This post as been edited to append the answer to a great question someone asked.
We’ve had many thousands of years of social control through meddling. Maybe tens or hundreds of thousands. It’s extremely difficult to wake up and do something completely differently–such as Thelema.
We are so used to groups creating atmospheres in which only certain ways of thinking and feeling are tolerated that most of us have never even questioned the basic approach or imagined a different approach–the Thelemic one.
Family, societies, organizations—these have been telling members they are not an acceptable part of the group unless they conform. Nowadays, people pick and choose their group membership based on the beliefs espoused, but they fail to realize that there’s no essential difference between such groups. They’re all based on violence, “that state of manyhood bound and loathing” (AL, I:46).
As a juvenile, I ran away from home when I was threatened with incarceration in a mental institution simply for voicing philosophical differences from the materialist view of reality. I would never have known the violence lying behind the façade of social freedom unless I had resisted the pressure to conform.
Belief-based groups have formed an instrumental alliance based on wielding power against some other group. Members of such groups may say they love and care for one another, but that’s not possible. The minute someone breaks the contract, they’re exiled and shunned. The entire “family” turns their back on them. No one in such a group enjoys real love, friendship, or respect. They’re using each other to feel safe and powerful by agreeing to support one another’s illusions.
Many well-meaning people have lost their Thelemic moorings by trying to gussy up the Law of Thelema with specific belief systems of one kind or another. They don’t recognize the gulf between their cherished ideas and the actual Law of Thelema, under which people must courageously embrace the Nothing—the Unknown which we clothe in the rags of familiarity. In Qabalah, these rags are known as the Shells, or Qlippoth.
Thelema is Absolute Freedom, which includes the right to stop those who *actually* thwart your free expression, whatever its content—and I do mean WHATEVER.
Disagree freely with your brothers and sisters, of course, but respect their Star. Fight with them if they thwart your Freedom. But truly let them be whoever and whatever they are in this moment. “For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect” (AL, I:44).
Note, however, that all magickal acts (i.e., all actions whatsoever) have consequences. This is absolutely crucial to understand. The Sin of Restriction isn’t just heeding any resistance whatsoever. It’s specifically heeding *mental* resistance spun by the fearful and dualistic human mind to clothe the Nothing in something we falsely believe we can control.
Real Form, real limitation, our real Law—that we *must* discern and obey. I regard Thelema as the most difficult spiritual path imaginable, in that it involves each center of consciousness distinguishing his or her genuine Law as it applies in that moment from the din of pseudo-authoritative voices attempting to seduce them into their easy, mechanistic, and self-serving set of rules and norms. Any specific “rule” that someone proposes as the way you should be is anti-Thelemic. Rules and mob-norms substitute for self-Knowledge and self-governance.
YET, the actual Law under which any one of us operates is so ruthlessly strict, so fierce, that most people would break down weeping and go mad instantly if they were forced to be conscious of It all at once. The ego would shatter and the unready chakra system would be destroyed. It’s the reason A.’.A.’. aspirants spend decades ascending the Tree as they acquire severe self-discipline. The true path we walk as Thelemites is so lonely and so narrow as to terrify the “fools of men” regarding whom Nuit commands, “[C]are not thou at all!” (AL: I:31).
Many self-identified Thelemites are not energetically prepared for the Aeon. Thus they are fortifying their mental armor by hiding behind ready-made rules and norms. And until their chakras are ready they should shield them—although they should also do as much as they can to open themselves safely to the Law of Thelema, which they cannot avoid forever. “I am in a secret fourfold word, the blasphemy against all gods of men” (AL, 1:49).
Holding the intent of channeling the One Will, every Thelemic aspirant should examine his or her proposed “chess move” for its next *several* likely consequences. This type of thinking can help a Thelemite refrain from impulsive acts of “Want” dictated by the personality that are likely to create unnecessary havoc and conflict.
My late teacher, Jerry Cornelius, used to say, “When two Stars collide, at least one of them is out of orbit.” I can’t do anything about others being out of orbit, but I can and do refrain from foolishly colliding with other Stars due to *my* being out of orbit.
It’s not that we should avoid all conflict, which is of course impossible. It’s that we should pick our battles, choosing from those that align with the Universal Will and then committing to them. “As brothers, fight ye!” (AL: III, 59). I stress, “As brothers”.