Category: journaling

I have a very busy mind.

This is an advantage for many aspects of my life; being an idea generator keeps me from ever becoming bored, and I have gained a truly astounding number of skills due to my ability to learn.

However, while reading a book titled Leaving the Body, about Astral Projection, I came across an innocent passage that threw my entire worldview into disarray.

You are more than your ability to process thoughts.  You are also a center of energy.

Of course, the light bulb labeled ‘Eureka’ said inside my head.  My status as an energy nexus is possibly more important to my livelihood, my enjoyment of life, and my abilities as a magician, than is my ability to think many variegated things.

I enjoy thinking.  It is one of the things I am best at.  However, it also interfered with very necessary aspects of my being that do not need to employ thought.

This morning, as I sat down to meditate (which I grudgingly force myself to do for under five minutes each day) I had a series of thoughts come into my mind, unbidden, as usual.  My favored technique has been to observe the thoughts as they come into my mind, and allow them to slide away as I return to neutrality.

I cannot keep this up for very long, because I begin to grow restless.  My need for accomplishment and experiment drives me to move on to a ritual, an affirmation, a place to direct my formidable will.

But what I am neglecting is my formidable energy.  I am a powerful being, and so long as I continue to ignore the needs of my energy body, I am going to continue thwarting it.

Yesterday I did not meditate in the morning, or spend any time at my rituals at all.  The effect was apparent throughout the day.  Calming my thoughts was so difficult as to become impossible; this is easy enough to focus into productive work on a work day, but on a Sunday, I had no outlet for these rampaging musings.  At the end of the evening, I sat with my glass of wine and a book, and read recreationally for the first time in ages.  While perusing Leaving the Body, I tried some of the breathing exercises that yogis have used to achieve OBE (Out of Body Experiences).   But I could not devote my attention fully to this experience without simultaneously continuing to read.

My mind is my hungry ghost.  It is insatiable.  Continually wanting to consume more new information, it is relentless in its need to find new material to interact with, consider, digest, and assimilate.  If alone, I cannot even eat without reading.

Since my Kundalini awakening, I have had energy rampaging through my body.  Instead of developing myself as an energetic being, I have dedicated myself wholly to the mind, neglecting the very explosiveness that I could use to focus to my purposes.

What, then, should I do?  I fear I cannot entirely leave the pleasures of the mind, especially while my career and livelihood involve working on the computer and on the internet.  But I can reserve sections of my week to build myself as an energetic being, and work on those exercises that would help me to grow in this area.

 

First, then, a compilation of exercises is in order.  My mind will be satisfied first before I can move into the simplest, purest answer; only after I have exhausted every angle of speculation will my eager mind let a subject rest, so that I may contemplate it in neutrality.

Last night, I entered the element of Fire.

 

In Amanda Jones’ Elements Series, we progress through each element for 2 weeks.  Earth and Water sucked, Air felt more familiar than I expected, and now, I am in my true element: Fire.

This morning, I rose at 4:30 in the morning to drive down to Eugene for a job interview.  I got a job offer yesterday for a lesser-quality job; cold calling in a cube for 8 hours a day.  A good environment to invoke the element of Fire.  I am optimistic about my career prospects with this assitance.

After sunrise, there was a mountain ridge to my left, and I pulled into a rest area.  Crossing the freeway on foot, following a path to a fence, nimbly hopping over and walking across the dewy grass, I looked up to the mountains before me, and watched the sun rise over it.

The shafts of light to either side of the mountain heralded the growing light that was on its way.  Their angles changed, and the skyline on the ridge began to glow bright white.  The silhouette shifted above and below the ridgeline, so I would alternately see a line of white, then black, then white, that matched the rugged curves of the mountain, overlapping and shifting above it.

Then the first pinpoint of light came over, and I felt the touch of Fire.

It was not blazing hot, as I had expected; it was more like the invocation last night: gentle, steady, warm.  The flame, not the spark.

