On Methodology In Spiritual and Magickal Practice

Hi. First, a little bit about myself. I practice a form of Chaos magick with influences from Zen & Advaita philosophy. My main expertise is the following subjects: Astral projection, meditation, higher states of consciousness, clairvoyance and magickal manifestation. I work pragmatically without dogma but draw a lot of inspiration and ideas from whatever resonates, including mine and other's experiences.

I'm going to approach a very difficult subject, which is to try to distill the essence of my spiritual and magickal experiences into a concrete and simple collection of important methods and ways of thinking. The goal is simple; to expand the reaches of mind, of positive self-transformation, of self-realization and having a lot of fun. In part, that will involve the development and maintenance of a practical foundation that keeps you safe in the abyss... Sorry, we're not going to go crazy and try to take over the world. I'm going to discuss some very advanced and deep subjects, but I'm also going to keep it as simple and clear as possible - the beginner's mind is invaluable. I will refrain from dictating truths about The Meaning of Life, The Universe & Everything. You will not find many examples of black&white thinking or deeply held beliefs, but if you do, please try not to take it too seriously.

The reason for my writing all of this is because I believe there is a very simple but extremely effective core lingering in all these strange branches of magick and spiritual practices, and it connects with how we relate to ordinary life and how we treat ourselves. It might be something very obvious and dull when you talk about it, but it is another thing to live in this core, to give yourself completely to it, to dive in head first with no regard for personal safety... and then come up on the other end being someone completely different. That is what I am interested in. The effect, the result, the transformation, the experience of renewal, of novelty, of vision. So what I'm going to talk about is the environment of making that happen. My writing is a form of practice, it is an invitation for you to practice (or keep practicing) for yourself, and perhaps something interesting will come out of it. What you want to do with it is your own concern. But it is my opinion that boredom is a horrendous transgression against all that is holy. And I have declared myself an enemy of boredom.

Like many others, I have had tremendous difficulties dealing with my path. It has often been a strange blend of half-hearted dabbling, deep revelations and humiliating failures. At first, I rarely got what I wanted to work. I either wanted it too much, or I wanted it too little. There have been times when everything I believed in completely failed me, just as there have been times where it has all clicked completely. As my experiences and my practice have matured, I have slowly developed a different perspective on this mess and have been able to spot where and why I went wrong. My approach has always involved a rigorous memorization of important aspects and processes so that I am able to pass them on. Partly, this is my fetish of invoking knowledge that deserves to be passed on, but it is also a way to deal with my over-active and restless mind.

Anyway, in the midst of all of my trials and errors, a deep conviction, that began as a whisper almost 10 years ago, has gradually crystallized into something that becomes more and more true every day. It is as follows:

The mind that secures magickal results and spiritual realization is the mind of Already Accomplished

The mind of "already accomplished" pt 1

A mind that is "already accomplished" is in a state of refined gnosis that has fused with every action of the practicioner in daily life. It means that in every moment that this mind-state is maintained, experiential insight transmutes into a strange combination of intense joyful abandon and incredible accuracy in the use of innate talents, as every aspect of reality reflects the internally projected state of accomplishment. The potential is a life of 24/7 flow and ease: When there are no obstructions to the natural flow of the magick practicioner, there is no need to engage any specific method of intention or thought, yet magickal faculties, deep insights and material satisfactions come about regardless. This means that no effort, method or ritual is necessary apart from the discipline of unlocking and maintaining the state itself.

Practicing it is hard and requires 100% dedication, but the fruits should be obvious from day 1 and eventually lead to enough motivation to keep it up.

In short, the practice of this state is a continual deepening of the mindset that you are already fully accomplished and have nothing further to do in order to complete or validate yourself. As a result of applying the mindset in action, difficulties and obstructions dissipate without effort. You can and should use this state for anything and everything you could possibly want to do. As good as that sounds, there are many, many difficulties and subtle nuances in the matter of this practice. I am going to try and cover as many of those as I can in this thread.

First of all, the statement that the mind should already be convinced of its accomplishment in order to unlock its abilities is a classic double-bind. It's just like the other ones; you have to stop seeking to find it, you have to believe it to see it, and so on.

To the unexperienced, a statement like that is mostly pretty meaningless and unhelpful. To the more initiated, it can be a typical example of a powerful ally and foe at the same time; a riddle. To some, it is a demonstration of the only necessary spiritual tool to carry with you.

But it is a gate and a riddle. I cannot describe a method that will take care of things for you instantly and make sense of the paradox. It doesn't work like that. To pass the riddle does not mean just coming up with an intellectual answer through a method, but having a concrete experience of something that settles the very core of doubt. The statement is my symbol of the realm of the unusual, we can call it magick, spirit, energy, mind, whatever. But this is where we begin, with questions and riddles. Think about that for a moment. That is where we began very long ago. That is where you began. All of life is a matter of great questions and riddles, one big whooping unknown. Do we slay our demons one at a time to develop the bigger view, or do we go right for the Big Dragon in the hope that it will take all the rest with it? How crazy can these riddles drive us? Just how do we approach life?

In the world of magick, it's pretty standard to begin with simple experiments like Sigils. If you haven't even done sigils, just do a simple one. It takes no effort. Do it and then forget about it. This is not about whether you get a result or not. It's about whether you can apply yourself to a strange ritual. Can you give yourself up, momentarily, for something that you'd usually consider silly and unusual? Isn't that quite a challenge? Where are your limits? Why are they there?

But this is the point of my riddle. It is not about intellectual understanding, it is a matter of raw experience, the core essence of one's interaction with existence itself. Everybody knows that if we want to actively change our experience, we have to do something. When that change reaches beyond our scope, our only hope is heading right into the unusual and unfamiliar with absolutely no guarantee. A good occult practice is in its essence a matter of thriving in that environment.

It seems everybody's got their own definition, but I'd say that fundamental magick practice begins when you realize that something as simple as a Sigil works. I'd like to say that Chaos magick begins when you realize that you don't even need a Sigil for it to work. Just that one special action, that one moment of focused output, be it in thought or feeling or action, will result in something very strange. It is extremely difficult to do such a simple act properly and that is the point of rituals. Rituals provide us with a focal point to get rid of that judgmental inhibitory thinking, which allows the magickal effect to transpire precisely because we get rid of the obstruction by the ritual itself. Is it then true that the more crazy, the more extravagant the ritual is, the better the result will be?

My approach has nothing to do with rituals. It attacks the root of the problem: Fear, uncertainty and doubt. As it applies to virtually every aspect of our lives, I am not going to prioritize any specific type of occult practice here even though I might mention a few. It means something much bigger.

Many of the implications around occult practice suggest a very difficult statement: All obstacles are self-created. There is a way to do it right, and if you aren't doing it that way, you won't get that result. You're either too stupid to do it right, you just haven't found the right way to do it, or maybe it just doesn't work. This can set off a very long line of questions and doubts. Sensible individuals can just decide that if something doesn't work, it's not for them, but for some people, it's not that simple.

If you go a bit deeper, that difficult statement becomes more defined: If you can't do it, it's because you don't believe in it or yourself. If you are able to conjure up that special state of mind that nobody can describe or give to you, you will have no problem.

But how does that help us deal with our obstacles? What do we do if we aren't able to conjure up that "special state of mind"?

I can probably only speak for myself, but the common reaction seems to be to try vastly different methods and learn as much as possible in the head to make it happen. We can then begin to flay ourselves with strenuous practices and rituals, and this process can go on forever. There is literally no end to it. You can start another type of practice, and fail at that just the same. And because there are so many interesting things to do out there, we can go through our whole lives just trying different things out. Just sampling. I'm not saying that's too bad, you might not want to get too involved with this thing called living. But if it's not enough to just try, this is why I'm writing this. I have been in that camp many, many times, and it quickly gets very boring!

The reason I find magick so interesting is because it can completely reveal how we deal with daily life: What I found out when I analyzed the difficulties of my practice was that no matter what I wanted to do, I had questions about doing it, specifically, doing it right. The sole reason I had the questions was because I didn't think I was able to do it, and because I didn't think I was able to do it, I wouldn't actually do it. Whenever I thought I did it, I didn't really do it because reality proved that I didn't. This compounded the doubt because I realized that I couldn't even believe my own thinking that I could do it. You can apply that to just about every activity you can imagine, occult and ordinary.

This is why this state of "already accomplished" is very difficult to achieve and easy to misunderstand. It is not a mantra, a thought or a method. It is a direct and powerful experience that does away with the need to even think about it. You can't think yourself into accomplishing something. You have to do it without question. Being able to understand what this "do it" actually involves, and getting there, no matter if one begins with a mind full of confusion and doubt, is what this thread is about.

An important breaking point that I eventually experienced was the insight that the questioning of my own ability wasn't spurred by a question, but by an underlying conviction that I was unable to do it right. I didn't question because I didn't know how, I questioned because I was certain I didn't know how - it was unfamiliar to me. This didn't help me one bit at first, but it halted the rampant search for another method or way of approach, because I finally had to admit to myself that if there is a problem, it has to be in here. Realizing this is about the most important aspect of developing an occult practice, because now you have something to build a foundation upon: Your own sorry ass.

The Idea of a Path

This is a matter of opinion but I'd say there are no paths, really. There is no big end goal. It goes on forever and you're just here for the show. If you like to think that you're going through stages or leveling up, that's your own game. Life doesn't work like that. It's a cyclical hula-hoop rollercoaster of weird twists and bends, and when you find yourself just right, you might find yourself just where you started. You might also find yourself being somewhere and being someone completely different. You might have everything down one day, and the next you will once again find yourself at the mercy of your own incompetence and the world's indifference. And then there's the bit where you go away and don't return and can't take any of those precious levels with you.

I think that any path that can start with that kind of self-deprecating and relaxed attitude is good enough to end with it. That is my idea of a path. One that begins and ends every day. It doesn't have to be very special. It's often not until many years after the fact that we realize we have been on a kind of path, and that our difficulties pointed to something important that we didn't see in retrospect. But our realization was the point of the path, the learning was the point of it, the experience of not knowing and then knowing. Knowing from the start wouldn't have been fun. But that's just the beginning. Then there's something new and inspiring, just right for who we are at the time. So don't be anxious to reach an end goal, because there isn't one. There isn't a next stage. The next stage is when you drop off all crutches, all ideas of attaining something, and start finding out who the fuck you are right now in the first place.

The problem with establishing a path that involves an imaginary end goal is the same problem with magick in the first place: nothing, no matter how big the attainment is, ever sticks with you as a guarantee. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to drastically change your reality in the next second, but there is no reason that should stick even throughout that one second. Anything else would rule out the complex dynamics of change and individual choice. You might be able to completely understand what I'm talking about while you're sitting and meditating on your own, but what happens when you do something unfamiliar and unsafe? What happens when you experience pain and disappointment?

But this is the good thing about chaos. It means that nothing is final and we are always beginners of the moment. What we think of as being stuck is just an autonomous habit of resuming an attitude that we don't want. Why do we get stuck? Because the familiar, no matter how uncomfortable it is, might be better than the unfamiliar to a doubtful mind. So in order to get un-stuck, we must brace the unfamiliar.

I'm writing this both for beginners and the advanced in mind. In order to be well-prepared, we have to become beginners every day. I don't care how much of a grandmaster of sorcery you think you are, you have to become a beginner every single day or that type of thinking is going to result in serious stagnation. It is a natural law. Every time we build up a character of ourselves, we put up a charade that usually creates more obstacles than we need. You just are what you are, you know?

