Mystical Memory

 I use the word communion. Not meditation. When I commune, I am engaging with the universe in a personal way, much like in real life. To my understanding, meditation is a different skill set.

I suppose two or three years have passed since I took Jason Miller’s outstanding course on Hekate. During that course, my communion skills increased to an annoying level. The annoyance was that I would get to a place with great visuals that was obviously communication with otherworldly spirits but the scene would change in an instant. This caused me to forget not only what I was just told but who was doing the telling, the context and location. This was much like waking up knowing you had an important dream but not remembering any part of the experience. Since that time, I have been working on a solution.

About six months ago, I hit on something important. Now, I have a tried and true system for resolving this problem. While this does take some practice, the process is simple to remember.

The first step is paying attention to the location. Notice several objects in the scene. Last night, the objects were furnishings in my what a ceremonial magician would call his astral temple, a table, an object on that table, and the design of the carpet.

The second step is harder. Immediately when one realizes the scene has changed, focus on those objects until one is back in the original space. Do not try to return to the space. Instead, focus only on the objects. When you think of a place you are in that place. Once you have returned to the space, immediately recall everything that led up to the switch.

While I am not going to relate last night’s communion, that may go something like this. I arrived in the temple, the moon was obscured by clouds, a voice emanated from a rock that told me that my attitude regarding my family situation was incorrect. I was told to see only a few facts and then I would see my brother’s perspective. Then I encountered a wispy apparition that floated through the space saying, “See without your eyes, interpret without thoughts.”

I have found it more effective when I focus on repeating everything encountered up to the change in scene at least twice. When I do that, I find myself back in the same place I started and the communion stays on point. When I do not, the rest of the experience is like a dream, disjointed and easily forgotten.

When one is in the same place, the communication doesn’t pick up where it left off. The experience is more akin to leaving a conversation at a cocktail party and then returning. Sometimes, you have to direct things back to when you stepped out in order to catch up.

Last night, during an hour and half communion, I did this around five or six times, maybe more. When I came back to normal consciousness, I recalled four items of interest and immediately wrote them down. As I prepared for bed, I recalled one more that had been on the tip of my memory but I couldn’t quite bring the thought forward. Four of these items were of serious import, one was curious. Recalling four items of import that I could take away from the experience is a huge win.

By focusing on the location and the linear time line of events during the communion time, my memory of events that occur in alternate states of consciousness improves. I would love it if someone reading this that has the same problem would practice this technique and let me know if it worked for them.

 

Your Thoughts Matter

Mystics receive messages in many ways. Sometimes, it is by observing coincidences. Other times, it simply being self-aware enough to know you are missing something bigger and looking for it. We have dreams. Then again, there is the famous ‘download’ of information that psychics talk about that leads them to doing a specific technique. We have leaps of thought in mediation that lead us in various directions. Sometimes, we are plainly instructed by the powers themselves.

All of that falls under the heading of unverified personal gnosis. These leaps of intuition can rarely be linked to some known fact and when they can, no one takes the link seriously. That is likely a good thing. Such information is meant for the practitioner alone. Sometimes, a cool thing happens and several people get the same message. Sometimes, we are simply instructed.

The rarest thing of all are messages for other people. If a mystic just randomly tells you s/he has a message for you that you didn’t ask for, there is a 99% chance their ego is interfering. In this case, I believe I stumbled upon a truth that would be good for the world to hear. That may be my ego. That may be the truth.

I experienced a series of dreams that repeatedly demonstrated the same message. I was shown over and over again how holding onto a memory or perspective about someone else is the equivalent of putting them in a cage with themselves. The person cannot change or has a much more difficult time doing so because someone else deeply believes they are the person they have always been.

Another word for this cage is a shell. The term as taught to me included every ‘bad’ action one performed in life. Over time, I expanded this to include incorrect perceptions that colored my viewpoint. I have never seen anyone write that shells are also created and maintained by others.

Let us suppose you know someone that has stolen from their employer multiple times. Over the years, you have lost touch. If your memory of them includes the idea that they steal from their employer, it is that much harder for them to turn over a new leaf. If that memory contains a belief that those actions define the person, you add a layer of bars to their cage. If you think of someone as a manipulator, womanizer, mean-spirited, psycho, a bad driver, a push over or anything else the same thing happens.

I believe this is really what forgiveness is about. Forgiving isn’t about condoning the act but accepting that the event happened. The next step is releasing the person from one’s perception that the act defines them. This allows the person to redefine themselves. The embezzler may just become the most honest employee ever because s/he does not want to feel like a thief ever again.

