break that law as it is to break the law of gravity, of strong and weak forces, the fundamental laws of physics.

Suppose this Law, this “Do what thou Wilt” is not just good advice, or a key to enlightenment, or whatever. Suppose it’s actually what we do, all the time.

Suppose it.

How free are we, then? How cool are we? How strong, how noble, how kind, how compassionate, how beautiful are we, as a people, as a manifestation, as an incarnation?

How perfect are we all?

We don’t have to feel bad about feeling bad, or doing less than what we could, less than we normally do. Failing to be compassionate about other people in the moment when you’re going through shit is valid, necessary, useful. It’s ok.

It doesn’t negate who you are at all. It doesn’t make everything you do a mask, a veneer, a play-act, a joke, a farce, or hypocrisy. You don’t have to be happy all the time, or wise, or compassionate. This isn’t an either-or thing. Life, existence, and incarnation has no rules or laws that state you have to be perfect all the time or you suck.

There is no law beyond do what thou wilt.

Love yourself, no matter what, sisters and brothers. You know how it is.

Love is the law. Love under Will.