The Foundations of Practice

In the ordinary world, practice is a very boring word. Sure, it makes perfect, but it takes alot of time and effort: It's only that boring grind before you get what really matters. In the occult, practice is an amazing word. It's about the only thing that matters, you. Practicing being you, practicing mistakes, practicing success. Correct practice brings instant results. Being attentive to who you are and what you want is what constitutes practice, so it is a matter of being attentive in the correct way.

What elements do we need in this practice to make it a kind of foundation? That depends completely on who's asking. What do you want to get out of life? What you want, what intrigues and inspires you are the elements that you want to bring into your foundation. The problem with a bad foundation is that the result will always be that you are dissatisfied, while at the same time, you are not even remotely involving yourself with what you want.

Within the world of the occult, building a foundation usually means a great deal of mind training.

I can say that it's not very difficult, once you get the hang of it, to let loose in the privacy of your mind and believe that you're invoking Satan's butthole while flying across the Ultraverse in a doghouse, even though reality shows all signs of the contrary. It's possible that some people think this is what magick is about. It's fun for a while, but it's clumsy and ineffective. There's an art to the power of mind, an art of experiencing the depths of it, of maintaining stability and experiencing concrete results. It is incredibly difficult to pull off greater occult feats, which require that kind of self-knowledge that the mind training brings. Additionally, I believe that any reasonable practicioner needs to have one foot on solid ground, in ordinary life, and both worlds reflect eachother. Otherwise there's the risk that you're going to start invoking Satan's butthole in the mall. No, not really. But one should remain perfectly capable of ordinary matters while practicing, and that is why mind training is so imperative.

If you can appreciate this, you can safely disregard the big deal with going insane or wreaking serious havoc in your life. All the proposed dangers of occult practice are results of approaching it in the completely wrong way, due to conditioned negative thinking and failures in self-observation. Here, we are going to deal with that type of thinking first and continue with it as a subset of our magick practice.

Mind training usually begins with some type of very simple concentration practice or meditation. I practice meditation every day and I can only heartily recommend it. It wasn't easy for me in the beginning, and I'm going to bring it up later as separate topic. But basically, the practice of training the mind into remaining effortlessly focused on one thing only opens up your mental periphery to such a degree that every aspect of reality becomes utterly transparent on a level beyond the normal. This is where we enter into the realm of Gnosis, which is related to that special state I talked about earlier.

Any type of concentration practice will do. Anything. Focusing on a candle, a small object, a mental visualization is a good way to start. Or just have a seat and follow your breath. Try anything and everything, for as long or as short as you'd like. I prefer to meditate with my eyes open facing a wall, in silence and in a posture that keeps me awake on the floor, but my idea is that one should be able to concentrate in all situations; with music, unwanted noise, in a certain posture and no certain posture. Flexibility is key, but the most important ingredient is consistency. You have to do something every single day. The real effectiveness of mind training comes when one can invoke this concentration practice in almost every moment of the day, when the line between being acutely aware and perfectly relaxed starts to blur. This is intimately connected with the effectiveness of magickal endeavors - it all comes together in this practice of mind training.

So, it is not only necessary to train the mind to be able to adjust for spiritually and mentally engaging tasks such as an act of magick or astral projection, but also to remain stable and perfectly able to deal with all ordinary situations in reality. When this is obvious, we can begin to apply ourselves in order to experience the mind-state of "already accomplished" and just how effective it is...

I'm going to continue abit on Foundations of Practice.

It is my intention to write of this foundation as something that we can not only return to and disassemble, but we should be ready to do that even in a moment's notice. This is a very tough process that involves careful scrutiny in self-observation. The reason why it is important to be able to do this is because the strength of the occult practice foundation is not in the strength of the beliefs that go with it (the beliefs are tools that you put on top of it), but the developed capacity of self-observation and the ability to reshape the personal identity, of immediacy and dealing with the unexpected.

This is a slightly unusual approach to the problem of identity, because we are all somewhat conditioned to the idea that a strong sense of self lies in having strong values, a baggage of root beliefs and being set in the ways of heritage and environment. Not so, but you might be able to imagine why one would think that.

The reason this different approach is a good approach is because it gets you what you want. It gets you out of old mistakes, habits and bumping up against walls. That is the whole point. Period.

All power and will lies in action. When there is the slightest hesitation, it becomes tainted and powerless. You get the result you want when you throw yourself out there completely and discover that you have not only changed yourself but your entire reality. Our capacity for magickal action is a tool to take us where we wouldn't expect ourselves to go, a way to hone our abilities to explore what's in the unknown and then deal with it.

So, it is important to be able to revisit the foundation at any time. This is when your practice can become much more open-ended and not tied to any particular school of beliefs or methods. It simply becomes the practice or the path, something highly personal to you. You might not even be able to describe what it is, you just know it. When you have this type of relationship with your path, sooner or later you will discover that EVERYTHING is part of your practice. Everything relates to your individual goals and reflects your state. Your dreams, your highs, your lows, your difficulties, everything. When the world around you begins to saturate with meaning, you are getting to know your path.

What's so interesting about all of this is that when it happens, it becomes blatantly obvious what magick is and how powerful it is. Every little ordinary thing reflects who you are and what you want, and what you decide to do with it becomes your Thor's Hammer. Your reaction to your experience, in every moment, shapes the experience just as it is happening. And there is such a tremendous butterfly-effect to every action, because it builds upon the sense of self and influences every future action. And just as you shape your world, you are shaped by it, which makes you incredibly interconnected with reality. This type of revelation alone can solve a whole lot of problems and that is why I believe that only focusing on one's capacity of aggressive will-power will often lead to serious mishaps. It is also important to restructure one's will, to be able to bend and adjust according to the situation. So, we need equal capacity of activity and passivity.

An interesting way to look at it is that you are essentially your own egregore. Every habit and thought that is fed takes on a life of its own and becomes an automatic system of ways of dealing with reality, that takes the form of personality. This is all well and good when we are comfortable with who we are and what we are doing, but whenever there is a need for something new, we have to start very deep within ourselves. I am not for a moment saying that this is easy. As Alexis Carrel said, "Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."

I am not suggesting that you need to switch beliefs like underwear, but you need to be able to carefully examine your current ones and whether they serve you. But this type of statement is a bit of a riddle, just like the matter of finding out what you want and who you are. It's not a matter of setting up lists, comparing and going through extensive quality judgments between different aspects of the self and beliefs. You don't have to try to find that stuff out. What you need to be able to do is to be intuitively aware of what you're doing in the present moment. That alone leads to insight regarding who you are, what you want and what your beliefs are really are doing for you. Reality really helps you out in this department because it reflects this at all times. There is not a moment in which you cannot discover something important about yourself.

There is no such thing as, oh, here is my occult practice and over here is my ordinary life and they are two separate things. Dissipating that line is part of the practice. Any ordinary obstruction is an occult obstruction and vice versa. Achieving a sensitive balance between the two is what secures the effects of magickal success without turning you into a total loon. You don't need that. That is my entire point. You can be completely ordinary and yet have the same abilities of a mage or realized spiritual master. With that said, I am not dissing any of the fluff. It's a whole lot of fun for those who are so inclined, but don't be mistaken into thinking that you need it.

On Noticing

As I've expressed earlier, the key to mind training, building your foundation and eventual magick action begins with being self-aware. Being self-aware is not the same thing as being self-conscious. It doesn't involve overthinking. True self-awareness is freedom from overthinking due to complete understanding. It does away with the necessity to overthink. When we are self-aware, we are free to concentrate our attention as desired - but we have to become self-aware first. We do this by noticing ourselves. Some people approach noticing as a means to an end and wonder what they are supposed to do with what they notice. This is because they haven't noticed enough and thus don't really understand noticing.

So, again: Noticing is not a means to an end. Noticing is the very end goal itself, the final result; the most important thing to do this very moment for a person who wants to engage their occult practice. If you sincerely wish to reduce conflict and invoke what you want, you should think real hard on your means to noticing; what opportunities you have in order to engage noticing rather than what noticing should do to you. Then you should practice those opportunities.

Anything can be a way of noticing. But it has to be something that is happening right now. Your heartbeat, your breath and your physical movement are good means of noticing. It can also be something happening outside of you, but it's more difficult to notice an outside phenomenon AND recognizing the reactionary judgment that you generate in relation to it. It is similar with your thoughts. You shouldn't ignore your thoughts, but concentrate on them too much and you WILL try to fix them while you're missing what you are doing with your body! Conversely, it's really hard to be excessively judgmental on your heartbeat or breath, so that's a good way to start.

If you notice that your breath is constricted, your focus should not be to judge how constricted it is, but to lessen the constriction. And the only way to do that is to reduce physical tension. As we go full circle, the most effective way to reduce physical tension is to get in touch with the present moment... by noticing!

In the present moment, past guilt and future worries drop away. We open up to ourselves, our will, our acceptance and our marvelous abilities of dealing with what we have in front of us right now. By doing that, we build the confidence and mental acuity to deal with larger issues in ways that we would normally not even recognize as valid options. This is tremendously validating and brings a quality of life beyond imagination. And that is precisely why we notice. It's really that simple.

I'm going to go through a brief examination of psychological time to show you my take on the mechanics, even though they may not be entirely accurate, nor apply to everyone. They are based on my rigid assumptions of a regular human being.

Fig. A:


I assume that most people have this kind of an intuitive conception of time. It goes in a straight line from start to finish. We have our limiting baggage in the back, and the unknown in the front. And right now, this elusive present now of nows, is so tiny and ungraspable that it can hardly be said to exist, yet it moves us completely without our control. We know that we are always facing the now, but we are somehow stuck in the back with our baggage. And we are supposed to feel powerful inbetween all of this? No fucking wonder it's hard to be a human!

The lower half of Fig. A is the internal reaction process to what happens in the schema of time; not only related to how we move our attention in the now, even though it is connected directly to the now, but it also happens in relation to our past and future. Our attention is what motivates our emotions, and our emotions usually go together with our thoughts. Your reality is essentially manifesting itself through your attention. As your attention rampantly moves all over this spectrum, like an arrow dictating precisely how you feel and think, getting to know it is going to be a very difficult but important task.

Do not underestimate the strength of your attention. It CAN move precisely how you want, BUT you motivate the movement of your attention so effectively that it can make you completely powerless. You will always have a real good, solid reason as to why you are being stuck, why mondays suck or why the world is going to shit, etc. If you ever want to change your attention, the most solid obstacle that you will ever find is the reasoning that you can't do it, and so you won't. The thing about the present moment is that the more you get in touch with it, the more all of that lessens.

As we are just starting out, I'm not talking about extremely large issues, but the small ones that you have to deal with right now and mostly do deal with in a reasonable way. The thing about the small ones right now is that they ultimately influence your opinion of your overall quality of life. What you realize, as you notice the immediate moment, is that you do change your attention a whole lot. You move it all over the goddamn place. And each and every time, it is completely your choice. You just don't think you do. You think that the attachments, the thoughts and the reasoning behind your personality are the only you there is. But widening our attention is all about getting in touch with the bigger you, and the most effective way to do that is to get in touch with who you are RIGHT NOW.