The reverse is also true. If your ‘knowledge’ of someone is that they can overcome their weakness or have a special talent or anything else positive, that makes it easier for the person to open that door to great things.

So, it is incumbent upon myself to give up all thoughts of people I have not known for over a year.

How is this done? I plan on using what I recall as a Buddhist meditation where one ‘sees’ his own body decompose in death. My plan is to switch that up and see people I know from the past behaving according to my perceptions and then watching that image decompose until there is nothing left. That will free people from the cage I have built for them. This will give them a chance to walk out of the cage they created for themselves.

These cages do not have to be the same. Perceptions of others and the self are often incomplete and incorrect. Mine included. People build their own cages from guilt, insecurity, how others taught them to see themselves, life experiences etc. From this point forward, I am making an effort to release all the cages I have created for others.

Abandon the Gods!

When I was a baby Pagan circa 2001, most Pagans I knew claimed allegiance to one deity or another. Some said they had relationships with several deities but had one primary. Others, mostly Wiccans or witches, claimed a generic god and goddess. Now, or so I have read and experienced in the shop, a lot of younger Pagans eschew gods altogether. Those I have spoken to cite how horrible they have seen ‘religion’ manifest on other paths. For the most part, that means conservative Christianity. This is flawed and reactionary reasoning.

When I worked for local government, the paid time off structure was so good it was nearly European. In addition to that, if people had PTO to spare, they could donate it to newer employees who suddenly fell ill. A couple of painters abused that privilege by figuring out an angle to take advantage of the process. The reactionary thinking from the powers that be was to stop the donation process, cut the amount of PTO given and other draconian measures. That took no thinking and no effort. It may have been slightly more work to close the loophole that was exploited and deal with the scofflaws that scammed the system.  That work proved too much for those in charge. Depriving others because a small group of people took advantage is both lazy and demonstrates a lack of sympathy towards others. People who followed the rules were punished because of the actions of other parties. This is a flawed way to make decisions and such methods serve no one. The proper term is ‘a failure of leadership.’

Turning away from the gods because a completely different religion manifests in obviously problematic ways embodies that same easy out approach to life. That path leads to mastery of nothing and deprives the practitioner of enriching relationships. It amounts to a failure of personal sovereignty as one gives up something of value because of the failings of another.

The first thing we have to think on is the difference between exoteric religion and esoteric spirituality.  In the former, one is expected to believe in someone else’s esoteric experience having never so much as met the person in question. Once belief is instilled, a power structure is created and becomes socially enforced. In esoteric spiritual practices, the practitioner experiences the divine for herself. There is no power structure between the practitioner and the gods. Thus, the abuses and controlling behavior we see on other paths cannot occur.

Note, I am talking about an individual practitioner, not group work.

So what is a god? My perception of deity is that gods are wholly perfect unto themselves. They exist in a state of perfectly fulfilling their own nature. For example, Hermes is the god of movement. He is the patron of travelers, news, communication, commerce and thieves. He is able to move as well and does so anywhere He likes. Unlike most Greek deities He can travel to Olympus, this world, and Hades.  When he is in the Plutonic realms, you do not see him carrying off riches for his own use, the skulls of the dead etc. When he is in Olympus he does not declare a golden chair his own and cart it off to his dwelling. Those things do not move on their own.

The closest example I know in the human realm is a baseball player named Ichiro Suzuki. When he gets up in the morning he exercises. Then he eats. Then he reads about exercise and nutrition, then he practices baseball. When that is done, he does general fitness work and reads more about baseball, fitness and diet. Everything the man did revolved around being an athlete and specifically a baseball player. He had no other hobbies, interests, etc.

Encountering deity exposes one to similar purity at an intuitional level. This can lead one to the desire further purify oneself and allow one to be more willing to jettison that which does not align with the true nature of the person. Even if the practitioner only does that a couple of times, she is much further ahead of the game than the average person. There is value in approaching the gods.

If a person does not want to approach the gods, that is one thing. If they do not do so because of the fear of recreating the failures of a wildly differing path, then perhaps they may be seeing a reflection of themselves. That fear of being the abuser may be the first thing that must be rooted out. The source of that fear is unlikely what one thinks it may be. Often the core issue is only vaguely related to how it manifests.

I do not believe that the only path to spirituality lies through contact with the gods. Only, that such contact is helpful to many that sincerely walk the path. I do advocate investigating the process without rejecting it out of hand.

