As a kid I was always working with my hands, making things from wood and any materials I could lay my hands on, often going through the cutlery drawers and toolboxes in search of knives and saws that I could use, until my parents finally gave up and brought me a Swiss Army knife. I had other tools over the years and started to develop some skill working with wood, but as life went on I experienced a lot of distractions and deviations that occluded my path.
I ended up, having thoroughly messed up at High School, enlisting into the army for a few years. I saved money, and took up music, the mandolin and then violin. It was at that time, on visiting a luthier in my hometown, that I found that I now consider to be the calling that I came so close to fulfilling, but again events intervened.
Once I left the military, I interviewed at a well respected luthiers college in England, and to my surprise and delight was offered a place to start that September. However, life had other plans, my fiancé at the time was utterly opposed to moving across to a new town. I made the wrong decision as it turned out and declined the offer, instead pursuing a course at a local college, which opened a career in environmental science, which I am somehow still in to this day.
That was back in 2009 or so. Having long-since broken off the engagement (less than a year in the college course), finished what I was doing in my home patch, moving across the country to attend university, later doing a PhD and then moving overseas. Life couldn't be more different from how I imagined it. During that time I also joined the A.'.A.'. and pursued that path to this day, but in the back of my mind there is still that inner sense that I could have been a luthier, had I been a bit more selfish, more selfish than my then partner who refused to move with me, causing me to make the 'honourable choice' and put her needs before my own. The fact that the relationship didn't last is enough indication that I made the wrong choice at that stage, yet it opened the doors in other ways.
I mourn that loss though, I still watch luthiers at work with a mixture of awe, envy, and sadness for what might have been. Working on musical instruments was something that consumed my attention in a way that nothing else ever has, yet without forcing the issue considerably at this point, that door is closed to me now, a missed opportunity. So what do we do when we feel that a calling like that is missed?
Well, for a start, we just live. In a sense, ones 'calling' is literally what one is called to do, it's called a vocation for a reason, it's the path you are called to, not necessarily the one you choose. This is where want and Will diverge, the opportunities that we are given, our available options and the extent to which they coincide with our inclinations. It's the lucky soul whose desires and opportunities coincide, and the rest of us have to learn to separate Will from Want.
We can only go through the doors that are open, and some doors are shaped so that we can only go through when we lose certain baggage. Had I broken off that engagement there and then and moved by myself to the town in which the College was situated, using my savings to get set up, then I would likely be in a very different place now, but I wasn't ready at that point to drop the 'millstone' (as my grandmother called her) that I had put around my own neck, and by the time that relationship ended I was already on the path I now find myself on, the door that was open had closed, and another path presented itself, and not without it's own share of luck and synchronicity, so who am I to argue? Twice I was funded to continue at points where only a dash of luck would have made it possible, there were other fortuitous events, but relating all that isn't my current purpose.
Instead of luthiery and the quiet life of workshop and simple craftmanship, the A.'.A.'., and a career in science, both areas in which I am constantly challenged and forced to learn and grown on a daily basis. Not bad really, and life still goes on. It makes me think that even when we miss our calling in life, that's perhaps not the same thing as missing ones True Will, in the Thelemic sense. A calling is heavily influenced by personal desire, what excites us and makes us want to get out of bed in the morning. It's a very human thing, and depends largely on luck and native aptitude as well as passion.
True Will on the other hand, is impersonal, being centred in Kether, so to speak, and only focussed in Tiphareth (the ego/self of the adept), which we could think of as a conduit of that light. True Will is the actual trajectory of every Star. It makes no sense to view True Will in terms of what might have been had we made different choices. We can all dream, I dream of wood shavings and oil varnish, but that isn't the path I am currently on, it's not the real trajectory of my Star.
We have to pay attention to the real topography of our lives, to 'chop wood and carry water' as current conditions require. As a 6=5, Karma Yoga is central to my practice, and that union with Karma has to be based on reality as it is, not as I would like it to be (although there's nothing wrong with working towards something, should circumstances allow). Even if we don't like it, we have to be ready to throw ourselves in at the deep end every day, and not count the cost. We don't always get the choice, but when we get our marching orders, we march, we don't stop and ask why.
When the Order comes, i it is often unequivocal, while at the same time being completely natural, the forces that govern our lives don't usually require a light show, except to penetrate the densest minds perhaps. It's perhaps no coincidence that at the six month point since my beginning the 5=6 work, instead of lights and visions, I was offered a graduate school placement on a full scholarship, something that I applied for simply as one of several potential pathways and one I didn't really expect to get. There was nothing to make it stand out and no clap of thunder from the heavens. No lights or obvious meeting with an Angel were required seemingly, it wasn't necessary to go to that effort, the message was delivered exactly when it was needed, and more importantly, it was heard and answered. Instead of bliss I got marching orders; "go back to school". I recall only one indication of 'advice', or subtle guidance. At the time when I was applying for other jobs and getting interviews, having just graduated and freshly back in the job market. I had the unavoidable urge to cancel other options and pursue this course, which I did almost despite myself. My A.'.A.'. supervisor later confirmed that this course of action constituted success in the 5=6 operation. In my case it seems that there was no time to bathe in the glory of 5=6 within, no long honeymoon, my HGA seemed to want to get down to business right away, and off I went.
So what is the path now. My earthly calling long left behind. The human initiate still regards this with sadness and a certain amount of longing, whilst also recognising that my current path has plenty to recommend it even though it's not easy. Yet the Adept knows that this is as it should be, total commitment calls for the sacrifice of 'what I would like to be' for 'what is', and Karma Yoga in that sense is simply the day to day pursuit of the path beneath our feet. As a sea captain who navigates the North Atlantic in a gale must take great care of the sea and the wind as they are now, never mind the fact that he'd much prefer to by riding a headwind in the South Pacific, or harbouring safely somewhere with warm taverns and good food.
So to my understanding, this is True Will. Just go on, read the sea on it's own terms, plot an accurate and unbiased course, put aside preferences, and most of all, listen. As the Blue Cliff record has it in case 2: "Chao-chou, teaching the assembly, said, “The Ultimate Path is without difficulty; just avoid picking and choosing."
That, to my mind, is the clearest and most direct description of the True Will, the way of the Tao.
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