Fig B:


I'm going to admit something. I lied in my description of fig. A. There is no past and no future. It is all happening right now. What actually happens when we move into the past, as displayed in fig. b, is that it is not a real past. It is our conception of the past happening right now. What's moving is the attention. In this scenario, the memory is limiting and negative. The attention is distracting itself with the memory, and the more it does so, the more limited it becomes in the present. The point about the now is that it is that place where you sit right now, free of all of those things, not separate of them, but encompassing them. You have the choice right now to keep focusing your attention in a limiting way, or you can focus on other things. So what happens is that when you get in touch with your attention, the more free and flexible it becomes.


Fig C:


As displayed here, it is actually not so simple as just being occupied with a memory. We are occupied with many things at once. When we move into our conception of the future, we simultaneously invoke our memories AND our expectations of the future. We may think, at the time, that it is only the future we're concerned about, but most of the time we are occupied in this way with a myriad of different associations and attachments, both related to the past and the future. The prime thing is that the more of this shit you've got going on, the less you're actually noticing the now.

You can focus on something different and more validating in a way that you struggle against your past and your natural movement, or you can focus on it in a way that you don't. The key to noticing is recognizing the ways of not doing that struggle, not invoking physical tension, not heading into conflict. Because you can recognize, by noticing, that right now you are essentially free of all that anyway.


Fig. D:


When you recognize all of this going on, it doesn't necessarily happen that all the conflict drops away, but you are much more centered. A Zen Master called it "no-thought in the midst of thought". You get in touch with that elusive present moment AND your elusive attention. You get to know who you really are at this very moment, and that you are aware of so much more than you think you are. And what's even more interesting is that you become more aware of what you really want.

I'm going to venture a guess that in the midst of all the crazy pipe-dreams of magick power and spiritual enlightenment, what you want most of the time is to reduce conflict right here and now. You might want effortlessness, self-validation, will-power, all that jazz. The reason you think you aren't able to experience that without accomplishing a really big and far-off goal is because you aren't noticing how much conflict you are creating right now, how distrusting you are, simply by the habitual movement of your attention. In worse cases, it's a loop of self-doubt, in which the only means to reducing the self-doubt is an absolutely impossible expectation.

The simple thing about noticing is that you can lessen the majority of conflict and self-doubt through lessening physical tension and stopping the heavy focus on past and future. That is exactly what noticing does. Noticing is itself an act of will-power. It means that you actually face yourself right now.

Anyway, noticing, meditation, mindfulness, being present, they're all essentially the same thing. The thing is that most of us, westerners in particular, are somewhat opposed to these things. We may even consider them worthwile endeavors in a crazy world, but we don't actually understand how to do them. And a whole load of people who think they practice meditation or noticing don't actually do it.

The thing is, they force it. People engage meditation in pretzel-y postures and get their legs really stiff, possibly for years on end. They keep striving for that future relief of blissful nirvana and think that their tension is going to result in that. People who actually do meditate sit down and just breathe because it is a really easy and relaxing thing to do. And then, hopefully, they get inspired by that and keep that easy and relaxed attitude throughout their whole lives, in all situations. But this is essentially the whole issue with our belief systems in a nutshell. We believe that conflict - pushing and chasing - gets us what we want. And when it doesn't, we try even MORE pushing and create even more conflict. But noticing makes you realize how absolutely useless that is - that's just how effective it is.

There are loads and loads of meditation and mindfulness teachers who try to redefine their concepts in a way to make it sound less aggressive, less attached and less concentrated. Mindfulness is not being "full" of something, it is being open and effortless. It's the same thing with noticing. But you have to keep trying until you understand that YOU are making whatever effort and conflict that's going on right now.

In daily life, letting go of the excessive thinking around far-off pipe dreams is an important part of reducing alot of conflict. When you notice, you automatically realize the importance of that. It's not so much that you should want to give up on your goals, but you recognize the absolute impossibility of your tension and despair, right now, leading to ANYTHING useful for you or your wants either here or in the future. It just becomes glaringly obvious. And since the present conflict is far more tangible than a far-off dream, and it just happens to be something you already know HOW to deal with, it becomes much more important to actually deal with.

It's not a defeatist way of accepting that you are not able to do anything that you want, but rather, the more you notice and concentrate on the present to the point of almost forgetting your habitual memories and thoughts, the more you realize that your sole ability to do what you really want, to become more willful and active, depends absolutely and completely on your ability to not fight against yourself or reality in this moment. You become so fully aware of yourself that you realize that as long as you notice, you are going to be fine. Because in this very now, YOU are in charge, not your autopilot or ego or whatever you want to call it.

HOLY FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am too damn excited to post logically about this right now. I hope I can logically go through this and get all the things I haven't yet, perhaps even contribute a little.
OP you are great at putting your thoughts in to words. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted out of this site.

_s wrote:HOLY FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am too damn excited to post logically about this right now. I hope I can logically go through this and get all the things I haven't yet, perhaps even contribute a little.
OP you are great at putting your thoughts in to words. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted out of this site.

Thank you very much! You can look forward to much, much more, we are just scratching the surface.

Feel free to contribute anything at all. Give me your take, ask questions or point out something stupid, it's all good.

I have done some revisions to the previous sections for the sake of clarity. Before we go into more practical stuff, I'm going to do a brief treatise of an immensely important subject.

Let's say that you're not really the spiritual type; you just want to get down and dirty with magick. You might not even care whether it is your mind doing it or if it's happening in the "real" world - You just want to see something cool happen. You might be completely uninterested in astral projection, meditation and other new agey stuff - and the whole deal with spells and servitors sounds boring and complicated - you're the gutsy type and want to see if you can produce a direct change, whether it is visionary, an act of manifesting something or moving an object without touching it. As it's all clearly obvious that you just have to believe in it for it to happen - especially if it's your mind doing it - how hard can it be, right?

What happens next? You can seat yourself with the purpose in mind, and proceed to think, think and think until you get blue in the face. You can try not to think. You can try every god damn method that you could possibly imagine - and nothing will happen. You might come to the conclusion that your thoughts of doubt are messing the whole act up, so you try to stop those thoughts. If you're clever, you might even realize that any thought of waiting and controlling is an unconscious statement of doubt, so you try to stop that too. In really bad cases you could start doing weird hand gestures and mantras - anything to force your entire being into that one thing that you REALLY want to happen. You might even be able to generate a strong feeling of confidence about it - still, nothing is happening! What's the deal?

As long as you haven't settled whether the above works or not, it will be impossible for us to move on, so feel free to spend as much time doing it as you'd like. When the exhaustion and frustration is complete and you have been abit humbled, you can come back and we can get down to business.

Everybody who is experienced with some form of magick will probably agree with me that it is easy to get the outcome you want when you don't care so much about it. When it is easy to forget about the intention you've made, it happens, even if it might be completely unexpected. But it can't be serious. This is a great way to play synchronous jokes on yourself, which is all well and good, but you might want something more substantial. You could even have some success with material goods like money - not out of thin air, mind you - but NOT when you actually need it! As soon as it starts mattering to you, when it's about needed money, threatening disease or clearly unnatural acts that threaten the integrity of your view of reality, it stops working. You might come to the conclusion that you want it so bad that you're ready to give everything to make it happen, to the point that you even consider making yourself abit (or totally) crazy. It still won't work.

This is the only reason I am wasting your time with these walls of text about psychology and self-awareness. The outcome of any substantial desire depends on your processing on a much deeper level. There is no shortcut. No way around it. This is the whole essence of the double-bind; why the entrance into magick is a paradoxical riddle. No matter how fully you grasp that you have to believe in it for it to work, you can't make yourself believe in it. Or can you?

Ego and Beliefs

This is a bit of a loaded subject. This is the area in which there is a risk of serious problems, of mishaps, bumping into walls and generally not getting through with what you want. Depending on your spiritual or esoteric school of choice, you are going to have your own unique conception of the ego. It's even possible that you've got the idea of many egoes going on inside your psyche. But I'm sure that there are commonalities across the spectrum and you will find something of value in here.

First of all I'm going to try to clear up some of the confusion in the bluntest way I can: Your ego is not your enemy. Essentially, the ego is nothing but a misappropriation of language. It is mental short-hand for the private model that you have built up and use in the business of interacting with reality. You are not under control by it. It is not a demon and it's not out to get you. I suppose we can admit that it is shaped by external situations, but for the sake of this topic I will emphasize that it is primarily your work and your responsibility alone. Every moment that you engage this model, you solidify some aspect of it. It is not even a matter of cause and effect, or call and response. One instant of an engagement of the model is the same instant of solidification of the model. This is why I find it laughable when people start talking about eliminating their ego and wanting to go through ego death (more on that later). You are your ego, and your own volition in any given moment is the fuel of ego.

This model is not only related to your perception of external reality, but what you concieve of as you in any way that is quantifiable - positive or negative, one way or the other. It is your private collection of beliefs. So, dealing with beliefs is dealing with yourself. This is why it is difficult to directly handle the subject of changing beliefs, because it's easy to fall into the trap of mentally going through a shopping mall to pick and choose what you want, and then not having the slightest fucking clue where to go from there. This leads to frustration and thoughts of elimination - an instinctive response to a metaphysical problem.

As I said in an earlier post, you - your thoughts and your model - are your greatest magickal manifestation. It is living, breathing proof not only that magick works, but also how it works. Any aspect of the model is fed by adherence to it - by conscious and unconscious reinforcement. The difficult bit is that the adherence can defined as ANY quantifiable thought or act in relation to one particular belief. What this means is that both the act of holding to a certain attitude and fighting against it (trying to eliminate it) will be expressions of the same adherence to the same model. If I hold strongly to a certain view of something, it is not much different than the complete opposite view of the same subject - opposing religious extremists are a good example. So, you can't eliminate your ego or your current beliefs just like that. No matter what you do, the model will be around for as long as you live and it will stay healthy - so you can't go crazy by tinkering with it. If you want considerable change, it will be a matter of what you choose in one given moment.

When the way you interact with this model is absolutist and rigid, it completely limits you from Gnosis and the sphere of infinite possibility. This is essentially the form of the ego as the subject of many spiritual and esoteric schools and it has been historically symbolized in the west as a dragon - in the east they like their dragons! Interestingly enough, the origin of the word dragon itself is greek for "that which sees" - the concievable I. Slaying the dragon is neutralizing the obstacles of the model that you built up yourself. The biblical statement of "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven" is symbolic for the impossibility of entering that sphere of Gnosis when your model is bloated and full of strong beliefs.

The act of neutralization is extremely difficult to describe because the first thing that usually comes to mind is an act of aggression, containment or control - it is none of those things. It is primarily achieved through extensive self-awareness, so if you want to have any idea of what I'm going to go through in the coming posts, you better start practicing that!

Do the Safety Dance

While there is no inherent risk of awful side effects in performing considerable alterations to the self and beliefs - because nothing is lost and nothing is ever permanent - there is a certain risk in doing it half-heartedly without adequate self-awareness. As I've said before, it is important to observe which beliefs serve you and which don't, but this is only half of the story. The reason is that whatever foundation it is that one wishes to change is never bad per se. It does a service. It keeps you you, the one you know, the one you are familiar and safe with. That is why it exists in the first place. No matter how destructive or limiting it is, it is fulfilling in some way, and a lot of energy is spent by you to habitually maintain it. You might have very good reasons for your deep-down, unquestioned truths, in the effects of your environment and the past, but that is just one side of the coin. Every experienced event collided with you and your subsequent reaction produced an aspect of the self that you know. It goes both ways. In truth, whenever there is a justification of the past, it is a maintained aspect of that very identity that one chooses to uphold.