Asking For Help Through Prayer

Assuming you understand something about yourself is not in alignment with your soul, praying to get rid of that trait is unlikely to work. Only the gods know how often I prayed to be relieved of my anger and the impact it had on others. There are a couple of reasons why I feel those prayers were not answered.

First of all, I asked the deities in question to do something for me. I put all the work on them. That is like asking for help cleaning your home before a big event and sipping tea while watching all your friends do the work, not wise behavior.

The second reason is a bit more subtle. My anger was not the problem but a symptom. Had the gods granted my petition, I’d still be saddled with the same problem in another form. Perhaps, that new form would be harder to identify.

A great deal of my problem was perspective or a lack thereof. To me, whatever issue I was going on about was obvious for all to see. While I never thought this, my attitude was that people were willfully doing wrong. After all, if you can see the problem, yet act to perpetuate the issue, you are twice as wrong!

Once my perspective changed to one where I believe most people are doing their best most of the time, my need to express my anger lessened a great deal. Instead, I was saddened, not enraged. Attacking my anger directly was precisely the wrong approach.

Had the gods granted my request and removed my anger, they would have removed my ability to see what is out of alignment with the divine flow. That would seriously harm my personal spiritual progress as noticing that allows me to remove that which interferes. It would also have harmed my ability to help people that ask for my assistance. “That is wrong,” is met with resistance. “How would you react to that if you were on the other side,” is met with contemplation. As is, “When you do that, what energy is manifesting?”

Solving the first issue is easy. When you pray, ask for help. Help me resolve my problem with anger, is much better than, take away my anger. The gods will give you clues to resolve the problem, that is the help. Your cooperation is spotting those clues and acting on them. You’d be surprise how easy it is to change when you follow the bread crumbs long enough to find the path. Change is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other.

Solving the second problem is just as easy. By not identifying precisely how you want the help to manifest, you leave room for the universe to provide you with the answer you need, not an answer you demand.

You may be given an extra boon. I have found that many of the things I and others have asked to be removed were simply misapplications of proper energy. For example, a person’s need to drink may be born of a need to relieve emotional pain, an understandable goal. Yet actually healing the wound resolves the problem in a much more substantive way.  The drinker applies the drive for healing in an improper way. The modality is the problem, not the need to feel better.

This is important so another example is warranted. The person that cheats on his spouse may be looking for acceptance from others, even though his spouse offers the same. The problem is that the person does not accept himself. No amount of acceptance from others will resolve that. Instead, he must learn that he is worthy of his own love. Seeking acceptance from others is an incorrect manifestation of the energy of love. Love sought directly from others is nearly always a slight miss. Love yourself fully and one has love to give. That love is joyfully returned.

Love yourself enough to ask for help. Love yourself enough to notice the universe’s reply. Love yourself enough to act on those messages. You will find the path.

Things Not to Do

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, before most of us had heard the term global warming and cell phones were relatively new, I told a friend of mine that my Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) often arrived in dreams in the form of a police officer. My friend, a policeman, was taken aback and asked why. At the time, I interpreted his response as a negative but never asked for clarification.

When the officer appeared, the instructions were always the same. Stop doing that! This is obviously a major role of police officers. Jay walking? Stop. Robbing a house? Stop. Selling drugs to children? Stop. Stop in the name of the law!

Here the law in question is not civil or moral. The law in personal and natural. The law is unique to the way an individual’s soul needs to manifest and cannot be projected onto others, a classic mistake of exoteric religion. The process is also part of the natural unfolding of one’s spiritual nature. Following this law is required of all spiritual seekers that wish to ascend and embody a higher nature than has currently manifested.

I write this today because I have been reading The Complete Book of Ceremonial Magick, shockingly available at The Open Eye and came across this tidbit in the writings of Sam Webster. “Socrates claimed to be guided by his personal daemon, mostly being told what not to do.” Sam goes on to claim this is an obvious reference to the HGA. This struck me as true.

When I looked back at my life, my HGA consistently told me to stop a few things in life. The better I was at not doing those things, the more progress I made.

Jumping to the conclusion that the HGA is a moral compass and is the same as our conscience is understandable but misguided. Our conscience is largely a construct of what we have been taught is right and wrong. This teaching is of social value as it keeps society under some sense of order.

