On Contempt

Aleister Crowley famously wrote ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’

Aleister Crowley famously wrote ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’. By this he refers to a will that manifests in our conscious awareness from our unconscious Self. The idea is that if we attend appropriately to this will, than we cannot be led astray. 

This will manifests as a stream of unconscious urgings and content, with the overall goal being to induce personal growth. It is up to us to understand and take action when our inner urging is in conflict with how we currently operate in the world. If we reject this process, than we are failing to achieve what is most personally important to us. We hold our Self and thereby ourselves in contempt, and by that same token are allowing others to treat us the same way.

Wikipedia defines contempt as a moral judgment. The individual involved fails to live up to an interpersonal standard that the contemptor treats as important, and as such is held in low regard. It is important to note that the most important interpersonal standard that we must live up to is the relationship that we have with our Self. Failing to honor this relationship is to hold our Self in low regard, as we are deeming some part of who we are as unacceptable.

To further illustrate this, last week I wrote that I had been experiencing ennui, and had experienced negativity around my passive attitude at work, which was followed up this week by a dream that shed further light on this problem. This can be interpreted as my unconscious highlighting what part of myself I was deeming to be unacceptable. Dreams represent a current state of affairs, and negativity highlighted in dreams indicate how my conscious being and unconscious urgings are in conflict. By reflecting on this subjective content, I can begin to integrate this conflict into my conscious awareness.

In the dream from this week, I had lost my job and am playing the part of a desperate job seeker. I pepper my recruiter with constant requests for updates. I have abandoned any thought of tailoring my job hunt to where I actually want to steer my career, and am instead intending to accept the first employer who will hire me.

I am hired for a temp role that is not remotely appropriate to my skillset. Even so, I attempt to pretend to myself that I could make it work. My parents turn up and are furious with me, even as I continue to scope out the role in a covert way to see if it could really work.

This dream then has very obvious parallels to my current situation. I have been experiencing a deepset feeling of inaction, not wanting to approach my manager to discuss where to steer my career. This displays the same dynamic of desperation, wanting to take whatever comes and make the best of it. Much like the recruiter in the dream, I am actually displaying contempt for my manager and the professional environment that I operate in by not doing my part in sharing my professional aspirations, and working through this with my manager. Finally, If we look a bit more closely, we might interpret my parents within the dream as my Self, and its disappointment in not respecting its urging. 

In summary, we hold ourselves in proper esteem whenever we align with our True Will. Or in Jung’s terminology, whenever we respond appropriately to the urging of our unconscious we work towards realizing our full potential as a human being. To do otherwise is to make ourselves to be less than what we are. It is to hold ourselves in contempt through ignoring the urging of our Self, and in doing so, we thereby invite contempt from others.