In the foundation of the average personality, there is a certain amount of protection, defense and safety for the sake of percieved but not real control. It is that very system that prevents considerable magick alterations in order to keep the integrity of one's habitual and preferred experience. Doubt itself is an example of that safety mechanism. Whenever there is a moment of doubt, you are generating it in order to keep you from heading into dark and unfamiliar waters - you intuitively know, without thinking, that you are clashing against something you hold to, and on the conscious level it feels like "I can't do this". While you might have all the desire in the world to enter the highly unusual and you really think you can take it, at one point or another it is a guarantee that you will encounter unexpected and deep elements of your own psyche, and it will be scary at times. Some people seem to believe that it is the act of changing or removing that safety mechanism, no matter how brief, that causes psychological and situational havoc, but it isn't true. It is the facing of the defense that activates it, creates fear and paranoia, and when the subsequent personal reaction feeds the fear, it creates the risk of havoc.

You don't have to worry about whether your underlying beliefs will manifest so that you can understand and deal with them. As soon as you get this desire, they will manifest and they will seemingly step over dead bodies to do so - the greater the desire, the more overwhelming it will be. You will draw to yourself situations in which you can clearly experience who you believe you are, how you react, and at times it will be bad. Your only concern should be to be aware enough of how you are reacting and interpreting what you are experiencing. There might even be a fascination with the danger of the crazy and the insane, of justifications of being a victim and getting oneself in fucked up situations. As magick works without distinction between good and bad, those things will become reality if one provides enough energy for it to happen.

Since reality always provides you with some side of your beliefs in every single experience, the very presentment of the question of control and safety is the presentment of your own beliefs in order for you to be able to make a choice. The question of control is not necessary when you are self-aware enough - you are perfectly aware that you are never stuck and you can choose however the hell you want. But before one comes to that realization, control will be a scary matter at times. Severe paranoia or avoidance issues don't happen overnight. They are fed over a very long time by the desire for control and motivated by the perception of unsafety. If you only go half-way, you will get stuck at some point in this area and experience extreme conflict; you know what you want but you will be entirely unable to go there because you have no faith in yourself; the other (any obstacle you can imagine, but situations of ordinary life are a typical example) is in your way. If there is the slightest need for camouflage and control (excessive thoughts of justification are a good indicator of this), there will be ideas about you having to overcome and win over the other in some way. If you spend the least bit of energy in forcing against this other, you will get yourself in a heap of trouble. This is a textbook example of doing magick the completely wrong way.

I am speaking from personal experience, as I was stuck in this type of "Dark Night of the Soul" for a period of nearly 2 years, and it was pure psychological hell. It was when I refrained from all delusional fantasies and camouflages - attempts to cover up the fact that I really didn't have one bit of faith in myself - and only focused on rigorous awareness training, that I realized what I was doing wrong and how to rectify it. The Dark Night is a necessary aspect of the path of neutralizing deep internal entanglement, but you are meant to pass through it relatively quickly, not hypnotized by it and stuck. This is why I keep emphasizing that type of training, as it will ensure none of these risks become reality.

With that said, I can only give you the suggestion to practice correctly, and I will give examples of typical pitfalls to steer clear of in specific occult experiences and practices, but in case you are inspired enough to follow some of my advice and exercises but don't fully appreciate the reality of what I'm talking about, you'll have to take responsibility for the consequences. Consider yourself warned.

just pausing here to chime in that this is a truly awesome dump of information. i've skimmed over it; haven't had time to really dig into what you're posting, but i will say that i'm excited for this weekend when i'll have sufficient time to give this its due diligence. much appreciated.

edit:
purely out of curiosity, is this something you've had cooking for a while? or did you put this together purely for our benefit? either way, it's an impressive haul.

tospiteyourface wrote:just pausing here to chime in that this is a truly awesome dump of information. i've skimmed over it; haven't had time to really dig into what you're posting, but i will say that i'm excited for this weekend when i'll have sufficient time to give this its due diligence. much appreciated.

edit:
purely out of curiosity, is this something you've had cooking for a while? or did you put this together purely for our benefit? either way, it's an impressive haul.

Thank you. Good luck reading it all! Don't hesitate to comment if something strikes your fancy or gets confusing. Everything (except pictures) is written on the spot for this board. The ideas themselves have been cooking and simmering for a loong time. The challenge is remembering and putting it all together in a sensible way.

Astral Projection

The Astral realm is not only a dimension of infinite fun, hidden knowledge and a great variety of experience; it is also one of the best ways to directly experience the effects of your attention so that you can understand how to train it. As such, what you experience out there depends wholly on what you take with you.

The Astral is closely related to dreams, but they are a private, highly symbolic form of projection in which there is a certain amount of separation from greater depths as well as the dimensional structures of the physical world and more exotic areas. A lucid dream is somewhere inbetween. The great difference is that lucid dreams feed the perception of a separate mind and it is somewhat limited.

The most important thing to understand about the mind in the Astral realm is that it is unlimited and there is no time delay - the dream-mind fuses with the collective consciousness of all of existence. Whichever state you are putting out, it will happen instantly and precisely to your instruction. This will be very confusing in the beginning because you will find yourself thrown about by your own astonishment, resulting in a potpourri of experiences of freedom and vividness clashing with the quite absurd and scary.

Initially, it will not be easy to discern an Astral Projection from your run-of-the-mill dream, but with time and practice, you will not only find yourself in unbelievably vivid and powerful experiences, you will also find yourself capable to cross between dimensions. It requires considerable energy and focus to interact with denser realms and the physical world, however, which means that to the average practicioner, there will, at best, be some limited opportunity for observation. There will usually be some connection with the immediate vicinity of the room you are projecting from, so you can do some fun experiments with this, such as placing a random face-down card somewhere in the room you are projecting from and verifying which card it is while you're out.

It is very easy to project. It seems that it is enough to have an interest and engage a concentration exercise with the purpose in mind. But it will take some months of practicing it relatively often before one becomes more secure and able to do it at will - this is much less complicated than it sounds, it is enough to have the desire somewhere in the back of your head and then not worry too much about it. At this point it simply depends on whether you keep it up or not.

I would prefer if you'd forget as much information on the internet about the Astral as possible because it is heavily colored by the beliefs of certain schools of thought. There is no need for a silver cord. It is generated by the imagination in order to keep a sense of safety. It is not even necessary to consciously go through the whole process of relaxing the body and rising out of it. The easiest way, in my experience, is to allow the concentration exercise to dissipate your thoughts and consciousness, and after a short period of "blankness" you will find yourself projecting naturally and spontaneously. Sometimes you will instantly find yourself out there. If you experience any difficulty with this, don't worry, we all have to go through it. It's most likely because you take it too seriously and want it too much. It will happen if you relax your body and mind.

It is very likely that you will have several experiences of being drawn back into the body when you just got out. The magnetism of the physical body is not something you have to overcome. This is an effect from the lack of experience creating a sense of unsafety, not knowing what to do, so the body naturally responds and draws you back in. The best way to bypass this is to have a clear and simple focus on what you want to do. It can be as simple as deciding to fly away and explore what's out there - you have no idea what you might run into! If you're not serious about it you will have no difficulty.

What next? The sky's the limit. Do you want to find out esoteric information? Do you want to learn about yourself? Maybe you just want to do something fun. There are way too many worlds and planes out there for me to do this topic justice, it is more likely that any suggestion of mine will produce some limitation in your perception of what you are able to do, so just follow your heart. If you find yourself leaving the body but still on planet Earth, I would heartily recommend flying up through the atmosphere into the solar system. I will caution against spying on the affairs of the world - if you want to learn about world events, go to the Akashic Records. It is a vast cosmic library. Just knowing this will take you there.

If you are esoterically inclined, a good area to visit would be the Gates of Horn. This is a kind of central hub for more meaningful experiences of self-knowledge, a jump-off point for deeper truths. It will be very special to visit. If you have an intention to go there, you must be clearly focused on this intention before you project.

A potential issue is the subject of negs, negative entities. If you go out there with a mindset influenced by christianity, gnosticism or white magic lodges, or with untreated issues or doubts, you will likely find yourself facing demons and all sorts of nasty creatures, and they will interfere with your projections in any way possible. They are not real. You feed them by your own attention. With that said, they can be quite bothersome and even affect you to the point of causing painful marks and scratches on your body and prevent you from sleep. I had some serious issues with this back in the day, but I was given the following remedy. If you find yourself in this situation you will be desperate enough to use it. Do it before you go to bed at night:

Spoiler:

If this ever happens, it will take some time before you will find it safe to project again. This is a perfect example of the kind of issues that can arise when you've got the wrong mindset from the start. So before we head into deeper territory, we will do some internal house cleaning.

..................
I've read the first post, and part of the second... And I don't have time to real all of this now. But...

I will read all of this...

Preface to Deeper Mind Training

If you're just getting started with your awareness training, you will notice how difficult it is. It's possible that you have no idea when you are being aware or what you're supposed to do - a bunch of new questions, unfortunately caused by something designed to stop them. Yet, in keeping up with it, at some strange moment the questions do begin to stop. We find ourselves, however brief, a bit calmer and happier. Things begin to flow and the now becomes more vivid.

This might last for a while, but in a split-second it will drop away and we're back at square one. You will have no idea when it happens because you will be distracted, either by your own thoughts or something external happening. There will be a moment in which you are not only unable to remain aware, you will also forget the awareness training completely.

However, this isn't the end. At some point, maybe even several days after the fact, you will become irritated or frustrated by something. It has to be a strong unpleasant feeling in the chest. By chance, the intuitive mind remembers the lightness in the chest from the awareness training. You realize that this is a LOT worse than being aware. You might have all the doubts in the world regarding the purpose of this training or whether you are able to do anything we're discussing here, but you want to experience that unpleasant feeling as little as possible. This is the only hope you've got in getting through with this difficult training. Your own experience leads you to the conclusion that you prefer the benefits from the awareness training instead of being thrown about by the fickle nature of habitual thoughts in objective situations.

Continued practice leads to more of that flowing awareness. Then, losing it in some humiliating way leads us to remember it and keep it up. By repeating this process over and over, we gradually overcome obstacles and discover that this isn't a sense of ignorant happiness or deluded confidence: When we are present, we know more and can do more. It is as if, in the midst of a process of thoughts, we discover an inherent knowing of how unnecessary most of the thoughts are - thoughts are not action. A shroud of fog is temporarily lifted from the mind, and that is why we become happy and confident.

Meditation for Starters

If you haven't meditated very much or in a long while, I'm going to begin with a simple method. Posture is not important at this stage, you can sit however you want in a chair. Or you can lie down and practice it before you go to sleep, which will be very helpful if you're dealing with sleeping problems.

Take longer, lighter breaths. Let the breath flow deep into your belly. The out-breath should be longer than the in-breath, and there should be a slight sense of rebound inbetween breaths, a slight pause between breaths. Don't be mistaken into thinking you have to force it, it should be natural and uncontrived.

Now, count your breaths. Count on the out-breath. Count from 1 to 5, then start over. Whenever you lose track or get distracted, start over. Don't anticipate the next number, don't question how well you are going to be able to do it. Only concern yourself with counting the breath in this moment.