Keeping a family unit together is of obvious value to society as a whole and therefore an extra-marital affair is deemed immoral. Interestingly, the French, ever practical when it comes to human sexual behavior, enter marriage with the near expectation of an affair as long as it is not thrown in the spouse’s face or otherwise embarrasses him or her. Again, this is an obvious practical way of keeping the family unit together. Morals are societally dependent and not divinely commanded.

A lot of Pagans and other spiritual people struggle with the challenges of the bodily demand for sexual activity. I have seen the gamut from abstinence to promiscuity of truly impressive proportions and everything in between. Absolutely none of that actually matters. What matters is what interferes with the connection between soul and manifest personality. That harm can occur anywhere on the spectrum and is totally unique to the individual. So, one’s HGA may issue a stop order basically demanding an end of abstinence, multiple partners, a given type of partner or even a thought that is never acted upon. Again, these orders are simply to further align one spiritually, nor moral judgement is made or implied.

Back in the day I struggled with expressions of anger. Thankfully, acts of violence were not part of my problem. I realized today that my HGA never once instructed me to get over my anger as so many humans did. I was not even told to adjust my behavior as far as expressing my anger. While curbing my anger had beneficial social applications, it did nothing to aid or hinder my spiritual growth. In looking back, I am wondering if the things I was angry at were primarily lessons in what not to do myself. If I am angry with X for doing Y, then I ought not to do X. That sounds like a reasonable interpretation to me.

The problem there was that anger also manifested in conversations that had nothing to do any behavior I would engage in. Such anger was obviously damaging socially. My thought is that my HGA was not concerned with social relationships in the least.

So, what is the purpose of obeying these edicts of the HGA? Unlike the assumptions of those that have not had what is called Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA, the process of the Great Work does not end there. Instead, this is the beginning of work toward Knowledge and Conversation with the soul. Which again is a beginning for the Great Action, which is behaving in accordance with the union of personality and soul.

To this end, the HGA does not normally tell one what to do. The things one does that fall into alignment with the soul are already being done at some level and simply need refinement. Those actions, at least for me, moved from ham-fisted to elegant. When I am not elegant in my interactions, I am slightly off. This is easily recognizable within. That recognition is the only correction really necessary.

Elegant actions give birth to obvious results.

So, what are you not supposed to do? That which does not align with your soul. How do you know what those things are? Well now, that is why it is called the Great Work. Learning what is and what is not in alignment with your soul takes hard work, introspection and observation. There is a reason why the Oracle at Delphi’s famous entreaty is still famous. “Know Thyself”. Stay tuned to this space on how to find out what not to do.

 

The Secret is a True Lie

I encounter a lot of folks that have read The Secret. I am always hit with the same analogy. If you go to the mail box expecting nothing but bills, you will find nothing but bills. What you think, manifests. This is true but the example makes it a lie.

The reason it is a lie is the analogy is reduced to ease understanding to such a degree that the analogy is untrue. Allow me to complicate things a bit.

The reason you have bills in your mailbox is not because you think there will be bills in your mailbox. The reason is that bills are often delivered via the mail. One receives bills because one spends money. One receives an unreasonable amount of bills because one spends an unreasonable amount of money or one’s income is too low to sustain oneself.

In the first case, the manifesting thought isn’t the one expecting bills. The manifesting thought is something more akin to I need all this stuff or I am successful because I have stuff or I can spend all this money. There are a thousand variations. Those are the thoughts that lead to manifestation of unreasonable amounts of bills. Changing those to something like, I only spend on necessities or I buy financial security not objects will manifest a different reality and thus less bills.

In the second case, there can be many reasons for poverty. Some of those are in a person’s control others are not. However, even those who have more control over poverty than they think tend to feel that they are victim of circumstance. Maybe a person makes just enough money to pay their necessary bills. They may think there are not any better jobs out there. This is obviously untrue as many people occupy those jobs. Maybe the thought should be changed to I will put in the effort to qualify for a better job. Maybe the thought is Weekends are mine. True enough but if that thought was changed to I will find a part time job that allows me to work Saturdays one may find such an opportunity. Since one is already paying one’s necessary expenses all that money can be saved for emergencies. That is a huge stress reducer, financial savings as you don’t have to borrow to cover an emergency and a step out of poverty. Maybe, saving that money leads to an educational opportunity that boosts one’s earning potential.

My point isn’t to bash people that are low-income. As I said, there can be a variety of reasons that one is in that position that are truly out of a person’s current ability to control or overcome. I am merely pointing out how a single change in thinking can manifest a different reality. This applies every area of life. 

Control your mind; control your life.