It grew slowly, and my eyes were faced with something greater than I could comprehend.  Literally.  I squinted my eyes and watched through my watery eyelashes, and a long streak of white light came down from the sun to the base of the mountain.  Although I knew it to be a refraction of my own eyes, I still smiled at the Sword as it manifested in my vision.

Then some amazing things happened with color.  The white of the sun became enveloped by flashes of purple, and the pyrotechnic display reminded me of the ‘flashing colors’ I have read about but never employed.  Except here, it was not two colors set side by side to create an intentional visual effect; this was the effect itself, happening within the majesty of nature.

As the sun rose to the top of the mountain ridge, the colors stabilized, white, blue, yellow and purple, crowning and cradling the newborn sun.  I drank in this majesty for a while, then stepped into my day, accepting the bounteous gifts of nature as part of my birthright.

Technical notes: I cast a circle, performed the Calling Upon and the Qabalistic Cross.  Rather than perform more rituals in the field, I opted instead to set the space and allow nature to interact with my magically-heightened senses.

It’s a big step for me to use magic, not as a force that I try and inflict upon reality, but instead as a container within which I can examine reality.

Absurdly, I do not journal every day.

As a writer, and a lover f words, I understand that my mind processes things best when I can write through them.  Yet despite my incredible advances in personal growth through study of the esoteric arts, I shirk this one necessary practice.

Why?

I suppose I do not attribute the time spent journaling as productive.  I could be working, or researching, but more likely I am surfing facebook or pawing through my email for the eighteenth time that day.  Before wasting time on any of these little trivialities, I must ensure that I have had the time to download my thoughts through my fingers by logging into this private blog and journaling.

I have the ritual at my hand for subjects; draw a card, out of my new Giant Rider-Waite deck, and contemplate it on my life.  There is plenty to discuss on this once a day and can be done in ten minutes.

A new commitment, then.  As I must learn a new deck, and move into a lost habit, I will journal on a card once every morning.

I am satisfied with the meditation portion of my morning routine; I now have a series of rituals to go through, and now that I have included the Middle Pillar in the lineup I feel more cogent.  Daily practice of this ritual, while necessary for Golden Dawn proper, is not recommended by the Modern Mystery School.  I find it inappropriate to banish this personal invocation of power from daily use, especially when it is essential to the work and craft of magicians from such a closely related order.  On a tangent, I have stopped doing the 7-directional pentagram every day, since it banishes forces in my sanctum that I don’t wish continually cleansed.  The daily cleansing of sage, yes; in nomini padre, yes; but this pentagram cleans the space in a way that leaves it stale, and I need a magical batina in my personal sanctum.

I have a project stirring around for a more comprehensive website, based on magickal arts and study; a resource, full of pages of SEO optimized content, with lots of hits and affiliate programs and advertisers on all of the pages.  Maintenance of this site would be an easy job to maintain while living in the tropics.

Now that I am in the element of Air (my first time through Amanda Jones’ elements series), possibilities are openeing on all quarters.  My wife has fallen in love with the idea of Costa Rica, and for more reasons than I can list, this is the right move for our entire family.  Now, I must manifest it.

Now, I must describe the life I wish to live.  The man I wish to be.

I visualize the future, fluently.

We live in a villa just minutes from the ocean.  I run down to the sand every morning, performing my rituals in a secluded little space I have laid claim to.  I swim in the ocean to start my day.  I come home and eat fruit and coconuts with my family, and we laugh and play in the sunshine.

I get to work when I feel like it, and I love my work.  I spend a few hours on the computer, being creative and communicating with my contacts back in the states.  Skype is essential to my livelihood.  After a few hours of tinkering with my websites and delegating tasks to my team, I take siesta with my family.  We laze in hammocks and talk about the world, numbers, myths, and history.  We speak in three different languages in the house.  We have a grand time together, and we all enjoy our fun.

Then my wife and I leave for a date, and we stroll through San Jose, enjoying our new community and culture.  We are seen as the exotic, magical couple, and peopla are in awe of us.  I like it that way.

I live a life fuilled with ease and prosperity.  I love my life.  I love my life.