Thoughts will not stop. But they get lighter. You will find yourself counting and breathing with no effort. If you keep this up, the present number gets bigger and begins to glow. There will be a deep and powerful nature to each number, a sense of connection, and nothing else will matter but following this process of counting, and it will be very pleasant. When you stop, you realize that you forgot about EVERYTHING while you were doing it. You forgot yourself and the entire universe.

Welcome to instant magick. You've just done a complete overhaul of your entire mind-reality and made yourself high, simply by concentrating to the point that you forgot your own ego-model. The model didn't disappear, it didn't get destroyed. You just stopped using it in your interaction with reality for a moment and it lost all power. In other words, you neutralized it.

This is a very good example of how simple it really is, but it is one thing to concentrate yourself into a brief moment of flexibility, and being able to do this at will, in an instant, in all situations, and refine and deepen the process so that we can use it to our precise desire. So now, we are going to use what we know and have practiced so far to head where few others have gone; into complete deconstruction.

It is a difficult but necessary hurdle that only the most clear-eyed, unjudgmental discovery of one's deepest hidden self will enable the possibility of reshaping all other facets of life. This involves something much deeper than one's relationship with the pursuit of wants; the true goal is to go beyond mere living and transform personal existence into the vibrancy and freedom that such a rarity deserves.

There can never be enough material in order to prepare one for this endeavor, and that is not the point. The combination of some preparatory information and the sum total of the individual's experience will have to suffice. The true purpose of this stage can only be achieved by relentless individual effort; the necessary ingredient for personal Alchemy must be the desire for it to happen.

Now, we are going to intensify our practice and unite it with every aspect of our lives until we come upon a black hole that consumes everything we think we know and believe. If you are ready for it, make sure that you do not waste your time.

I am not going to introduce excitatory exercises at this point. Instead, we are going to use Zazen meditation. It is a form of death posture that will be more than adequate for our purposes.

Zazen

It is not necessary for the body to be flexible enough for a complex lotus posture. What is needed, however, is a bodily balance that reflects the intention of a mind aspiring to be utterly immovable. As we begin, you will find it incredibly difficult, but it isn't meant to be easy. What needs to happen is for you to clearly see, within yourself, the amount of intention and dedication that is necessary to be able to go through it, and then apply that amount of dedication. If you do that, you will find that it takes less and less effort and the transformation will begin. When your mind is dedicated, you will have no bodily issues.

Find a wall somewhere in your living quarters that is free from decorations and distractions. The less audible distractions, the better. Feel free to place a small mat on the floor by the wall. Find a cushion or folded mattress that gives adequate height to sit on for the sake of the following posture, then place it directly facing the wall.

Now, for the posture itself. I will try to describe the necessary components but if you really want to get it right, google your way around and contact a meditation teacher.

Essentially, the two back bones of your buttocks, the "sitting bones", will form a triangle of balance with your knees. This means that your body below the navel will be turned slightly downwards, which produces a natural arc in your spine and creates an immovable balance for your upper body. Do NOT strain your legs into a position that is uncomfortable or leads to complete loss of blood flow. If there is a light tension or numbness, that is okay. It will keep you alert.

Let your upper arms rest parallel to your body and place your hands below your navel in the cosmic mudra:


The thumbs should touch lightly. The reason this is a great position for the hands is that whenever there is the slightest mental imbalance, your thumbs will slip or push against eachother. In this situation you need that kind of information.

Now, for the difficult part. Allow your spine to become totally erect - not excessively straight, not slouching - but let your belly remain completely loose and free. This is so you can breathe from your belly. It should feel like your entire lower torso is hanging freely from your spine and ribcage. If there is the slightest amount of effort to control, it will become painful and difficult to breathe - that is the point of this posture.

Align your neck with the straightness of the spine, but move your chin slightly inwards into your throat. Do this right and it will feel like your spine is going in a straight arc upwards through the tip of your head, being held by the sky. Listen to every little sense of imbalance in your body and stop straining that area. All this will not come at the first try but you will get the hang of it soon enough. If any issues with the posture persist, consult a meditation teacher.

Allow your eyelids to drop slightly. Do not close your eyes. They should be utterly relaxed but not shut tight. The same thing with your visual focal point. Allow it to remain loose and relaxed until it naturally falls into one point and remains there. The more you try to hold it there, the more it will escape and go all over the place.

In the beginning it is fine to continue counting your breath as described in the last post, but eventually you'll develop an intuitive feel of when you've got it right; you feel balanced and relaxed. When the sensitive balance of the body is kept undisturbed, you will find it very difficult to venture off into thoughts, which is why I must emphasize the importance of having a balanced posture.

When you have a more intuitive feel of the "state", you can stop counting and simply follow your breath. Not controlling it, only following it. Whether the breath is short or long, just follow it. The more you let go of controlling it, the more naturally full and pleasant the breath will become. When you follow the breath completely, even the suggestion of counting the breath will be an effort, a slight disturbance of that balance. It will be much more pleasant to let things be.

Enter the Void

Now, we are going to build up a schedule of this exercise. You have to do it at least once a day. Begin with short periods of 5-10 minutes for as many days as you deem it comfortable, early in the morning or some time at dawn. When you are ready, we can begin to extend the interval.

The first time you make an effort to sit for 30 minutes, you will discover how incredibly difficult it is to remain balanced. Your thoughts will go all over the place. Welcome to you. This is you, your thoughts, your beliefs, your motivations and ultimately your belief in your capacity for magick action. This is the reason we are doing this. We need to burst through that shell.

This is the attention I described earlier, in the habitual state of moving back and forth; wants, doubts, and so on. The sole purpose of this exercise is not to feel defeated by this movement of thought, but to keep bringing that attention back to the equilibrium of the present moment, the present breath, no matter what the thought is. It will be impossible to stop all thoughts but as long as you do not follow their suggestions, they will lose power over you. You will become less attached.

Keep this up and you will gradually find it easier and easier to sit for 30 minutes. You will begin to discover that the balance that you felt very early on in the counting of your breath is not "kept" over a period of time, it is deepened until it goes beyond time. The less you think about time, the faster it will go. This is real magick power; the ability to forget time!

Muster up all the dedication you can to keep practicing daily. Immerse yourself in meditation literature and philosophy. Strive to go beyond time, beyond life and death. At some point, in the midst of your difficulties, you will begin to feel a warmth in your belly. You will find that there is no outside effect coming to bless you as a result of this strenuous exercise, but rather, doing it allows you to become free because there are NO distractions. You will begin to develop a reverent attitude to the practice. It is natural to bow to the wall before and after your practice at this point, as the wall you are facing will begin to glow with a sense of importance, intimacy and happiness. This is a sure sign that you are doing it right. Welcome to you, but deeper you. You are beginning to gain hold of your attention.

At some point during the practice, it should become relatively clear that whenever there is a sense of doubt, of over-thinking, of straining, it is impossible to resolve the line of thought by satisfying it in the same dimension of the thought itself; rather, the unpleasant reaction is ONLY an internal message for you to refrain from even entering into that dimension of thought. Remember this "Refrain", whenever you are feeling uncomfortable. You will start to "zoom back", out into an impossible space. You gain a deep sense of width, of internal perspective. It is impossible to enter this perspective within the dimension of thought, it will be impossible to grab it. The only way to do it is to stop trying; finding that you are already there when you do not confuse yourself.

Over the course of 6 months, there should be the dedication to intensify this practice to the point that you are doing it between 2-4 hours a day. Never do it more than an hour at a time, but feel free to have as many sessions during the day as you want. This will not bring you any rewards. What it does is help you keep returning to that perspective, no matter what, and train yourself to not fall out of it so easily. This is because after 6 months, we are going to introduce the goal of maintaining this equilibrium in every moment of the day.

At this point, your life will now consist of two things: taking care of earthly responsibilities and maintaining awareness practice. While, at first, this will involve letting go of casual interests, with time we become capable of maintaining our awareness even while engaging them. What is even more interesting is that we become more joyful and adept at handling any problem if we resume the practice. Now you are greatly widening your view and realizing that it is not a matter of either-or. But you have to make some considerable sacrifices to come to that point.

It is very likely that some days, you will experience a sense of deep confusion, a fogginess, a disinterest in thinking. If you are unafraid and unattached, it will dissolve itself. If you are desperate for control, the fog will intensify. This is because you are letting go of deep attachments to your surface ego-model.

During sitting practice, your wall with fill with hallucinations. Pay them no attention, do not become distraught, only resume the practice.

At some point or other, if you dedicate yourself to this purpose enough, something very strange will happen. When you get up from your meditation, you will realize how strange you felt while you were sitting. You were somewhere else entirely. Everything feels much freer and more pleasant than it ought to. It will feel like letting go of a ton of garbage in your psyche. It will not last for very long, which will lead you to want to return to meditate. You will naturally try to remain in that equilibrium in every moment, and you will have more of an intuitive awareness of how to do so.

At this point I must stress the importance of remaining anchored in daily life. Do not speak a word of your experiences or insights to anyone. If you see someone that needs help, try to help them out and consider it part of your practice. Don't complain or elevate yourself above any other person. Don't strive to be humble or enlightened. Just be. Take care of your responsibilities and continue practicing like your head is on fire.

At this stage, there is an incredible likelihood of you experiencing the effect of a turning-word; a word, phrase, or sound, which in an instant will lead to your mind being completely blown. Suddenly, it will feel like heaven and earth are crashing in on eachother, everything dissolving into energy that goes beyond all concepts. Everything will be just the same, yet nothing will be the same. Suddenly, all is one. You will be higher than you have ever been in your entire life. It will be incredibly special and ordinary at the same time; like coming to life for the first time.

This is the beginning of Gnosis. Now you should realize why you have been putting up with this shit; It was the right thing to do because it gets you in touch with yourself.

Ego Death

If the above happens, you will suddenly feel a great surge of inspiration to let go of every casual, fleeting thing in your life and strive even further to deepen the awareness practice. It will cascade into numerous types of insight and states of joy. As the effect will lead to you striving to remain unattached and balanced even in the presence of feelings of happiness, no matter what, something very strange will happen. You will become very tired, mentally and physically. At this point, there is no more advice. Just let go, give up completely. Make a solid promise to yourself to not control anything ever again. It should come naturally and intuitively because even the suggestion to control will be an impossible amount of effort.

This can happen within the space of one single day, but basically, the profound sense of fatigue will intensify to the point that you are unable to think, and you will feel like you are dying as you go to sleep that night. It will be the most profound feeling of dying because there will be no struggle against it. It will just be a silent free-fall into complete void, nothingness. This is what it is like to die.

Except you didn't die. Passing through the void will be a great cleansing. You will wake up and there will be no way for me to adequately describe what it's like. There will be a completely new reality. You will wake up to the whole universe celebrating your existence. Have fun.

It is very important not to get over your head and attach importance to the experience at this time. Otherwise, you will likely say too much to the wrong people and be horribly embarassed over it afterwards, as after a couple of weeks, you will come to the unfortunate truth of chaos: Nothing is permanent. You will be completely back to normal. Don't get caught up in disappointment. That will teach you an important lesson, not to be attached to specific states, either of joy or of despair.

