________________________________
From: "s3raph...@yahoo.com" <s3raph...@yahoo.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 11:46 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: The Beast and the unborn
Re Steve Sundur's "Hey Judy, sorry for any nastiness. Seraphita's analysis of
the book touched on some of the reasons I did like the book. Addiction issues
have always been of interest to me . . . when the discussion of this book came
up before, many years ago, I was more confident that the modality put forth in
the book could be effective.":
If we are still talking about Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend, I mentioned
above that he himself never lost his heroin habit. The drug was prescribed for
his asthma so maybe he never had a fighting chance to stay clean.
Curiously, I used the Beast's ideas when I quit smoking. The gist of Crowley's
thinking here is that when a man (say) decides to stop a drug habit (let's say
smoking) his surface consciousness comes up with lots of reasons - my clothes
stink/it's an expensive habit/I'm coughing up phlegm/ . . . - but his deeper
nature (his True Will) is actually rather keen on puffing away. The man has set
up an uneven contest that he's destined to lose.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"
Aleister Crowley
(I guess, one his more notable quotes, although I think I've gotten a little
fuzzy about its meaning)
When I stopped smoking I did two things. First I decided to only stop for a
week. That way it couldn't be any worse than having a dose of flu and there
wouldn't be that nagging, horrid thought "I will never again know the pleasure
of inhaling on a cigarette". Secondly, as I've always been inordinately curious
about whatever takes my fancy doesn't that suggest inordinate curiosity is part
of my True Will? So I thought, I'll treat the experience of going cold turkey
as if I'd just ingested a novel, experimental drug and I had to keep track and
report back on what the effects were. In other words, I made the quitting into
a game - and a game that would just be a short, sharp shock. At the end of the
week I'd (more-or-less) sailed through the adventure and I knew I'd never smoke
a cigarette again. Hey, maybe I should set up shop as an addiction counsellor!
