Listen Brother! Are you. FREE?
Are you enjoying the full, free
life of the true master-class, or
are you groveling in slavery, in sin?
“Sir,” you reply, “What is sin to me? I have outgrown such ideas as Sin, and Hell and the Devil. Nowadays, no educated person believes in the existence of these things. But, as to Freedom? How can I be free when I am working 10 hours a day, so that the Capitalist who is pocketing 3/4 of the results of my labour, may live in luxury and idleness on the money I earn for him. How can I be free under such a system?”
Listen Brother! You may be free NOW, if you WILL. Work does not bind you. Work is no sin, but RESTRICTION is. “The word of Sin is Restriction.” You are sinning as long as you feel restricted, for “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!”
It is not the Capitalist who is preventing you from enjoying to the full your leisure hours. It is not your daily work which prevents you from taking advantage to the full the pleasures of your spare time. It is yourself, because you have either forgotten how to enjoy yourself or you have never learned, or been taught, or tried to teach yourself.
Freedom is Fullness of Life, Manliness of Action, Virility in Love, Fearlessness of Conduct combined with the utmost toleration of the rights of others, and a true recognition of their liberty to do their Will.
What, think you, is the reason why the Latin and the Chinese and the Hindu (of whom many of you are jealous because you think they have no right here and would take away work that you should have) are willing to work for a mere pittance? It may well be that you have good cause to envy them, if you did but know it, for they are Con-tented and Happy because their SPARE TIME, their LEISURE (however short) is FULL OF DELIGHT. They are wont to indulge their true feelings in every way, including the proper way, for it must be admitted that many of the Oriental Races are masters in the art of producing pleasure WITHOUT EXPENSE. They know, from experience, as you have never known, as yet, that an Hour of Rapture is recompense for a Day of hard work.Don’t you see, brother, how you are being fooled with regard to these things, all the time. How those who want to keep you in slavery are cunningly (or ignorantly, it matters little) working in every possible way to take from you one true pleasure after another, to prohibit you from all those things Nature has provided for your enjoyment and highest good? Don’t you see how the more their grasp on you slackens, the more they will try and take, so that they may better retain their hold, while you are less and less in a position to Free yourself, and more and more stupefied into submission because there is so little of the true man left in you to fight? Their very system is based on slavery (your slavery) as representing the highest perfection, though the Truth they once held – but never declared and therefore lost – was intended to lead you to Perfect Freedom.
But when you enjoy yourselves and take delight in those pleasures of which the Life of man is made up, you must remember that every act of Pleasure and of Love is a Sacrament and as such is holy. That is just where you have been making the mistake in the past. You have looked upon these things as wrong, and therefore restricted yourselves and your actions making them sins instead of realizing their true value and perfect holiness. Again, if you drink wine, and so long as you enjoy it – and you will enjoy it when you understand how to use it is not wrong, but you should drink unto the honour and glory of Our Lady of the Starry Heavens, Nuit, Who has Herself given us these teachings, and who tells us in our Holy Book, the Book of the Law, Liber Legis: “Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.” If you ever bear this one point in mind, and remember that these acts are holy and sacred, not sins, but true virtues, life will at once wear a different aspect. You will no longer feel sorrowful or sad, and while you look upon the wine you drink as a Sacrament, you will never debase yourself by getting ‘drunk’ in the old sense of the word, but you will ENJOY your drink as never before. Thus with Love, and all else in which you indulge and take delight. For “It is a lie, this folly against self – Be strong man! Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.”
Be strong then, Brother, and be not afraid. Work, work hard and well, since your living depends on this, but after your toil is over, in your leisure hours, remember what we have told you, Seek Rapture, if only for an hour, and learn that Love is the law, love under will.
Frater Achad
Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886 – 1950)
Outtakes from “FREEDOM: AN ESSAY”
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