Do this correctly and you will come to a deep understanding that you did indeed not eliminate a single thing, you didn't attain some liberation, you neutralized your model and are completely free to choose. It is never a matter of either-or, and so there is a tremendous freedom. But neutralization is only done in the moment and never final, so we must be aware if we want to be free to choose what we want. Now you should intuitively understand that awareness practice is about one thing and one thing only: Returning to being who you really are, beyond all concepts and quantifiable thoughts. And that you is already accomplished at all things in the universe.

While the above post is a general outline of how such a process may take form (and possibly a fool-proof method since it even worked for me!), it can happen in virtually any way. The crucial ingredient is a considerable amount of self-sacrifice or a moment of complete, deep acceptance. It has to be felt and experienced, not thought. To completely abandon old routines in behavior and thinking and find one's self perfectly at home in the new and unfamiliar is the revelation that leads to all possibilities. The resurgence of creativity and self-confidence will, however, involve some dangers.

Bat Country

This stage is where you see young people boasting about their enlightenment or realization. Hopefully, we are going to be a bit smarter than that and not involve ourselves with such bullshit. Why? The first problem is the inevitable experience that the model has not been eliminated. This will lead to strange conclusions; One affixes one's self with the idea of enlightenment to the point of obsession in order to carefully hide the fact that nothing has happened to the ego-model. This can lead to thoughts like "Nobody is enlightened but me, I'm such a unique and misunderstood spirit". This WILL generate conflict. The truth of magick will always be in the reflection. If negativity is reflected, it should be clearly understood that this is the internal state.

Another possibility is that one becomes even more dedicated to the idea of an ultimate goal, of complete ego-elimination, and so embarks on an even greater and more exhausting quest. It is possible that the very idea of being enlightened in the first place, which conflicts with the fact that the old model remains, is what sparks this kind of motivation. As such, one becomes a lightworker, an initiate in some order, joins a monestary... The list is endless.

All of that is completely unnecessary. There is however some truth in the thought that one is not finished. First of all because we never are, secondly, we are just beginning to test the waters of the newly discovered aspects of self. This is a quantum state of mind where we are simultaneously limited and seemingly endless. There is an incredible potential for massive bursts of energy, which involves some risk. We can't stop here for long.

As the practicioner hopefully becomes truly inspired to see themselves in clarity, it is almost inevitable that deep and underlying beliefs, such as thoughts of justification, will move into even more subtle and refined manifestations. Without the most clear vision, these aspects will slip by the radar and create considerable issues in reality. Such an example is the above "I'm so special" mind-set. This process will go on for as long as it takes for the practicioner to realize that they themselves are generating the very issues in the first place, by engaging effort and struggle due to underlying fears and complex motivations. The struggle will not stop until the motivation for it is clearly seen and dispelled.

Luckily, there is a simple and very potent remedy to deal with all of this in an instant: BEGINNER'S MIND. Let go of the ideas, the thinking, the justifications. Be present and be completely comfortable with being utterly ordinary. Embrace the simple.

The positive thing in all of this chaos is the fact that one has trained the mind to an incredibly heightened sensitivity of awareness. It's just like in the beginning, except that being self-aware will lead to higher and higher states of bliss, confidence and connection, and the moments in which one is not aware will be fewer and recognized VERY early, not marked by intense discomfort, but as what the average human being would call normal.

If the awareness practice stops, it will lead to a Dark Night, wherein one at first becomes some type of Nirvana-junkie; attached to specific states of concentration, and with time one loses that ability in a sea of frustration. One becomes preoccupied with ideas of "Nothing is real", "Everything is permitted" in order to make up for the fact that everything is quite real and not much seems to be permitted. Before long, all the positive experiences of this period will become bleak memories. This type of experience will be easily avoided by continuing to listen very carefully to the internal state and one's own reasons for volition. The risk happens when we go through an instant of a deep sense of "I can't do this", and then don't see what we just did and follow this thought into reality. If anything, this type of experience should reveal how utterly ridiculous such thoughts are. We have just touched a reality where they are not true; what matters is choice.

If we do follow the positive aspects and remain vigilant, even stranger things will begin to happen...

The Turning-About

As if it weren't obvious enough, it is incredibly difficult to adequately describe crucial parts of this stage in the practice. It is much easier to treat the subject in forms of parable, allusion and symbology, which should explain the development of most religious and occult literature.

The void, for instance, is the very essence of the unfamiliar in a way that is difficult to appreciate for the impatient practicioner - it is simultaneously completely ordinary reality and a transcendent space beyond all concepts. It is not one or the other, it is both... and perhaps neither.

A sense of unreality is a limited form of interaction with the void and can happen to everyone. The challenge of the void is that it is synonymous with death because it leaves no foothold for the ego-model - that's why any deep and powerful experience, normally interpreted as ego death, is virtually necessary in order for the individual to come to the profound recognition that there is no inherent threat in the void; it is inevitable and completely futile to resist. Rather, an embrace of the void becomes a new source of life - all other attempts to go about life will be even more clearly understood to be useless roads filled with frustration and limitation. In this way, a devoted practicioner of deep spiritual and magick states aspires for an existential connection with truth, not security, and puts himself in a continuous exposure to the void, which inevitably leads to an intuitive understanding of the fact that the void - chaos itself - is synonymous with limitless power and potentiality.

When certain aspects of judgment are temporarily abandoned in favor for the open-ended and all-inclusive nature of the void, there is, at an instant, such a complete and total alteration of reality that it is impossible to discern whether there is anything left of the "old" reality. This is impossible to demonstrate as long as we hold to temporal ideas of cause and effect, since at first glance, that would lead to this phenomenon being construed as "making use of" the void, which is wholly incorrect. It is the personal devotion to abandon the self and merge with the void that leads to the alteration.

This is exemplified in instances of early gnosis; forget the self and all of reality begins to glow with novelty. At this stage, there is still the tendency to make unnecessary judgments and provide a sense of narrative to the process in order to carefully test the waters before one heads into further exploration of the inherent dynamics of this phenomenon, but at some point, if one is daring enough, there will be a heightened potentiality of a complete change in the very core of one's relationship with existence, in the deepest seat of consciousness: The self is not looking in on the void, it is looking in on the self.

That type of experience has been described in countless types of religious and spiritual imagery throughout time as some form of absolute knowing or attainment. It has been described in Crowleyan Ceremonial Magick as Knowing & Conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel.

The intensity of such a kind of experiential connection could prove to be completely confusing to the individual, because it is not necessary for any aspect of life to demonstrate this type of absolute knowing, at first. If this is interpreted as dissatisfaction with ordinary things, leading to a sense of calling of deeper causes, it might involve a spontaneous revival of the earlier "I'm so special" mindset, which will lead to further difficulties and struggles. An interesting potential effect at this point, however, that it is not just a matter of being practiced enough at self-awareness in order to recognize one's "foolishness", in the traditional sense of approach to the spiritual path, but in addition to that type of intuitive understanding, there arises a deeply profound insight that creating conflict for the sake of conflict is a completely viable choice if one is so inclined, and that there is nothing inherently wrong with that. It is perhaps even necessary to certain minds in order for the movement on the path to be satisfactory enough - struggle and intensity provides spice. Naturally, having the extent of vision to recognize this will ensure that it is no longer percieved as necessary and if one prefers ease, the fruits will come much quicker.

There are also many forms of intermediary experiences of insight leading up to this phenomenon which could be misinterpreted as absolute insight and lead to the aforementioned "error" in judgment, but there are a few crucial "peak" forms of recognition which will make the transition profound enough to the point that it actually alters the personal life on a fundamental level and makes magick a real and tangible phenomenon.

Minimalist Magick

The necessity for a transformative experience of the nature I've described above is a completely uncontrived resolve to detach from all afflictions, doubts and dependencies. The awareness will, at this point, be refined to the point that any conflict is clearly seen as a complication of the very simple and absolute nature of existence, and so there will be no desire for reward, only a desire for removal of useless complications that are inherently and pointlessly caused by one's own ignorance. This is acceptance and neutralization on a whole other level, since it is much more quiet and effortless. There is not even the suggestion of a defeatist nature, or of a temporary and rather shallow type of tolerance - it comes from the heart.

While most states of Gnosis are experiences that could be likened to the tasting of wine, this type of revelation is akin to seeing the wine in one's self, the great ocean of freedom, and resolving to return to its uncontrived and simple nature to the point that it becomes as automatic as breathing. There is no struggle. While one has not merged with the wine of Gnosis, one can clearly see its ocean ahead. What is difficult is accepting the fact that from this vantage point, the ocean is absolutely infinite - in order to enter it, one must forget everything they know.

It is very likely that this type of realization will translate into surface-level thoughts of "I am eternal", "I do not exist", or any absolute statement of that nature, but I believe it is important to emphasize that there is no inherently discovered truth in the conceptual thoughts themselves (and we would be wasting time if we were to debate their implications); what is important is the acceptance that it really does not matter who you are or what you believe. Having this attitude will greatly aid in any type of exploration since the matter of whether any unusual experience is trustworthy enough will be clearly understood to be a reanimated aspect of the false safety of the ego-model, and thus completely futile in the path to tangible results - the ego-model is the most powerful magickal manifestation and it creates an absolutely real reality wherein the personal self is likely not capable of much. Another important aspect for securing the success of such endeavors is an absolute refusal to depend on their manifestation for self-faith; the self-faith has already been found within and it truly does not matter. This is an absolute prerequisite for magickal operations of greater kinds.

There is a very subtle and important aspect of this acceptance. Since the wisdom becomes absolute at this point, it has reached all corners of the universe and thus becomes completely forgotten on the surface level. This forgetfulness is not of the foggy kind; it is the entrance into a reality where no issues and obstacles even exist in the first place. Thus, a clear sign that one has not gone through this transformation is the thought that "I have accomplished" at something, since that in itself is an act of volition that serves to reinforce some aspect of reality that one does not yet believe in. In fact, upon true entry of Gnosis, there is nothing in the universe that does not demonstrate this fact. One's very breath shatters heavens and hells. This leads to complete freedom even in circumstances that would normally be described as situations of despair.

While reality takes on a very simple form, there will be a definite knowing of having found a precious jewel, and dreams will symbolize this fact; Of having found a solar inner body, finally having enough oil to light that very special lamp, of finding endless treasures and meeting with an absolute being of sorts. One finds one's self a master of the inner world, but the effect of this is not necessarily of the kind that we'd expect. It is not a mastery of magickal faculties yet; It is a mastery of the physical world.

This means that one has not needed to engage extensive tactics to deal with physical situations, since the obstacles that usually were there are no longer in place - one's capacities far exceed any suggestion of impossibility. Situations that would normally be considered to incorporate unmistakably real and difficult obstacles are dealt with completely effortlessly. There will be a surge in physical ability, while at the same time, the body will require less, as less energy is expelled in fighting against its very powerful natural movement. Pain and fatigue will dissipate by mere will. This is the essence of Alchemy; The ego-self and the void fuse to create the Natural Self. This may take virtually any form of surge in creativity, happiness and unbridled satisfaction, and no one in their right mind would judge a person who were to remain in this state and not involve themselves with magickal endeavors - it is almost as if magick practice is itself a perversion of the fact, and there is indeed a risk of needlessly disturbing the movement of the Natural Self, something that I will take great care to elucidate in any magickal operation I will describe.

Another interesting example is that this will be clearly recognized on the social level. It is not rare to recieve unusual comments, of having glowing eyes, commanding respect in situations that would otherwise have been threatening. This respect is not fake, it is real because it is absolutely not needed. This is the essence of magick: The removal of conflicting wants instantly manifests a reality in which the desired expression is already true, because the Natural Self is capable beyond imagination.