 

Power

 

Power is a strange thing. People often seek power while having no idea what power actually is. All they know is they are not satisfied with their life or some situation(s). The seek power over those problems but since they do not know spiritual power, they take a clue from mundane power.

Mundane power is the ability to control people and situations. For example, being in a position to hire and fire people, have access to money making opportunities that others do not or being in control of social perceptions or groups. While magickal power can be used in these ways, those are not examples of spiritual power. This is true even though spiritual forces, in the broadest sense of the term  (i.e. spirits themselves or life force energy), can be employed.

One can use a road opener spell to open a path to a new job, bind a stalker or open up communications. Those are examples of magickal power but not spiritual power as I define the terms. While you can open a path to a new job as a charity worker or mafia enforcer, intent does not factor into these definitions of power. Magickal power is the ability to impact the mundane world directly using non-mundane methods. To use it, one must make specific decisions. One must decide one wants a job or that a stalker must be stopped. There is nothing wrong with using magickal power in this way.

I have met practitioners of hoodoo that do not look at their practice as spiritual in anyway at all. I have met some say the traditional prayers that go with some hoodoo practices that do not really believe what they are saying. They simply acknowledge that a formula works. They do not claim any particular spiritual insight or self-improvement has resulted from working their tradition.

Spiritual power is different. There is nothing overtly to do once one possesses spiritual power. There is no one to control. There is no situation to manipulate. One simply lives within one’s own space.

Spiritual work is basically finding out what that space is, locating the center point and residing there. When I first began my magical track, my circle and home position within that circle look like this.

The circle encompassed all the events and interactions in my life. The red area indicates my then insecurities both valid and invalid. The black dot represents my home position at the time. Obviously, that is a very difficult place from which to navigate one’s life. Some people would choose to magically lash out at anyone who challenged this position. I did not do that. I did verbally argue my position and pushed people back. Yet, at the same time, I was constantly trying to fix myself. I believe refusing to do magick to control those past situations benefited me in the long term. In the short term, some people cleaned my clock!

As I began to have some healing abilities, I convinced myself I was operating from a new place. This new place was mercy and caregiving for those that “needed my help”. Not only is that a place of ego but again a recapitulation of insecurity in a different form. It was as if I was saying to myself, I must have improved because now I can help some people. There were times where I bought into that line of thinking. There were other times when I knew it was bull shit.

The image below shows a shift in my home position within my circle. I was still out of balance and operating from a place of ego, albeit a kinder one.

At this point, I was always taken aback when somebody I helped revealed themselves not to be my friend. I had conflated being kind and healing towards others with earning their friendship. That was an error on my part.

I could go through a lot of similar iterations moving both the point and perspective within that circle. Yet, the story would not change much. Life was always a struggle.

Only very rarely, when somebody was being particularly troublesome, did I use magic to push people outside of my circle. Some might call that controlling others. I called that creating a reasonable space within which I could work. I’m sure it is pretty easy to see both sides of that discussion.

My point is, that when working magic to exercise control (power), one pretty much stays in the same place. If that place is a position of insecurity, an emotional need to control and dominate others, an emotional need to help others or any other unbalanced place, working magic does the practitioner little good in the long term. In fact, it becomes a cement keeping one stuck in an out of balance or uncentered place.

The practice of spiritual magic or theurgy, is to keep moving out of imbalanced places until one finds the center point within one’s circle. At this point, the circle self-balances. So, people that seek to do you harm have a very difficult time doing so. Those little mistakes we make also are self-correcting before they become big mistakes. And the more we recognize things that need correcting or have self corrected for us the less mistakes we make.

Standing in that center point is such a strong place that one is nearly unassailable. Yes, it is possible for the random person to shoot you or rob you or for somebody else in your life to do nefarious things. If that happens while you are centered and balanced, at some level it becomes your own life lesson on a much larger scale than average. Or, it was simply your time to go. While dying might be agony, death really doesn’t matter.

When you are at that point of balance within your circle it looks like this.

If that looks like the symbol of the sun to you, in that you can find a clue to the first level of spiritual work. If that looks like an eye to you, that can be a hint for you about what it is like to be in this place.

When you are in a position like this, there is very little magic for you to do that has any impact on anybody else. Your sphere does that for you. Because those who enter that sphere very often automatically adjust themselves to a point where they either become participants, allow themselves to heal, or move elsewhere. The work at this point is simply expanding the boundaries of the circle.

Spiritual power is not exercising the need to control. Spiritual power is simply expansion.