It is absolutely necessary to incorporate this fearless nature in present and real circumstances before we engage more esoteric and strange practices, because the necessary awareness and self-faith will have to be trained to that level before we can expect any success in the inner world. Otherwise, there will be no end to the possibilities of conflict. Before we venture into even deeper and unknown waters, we must be unmistakably certain that we are not causing ourselves harm or putting our ordinary lives at risk.

Reviving the Natural Self

The reason I added the previous cautionary clause is due to the fact that any initial tangible experience of the natural self will be a spontaneous moment of uncontrollable laughter, from the very bottom of the heart. Simply put, the natural self does not give a fuck.

If one takes this message of "The world is my oyster" too seriously, due to getting the absolutist interpretations of the ego-model in the way, and mistakes it for a kind of divine message or knowledge of fate, it will likely lead to inadvertently getting oneself into a heap of trouble. What I mean is that it is easy to interpret this as a kind of get out of jail free-card, to be free to forget the importance of being self-aware and naively assuming that one's own actions, however stupid, will lead to some intangible future destiny. It is entirely unnecessary to develop a spiritual Napoleon complex. A deepened understanding of the natural self will lead one to the conclusion that not only is it unnecessary, but a very potent magick ability, innate to human beings in particular, is the potential that ensues from fighting and struggling against percieved obstacles - they fight back.

The complete understanding of the importance of self-awareness is not a get out of jail free-card, it is a tremendous responsibility and will result in the practicioner finally coming to terms with their own capacity for mistakes and recognizing how deeply hurtful one's own actions can be. It is very sobering!

The subtle interactions between the natural self and the ego-model take some time to stabilize, so it is important to be patient. It is not unusual to oscillate between states of deep peace and being rather disheartened, "coming back" to doubts and instantly being unsure. With time, a natural understanding of the dynamics inherent in the nature of the natural self and its relationship with the structure of the ego-model become apparent - one gains the ability to make use of the model as one sees fit, and the previous doubts lose substance.

The result is that a person in the mode of the natural self does not shy away from or fight facts - it is a centered equilibrium and a much wider view of experiential reality. When it is fully experienced, there is no longer the slightest question of sanity or self-delusion, but before that becomes apparent, it is likely that one is incapable of understanding this elusive flexibility because an absolutist ego-model is not comfortable with contradiction. For the natural self, there is no doubt because there is a complete understanding of the nature of reality. This is not some esoteric mystical knowledge, but the very simple and unwavering knowing that there is no foothold: This breath may be your last.

The natural self is not hidden from the surface-self by anyone but the self. The problematic type of ego-model, the one that gets the user caught up, is a carefully orchestrated manifestation of hiding the fact of no foothold. It is a foolish attempt to hold on to the breath in the hope of getting every last bit of oxygen before one faces the uncertainty of there being any oxygen in the next breath. The natural self completely accepts the uncertain breath as it is and finds itself at home in the chaos of reality, inexplicably uplifted by it.

The above change in perception is vital to actually experiencing success in the mode of the natural self, because with it, there is an intuitive understanding of the implications of doubt and checking. Doubt is an inherited aspect of the ego-model and a way to revert one's conception of reality into the mental maps of memory - to regain foothold of that which is quantifiably known. If you were to visualize your goal as something in the other end of a tunnel, every reaction and tendency to doubt and check is a type of reality tunnel safety mechanism, like a bunch of sticky nails sticking out from the tunnel walls - which will instantly revert the state of reality to the beginning of the tunnel. This is not a reason to become disheartened, but a way to understand how one can maintain a solidified limitation of reality - and how unbelievably simple it is to go through with a change, provided that you have the balls.

The reason the natural self is so potent is because it knows without a doubt that there is no foothold and so it is incapable of taking itself seriously - it does not get stuck on those nails of doubt. This also leads to a natural conclusion to the potential of magick; like we deduced before in the nature of synchronical pranks, when you do not take it seriously, it works. Since the natural self has an immense capacity of not giving a fuck, the scope of magick results increase dramatically. When important aspects of life cease to be problems, they naturally untangle themselves and we are endowed with energy that can be used to engage more interesting endeavors than worry and fear.

What Riddle?

This puts us in an entirely different perspective on the Great Riddle: There is no riddle. It's a joke and the ego is the punchline - ta da! The riddle is the game for the ego; a way to distract it by being unsolvable to the point that the ego collapses and the truth of reality is no longer ignored.

In the same way, any effort to engage an intended goal is a similar type of riddle. It must be difficult, strenuous and completely unsolvable for the discerning mind. The dedicated individual will nonetheless go through with it, and reach the point of collapse, in which the movement into manifesting the goal is realized naturally and effortlessly.

Jumping to conclusions, this leads one to believe that it is the effort that leads to the goal - and in a way it does, by virtue of its riddle-nature - but it is not the goal and it is a wholly different state. The state of goal is inherent to the state of accomplishment. The ease of the natural self comes from it being only concerned with the state of accomplishment, because it already recognizes the riddle-nature of effort, and so it accomplishes its goals without effort. It knows that the process of pushing against to achieve a goal is an illusion.

It is easy to misread a state of gnosis as a mechanism that is used to lead to the intended goal, but it is far simpler than that; the gnosis is the realization of the goal itself. As gnosis is total knowing itself, the movement into gnosis is the movement into the knowing of the goal as already being accomplished.

This takes us back to the strange dynamic of forgetting: We do not keep track of that which we know. When we explore the dynamics of magick, there is a similar byproduct that when we do not keep track of it, we are more certain of ourselves and it comes to us - provided that we have no delusions about what our own actions state about ourselves. Thus, the intention process is completely different for the natural self - the intention is to remain validating of oneself and one's unwavering knowing in every breath and action. This is essentially that subjective knowing of no foothold, because it leads to knowing that what one thinks is true is not certifiably true. Thus, the movement into the knowing of a desired goal begins with being pretty uncertain that it is not already true, or at least available, and then exploring the waters...

Knowing How Is Above My Pay-Grade

The gnosis-state of accomplishment is essentially the internal removal of distance between the state of self, the present moment, and the desired state.

This can be easily misinterpreted if we think of it as a method to the desired state and begin to wonder how exactly it is going to manifest. The need for a specific method is a manifestation of distance, and in order to unlock the knowing of the desired state, we must remove the method, the how. A method is a good approach if it completely distracts us from those questions, but our greater capacities come into being when we know for ourselves that we do not need it.

When there is no hesitation, it becomes much clearer that it is, once more, not a question of either-or. If the desired state is a strict material goal, the removal of distance might be the removal of hesitation of one's capacities to accomplish the material goal in a very ordinary manner. It might also be a spontaneous influx of affirmations in regards to the goal. It might also be the spontaneous materialization of the goal itself. There is no limit, and the magicians job is not to know which way is correct but to remain absolutely open to ALL ways.

This is why I'm using the word manifestation in such a flexible way. There are as many ways to manifest a certain state of reality as there are ways to get from A to B on a blank map. The extent of the magicians ability is the inherent flexibility to recognize more ways between A and B than the absolutist ego-model would ever dare to admit.

The common ground, the core itself, is THIS moment of internal volition, the internal state. How exactly do I approach my state of wants? What does that tell me about myself and my suggested abilities?

Applied Accomplishment

This takes us back to our very early conundrum of wondering which action is the correct action, but now we have a few more dimensions. As the human psyche is infinitely complex as soon as it begins to hesitate, we are going to try to recognize some of the stages of approach and discern how they function as obstacles. I am going to include the most definite stages but there are shades of grey between all of them.

1. I cannot do it. It is impossible.

2. I can do it but I must do it in a specific way.

3. I can do it regardless of way, but I must be in a specific state.

3. I can do it regardless of state, but I must be aware of that. (This is an incredibly subtle repetition of the previous stage)

4. I am doing it.

Please note that stage 4 is not a mantra or affirmation. It is the action itself, and it is a great widening of the view of what we discern to be the action itself. This means that when we change our view, states and actions that we previously viewed to be obstacles because they were not related to the goal on a surface level, are no longer obstacles and actually serve to be affirming in relation to the goal because they affirm our sense of internal ability, which quickly snowballs into greater dimensions. The only problem occurs whenever the mind stops at a doubt and makes an assortment of subtle obstacles in order to provide to itself a reason why it might not be possible that we already are in the state of accomplishment.

While we previously approached our problem in a more rigid way, the biggest obstacle will be subtler versions of the same problem remanifesting itself again and again. The problem is the hesitation itself. But as long as we treat it as a problem, it keeps us trapped. When we remove hesitation, not even the biggest fuckup will be an obstacle because our attention is somewhere else; the attention firmly seated in the lack of distance between the self and the desired state. This is not really an eyes on the prize approach, because that too involves a type of distance. The eyes are on the grandeur of the self and its abilities.

The difference between stage 3 and 4 is that while we previously needed to be aware of the fact that we are able to do something, the next stage is a complete refusal to enter that line of reasoning and explore the action of actually doing it, and deriving a great sense of pleasure in the action itself as we are freed from the trepidation. The gnosis becomes a sense of unity with exactly that which we want. The strange effect will be a complete removal of false goals, distracting wants that are motivated by a lack of trust, and an influx of the effortless energy to follow the goals that actually matter to us.

The only really important thing to keep in mind here is that each state involves a further drop of the sense of internal trepidation. This is physically felt. The more hesitation, the more difficult the action becomes. Hesitation motivates effort, not a removal of hesitation. Effort feeds more hesitation, and this makes things seem impossible.

Push vs. Pull

Have you ever experienced a dream of encountering something that you really wanted, but the moment you try to grab it, it goes out of your reach? This is a concrete example of the use of attention, the magickal effects of the push - fixating our attention outwardly on our desire in order to hold onto it in every way we can. It doesn't work. The simple difference, that changes everything, is that now we are learning the ability to pull.

It will not be noticeable in waking life at first, but when we begin to pull in our dreams, they change and we experience that sense of success and being handed that which we want on a silver platter. There will be an incredible ease in the pull, a release of energy and an immediate satisfaction.

I could not emphasize this enough if I had a thousand pages of the same word: Pull, pull, pull, pull. In every moment of the day. In relation to everything. This is the only point of this whole thread and the only important thing I have to tell you: stop pushing and learn to pull.

It might be easy to mistake the pull as taking the same effort-action in the opposite direction, somehow going against the self, and it is not that. It is a mental release of energy and an absolute free-flow, the very essence of removal of distance, of absolute unity. It is to discontinue being a separate person and letting the currents of the universe dictate action. This is why, for instance, forgetting a sigil works. It is a statement of intention and then a pull. The statement of the intention and the method doesn't matter. It is the pull that manifests the desire.

I'm having trouble getting from "This will happen if I'm in the right state of mind" to "I am doing it". It's quite difficult for me.
Reading this and random Crowley libers has helped.

Most of the time when I get in to that state of mind I just write, I don't care about doing magic or anything.

_s wrote:I'm having trouble getting from "This will happen if I'm in the right state of mind" to "I am doing it". It's quite difficult for me.
Reading this and random Crowley libers has helped.

Most of the time when I get in to that state of mind I just write, I don't care about doing magic or anything.

Oh yes, it's difficult! But this is my entire point. You may not THINK that you are doing magick when you are writing in the pull state, but you are. If you try to do a magick ritual instead, it will be entirely useless if you start pushing, and it becomes obvious because the state will be long gone and you will start thinking about hows. It does not matter what you are doing when you are in the pull state. The idea is to magnify this pull state and infuse it in every movement, every thought, every activity. Then you are increasing your magick Will.

It is difficult because the difference between the states you are describing is that in the first you are checking, keeping track; in the second you are not. You are simply doing, being. This is the entire essence of what Crowley described as action without lust for result. Doing without expectation is instant magick.

Jesus Christ mohz, this thread is otherworldly. thanks!

Thank you Fraga!

Pull, Baby, Pull

The pull is my term for what people talk about when they say let go, trust in yourself or the universe, open your mind/heart, and so on. The pull-state is, without a doubt, the most effective and simple way to achieve a certain outcome. It is the essence of "already accomplished".

The reason I call it pull is because it is impossible to do as long as you have a conception of an outside goal (or state) and try to connect with it, grab it, attain it - that is the outward push. It is also impossible if you relate to the goal in a way that you think you must change yourself, your view of yourself, your movement or your thoughts - the inward push. I am most familiar with this term under the guise of self-trust, but I don't call it trust as chances are that you will interpret the concept of trust as something which you must change yourself in order to experience. As in, "You must become more trusting". Or maybe that was just a personal problem of mine, in which case you don't need to read this section.

Another reason I call it pull is because you become a magnet to exactly that which you want. Don't think that you actively pull it in; it happens entirely on its own. The pull is absolutely effortless.

Pushing is the yoke of mankind. It accomplishes very little of use. The problem is that the only way to appreciate the pull-state is by extensive experience of the futility of pushing, even if it takes a lifetime, or an absolute willingness or readiness to abandon pushing - together with a keen and intuitive ability to sense the push. Very few people are ready to give up on their push. Some people might give up on it to a great degree, but they will come to a certain limit in their own mind, at which point their abilities to utilize the pull stop dead. A few people have no limits, and there are only legends of what they have accomplished. With that said, you can use the pull-state for anything; a wicked guitar solo or public speech, but we're going to keep it in the strict magickal realm for now... If you are a creative person, you will notice that the pull-state brings an incredible inspiration and motivation for your craft.

If you are reading this, I assume that you are more or less willing to practice the pull. It does not matter how much you want it. It is 100% possible to increase it to unimaginable heights, but the only obstacle is your own pushing.

Everything we've talked about previously, about meditation and awareness in the present, is about experiencing a mix of preliminary to medium level pull-states. An experience of Gnosis is a relatively strong pull-state, but there is a key distinction; you will mostly be conscious of yourself and your thoughts while you are experiencing gnosis. You will relate to it in some way. You will be aware that you are going through an unusual state.

A typical instance of pull in magick is when we forget about our intention. That is all that is necessary. It is the meaning of "It comes when you do not look for it." But that is the issue. To actively engage a pull is the most paradoxic act in the universe, but it works.

The most important ingredient is the raising of awareness; through meditation and awareness practice, we become exceedingly keen on sensing our push and being able to dissipate it to some degree. We become more able and relaxed, seemingly filled with a reservoir of new-found wisdom and strength because we are no longer pushing. But it is inevitable that we get to a point where we are sensing our push but unable to dissipate it. I am going to explain why as clearly as possible. It is because you are still pushing. You are still trying to control. You still want something. Your body and your entire being is telling you this: You are not ready to let go at this point.

There is no obstacle. Let me repeat, when you practice pulling and encounter an underlying, seemingly impossible push, it means that you are not ready to let go at this point. You are thinking, or trying not to think. You are not letting things be just as they are. Many people are accomplished at meditating, but they often have some level of inward push that can be so subtle that they don't think they have it.

A successful entry to the pull brings a sense of physical warmth, of openness, happiness and confidence, as well as a state of wider awareness. None of this is "built up" from within, it comes automatically, without effort, in direct relation to the pull. The only limit to wider awareness is whatever amount of push that remains.

A deep and successful pull will obliterate you. You will not be aware that you are going through the pull, because the pull just is. It's not that there will be no thoughts, but you will not be aware that you are thinking. It is the state of a person intoxicated by the universe, playing an intense musical solo, in the state of a deep trance or under the influence of drugs. Everybody goes through some level of the pull-state at the verge of sleep.

Accomplishing the pull-state at will comes natural for some people, while for some people it is nearly impossible. I am one of the latter, and it took me many years to experience a strong level of the pull-state in its purity without the use of some aid.

For any magickal act that would be construed as actually involving magick, and not synchronicity, it is absolutely vital to be practiced in the pull-state.

Manifesting a Visual Thoughtform

We are going to go through an example of how to use the pull-state for a simple act of manifestation, of a thoughtform, tulpa, or whatever you want to call it. The only goal here is to get to the point where you can see the thoughtform with your eyes closed. You can then discard it or continue the practice as you please. If you've ready any guide on this, forget whatever you've ever read. It is much, much simpler than you think. We are not going to spend hundreds of hours, the idea is to accomplish it within a week.

Be absolutely certain of what you want the thoughtform to be. It can be something or someone that you've made up entirely on your own, but it can also be a mythological or spiritual being, a historical person, or even the simplest object. It should come quickly, without extensive thought, because the idea here is that if you are interested in this exercise, you should intuitively have a clear idea of what you want out of it. Your goal has to be perfect for you.

We are not going to involve ourselves with the slightest amount of deviation here. Deviation is a misinterpretation of the process of manifesting the thoughtform because people like to think that thoughtforms are not under their control. What is deviating is the intent and will of the individual, and then they accept their own deviation as an external entity - The source of deviation is the attempt to control and interact, which is a direct magickal statement of doubt which has an instant effect on the mental relationship with the intended thoughtform. The goal here is to experience the thoughtform exactly as we want it to be, with NO exceptions.

So, clear on what you want? Sit down, relax your body and close your eyes. Be as relaxed and loose as you possibly could. Right now, there should be not the slightest care in the world. Be creative and approach this as the fun experimentation it is. Do not become serious or you will struggle. Get a good sense of the personality, or the aura of the thoughtform, what it feels like. Spend a few hours on visualization if you are not quite sure how you want it to look. The trick here is NOT to try to get your visualization just right, but to get to the point that you know precisely what you want without having to think about it! Try to visualize at this point and you will encounter endless deviation and think that this is the obstacle.

Let me be perfectly clear: At this point you must STOP, STOP, STOP visualizing. You are not going to get anything but a headache. This will take as long as it has to take for you to give up on visualizing. This is why people spend endless hours trying to "get it right", they think their visualization is going to manifest the thoughtform. It is completely useless.

If you are able to sense your push, you should know that the instant you try to keep visualizing, try to fix it, try to get it right in some way, you will experience the push. You interpret it as an obstacle but it is your own doing.

If you stop pushing, you will quickly experience a lighter, more relaxed state, and possibly some vague sense of relation with the feel of the thoughtform. You might get some strong impression of the thoughtform in a more vivid way, as if it is alive. At this point, people become oblivious to their own push and think that if they concentrate really hard, their thoughtform is going to appear in the black. Even if you see vague, swirling blue or green colors while your eyes are closed, it does not mean that your thoughtform is trying to appear. This does NOT happen.

If you do this practice for at least 2 hours a day, you will come to some point where you are so let go that you stop thinking, you stop being aware of yourself, almost heading off into nowhere. It happens when you are entirely careless. This is the essence of the pull-state. You will oscillate in and out of it, if you try to push or grab hold again. If you become more let go, you will experience a "bending" of the senses, as if you are suddenly upside down, or that your body is becoming longer or shorter.

Do not try to check for anything at this time. Take every instant of push as a sign that you already know everything you need to know about the thoughtform, and you are already manifesting it; you should not devote any more effort to do anything. Just let go..

This will take more or less time depending on how tightly you hold on to yourself. You might encounter the thoughtform in a dream, and it will offer you a sign of how you are progressing. If the thoughtform is distant or turning away from you, it means that you are still pushing. In my first thoughtform-dream, I found myself trying to keep track of polaroid photos of the thoughtform when it was just in the nearby room! This was a clear sign that I was still trying to visualize it by my own effort when it was already available.

If you come to the point that you can let go of your own track-keeping and your own thoughts, and not do anything in particular about yourself or your viewing, you will black out for a short time. When you come to your senses, you'll realize that you have just spent a few seconds talking with the thoughtform or clearly viewing it. You will not be aware when it happens, you will be aware after it happened. If you want to keep going, it should be obvious how to go about it from here: Simply keep practicing the pull-state. Well done!

Mohz wrote:
If you come to the point that you can let go of your own track-keeping and your own thoughts, and not do anything in particular about yourself or your viewing, you will black out for a short time. When you come to your senses, you'll realize that you have just spent a few seconds talking with the thoughtform or clearly viewing it. You will not be aware when it happens, you will be aware after it happened. If you want to keep going, it should be obvious how to go about it from here: Simply keep practicing the pull-state. Well done!

I find this to be a terrifying notion. What if the mental space that the thoughtform occupies eventually intersects permanently with the part of the mind that percieves reality? You would become delusional, you wouldn't be being honest with yourself any more, you'd be recycling whatever you happened to be thinking at the time you made the tulpa, forever.

_s wrote:

Mohz wrote:
If you come to the point that you can let go of your own track-keeping and your own thoughts, and not do anything in particular about yourself or your viewing, you will black out for a short time. When you come to your senses, you'll realize that you have just spent a few seconds talking with the thoughtform or clearly viewing it. You will not be aware when it happens, you will be aware after it happened. If you want to keep going, it should be obvious how to go about it from here: Simply keep practicing the pull-state. Well done!

I find this to be a terrifying notion. What if the mental space that the thoughtform occupies eventually intersects permanently with the part of the mind that percieves reality? You would become delusional, you wouldn't be being honest with yourself any more, you'd be recycling whatever you happened to be thinking at the time you made the tulpa, forever.

Short answer: If it's not fun, don't do it.

Long answer: There is no such thing as a permanent state or any state having power over one's intention. There is absolutely no possibility of a thoughtform doing anything of the kind you are suggesting, but you are touching upon something substantial when you mention not being honest with oneself. What happens in the case of intrusive thoughts in connection with thoughtforms is that people do some expansion of their minds, come upon different mental spaces, but over time do not take responsibility for themselves, they don't keep track of their own reactions, intentions, will and energy. Then, upon discovering the negative results of their own doing, they blame it on their creation of the thoughtform and assume that they have gone somewhere they weren't supposed to, or that it is doing something.

Essentially, having any such apprehension or fear regarding the phenomenon will not cause demons to jump out of the depths. It will most likely ensure that the creation of the thoughtform will not happen at all or that it will occur in a very limited way. But people like to shift blame and think that their occasional imaginings are having power over themselves, so they don't have to own up to their own actions. You are 100% in charge of the depth of your own mind. I will also note that this kind of alteration requires a trained mind and occurs in very short intervals. It occurs when one's will is completely centered in one spot. Now, the point here is that the mental space that is achieved is EXACTLY in line with one's intention. It is just the same way with other actions. When you do something like this, it is 100% clear that you don't stumble upon it. You make a decision, you go through with it, and it happens. But it is probably essential to have some experience of seeing through oneself to understand that you are more than your thoughts and the aspect of control is an illusion.