I have moved from the city to the tropics, changing latitude by more than 40 degrees.

The equinox is coming, and the sun is pretty much in the same place. I am only a few degrees above the equator. Astrologically, I can’t tell how this is affecting me; I am overwhelmed by the difference in energetic environments.

Here, in the jungle, it is wild.

Here, in the jungle, the unexpected happens as a part of the daily existence.

A spark of life, a butterfly, a bug, a bird, traverses this landscape, and could be eaten by a predator at any moment.

For the first couple of weeks I was here, this was manifesting as strange vision flashes of catastrophe that could potentially happen to me and mine. Anticipation of devastation.

Thanks to my training, I have been able to let this go rather quickly, and focus on what I choose to focus my intent upon. But the barrage of catastrophic visions has taken fortitude to withstand; so today, the jungle and I came to an understanding.

I live on a mountain. The house was built by an American, so the space is well delineated between what is man’s space and what is the jungle’s.

The road to my house is paved. There is a wide tile porch and lights that flash on when a frog comes nearby. My space is my space. For weeks my two dogs have ranged around my house, chasing away creatures, marking territory, and acting as proxy extensions of my presence, helping to claim my space.

After first arriving, I hesitated to clear the space, declare my presence, and put up my flag for any and all spiritual beings in the local environment to see. I waited to feel it out first. When I finally did my first LBRP, it was an expected stirring up of the energetic pot.

I felt beings taking notice, and minor conflicts over space, but it was not until I performed this ritual in the jungle itself that I ran like hell.

I did this at night, in a foreign environment, in an unsanctified space. But I declared my presence, threw up some wards, and energetically walled off my house and property when I returned.

Whether this was a mistake or not, I am not sure. But today, I made a good connection with the jungle, using symbolic imagery.

There is a panther nearby. He lives on a mountain a few miles away, and the locals toss him a chicken every once in a while to keep him sated. This way their own goats and chickens have nothing to fear, so long as the jungle is sated.

I returned to this magical bower on my mountain, and went through my basic rituals: laying the circle, Qabalistic Cross, the affirmation to healing. And then, I listened.

There was a presence inspecting me, sniffing me. It was immensely powerful, but it was not hunting me; it was sensing me.

I personified this presence as a panther. Then I reached inside myself, and got a chicken, and tossed it to him.

He was very satisfied. I visualized myself encased in shining gold, and I reached out to scratch the panther’s ears. He rolled over on his back, so I rubbed his belly.

The jungle and I, we have come to an understanding.

I will appease this energy and these beings, and I will go about my merry way, unaffected by the chaos of nature that can bring unexpected destruction. Because I have paved my place, according to my rules, and we are but neighbors.

There was a lot going on tonight.

Considering everything that is happening cosmologically this evening, I am surprised I didn’t have the night planned out.  But tomorrow, the day of the actual solstice, I am taking a trip to Eagle Creek for a sweat lodge.  Tonight, the full moon and lunar eclipse, I could not find any magical event or happening that was scheduled elsewhere, and didn’t have the wherewithal to plan anything myself.

So I was taken by surprise this evening when I felt a calling a good half hour before the eclipse was to start.  I entered my sanctum in a near trance, unwashed and unprepared, with just enough time to go through my protective rituals before it started.

Someone is doing something very clever.

The Shamballah community has been given homework; every sunrise and sunset, we meditate for seven minutes on the golden pyramid, floating above our heads.  This image creates a beacon for someone to reach out and use to access the powers of all the initiates who participate.

I felt this happening, and rather than try to amplify my energetic output into my visualization (a bad habit which is my custom reaction) I decided to observe.

What I felt was the components of an advanced working.  My pyramid, and those of several other initiates (dozens? thousands? a few? who knows) were taken to put into a round amulet.  I felt Saturn, and the color black.  It did not seem to be the device for use in the culmination of the working, but rather a protective measure for something to come later.

I allowed myself to be used as raw material, for I was a brick in someone else’s wall, and to integrate my will or wishes with my small part to play would have either ejected me from the working or disturbed it too much to allow it to continue.  Either way, I was more interested in participating on the level I had access to.

There were definite amplifications of force, and while I don’t recall too much about the process, and I couldn’t sense too much, I could also tell when I was done.  My energies, accessed through the golden pyramid I have been visualizing day and night, were put to good use and I was not needed further.  The entire time was probably twenty minutes.

I went out of my office in a daze, had some brief interactions with my family, most of which centered around the movement of moderate sums of money.  We had roughly outlined these movements over the past day or week, but they were agitated by the movement, as I was not.  I took the opportunity, and the cash, into my office to cement the feeling.

I had the epiphany earlier this week that I once pined for love endlessly, obsessing over my lack of intimacy with all of my being.  It was only when I made the conscious decision to let this go that I found my life mate, and our romance has been a fairy tale ever since.

For the last few years I have had a comparable obsession with lack of money.  By consciously deciding to let this go, as well, to no longer let the lack consume my every thought, emotion, and decision, I feel I will similarly catapult myself to a different state of being.

This was confirmed when I returned to my office to meditate, cash in hand, and added it to my supply of money saved for a trip to the tropics.  I adored this money, felt gratitude for it, and will be letting it go when I exchange it for colones and give it to my bride for christmas.  I set the open box on my altar, and looked at the fat stack of bills through the candle flame, and I was urged to move through the flame spiritually.

I merged with the flame, became one with the light.  It is during such a state that impurities are burned away, and I fascinated my inner gaze upon that separate part of myself, my lack, which could now finally be recognized as other than me.

I went through the fire, emerging on the other side purer, without the gnawing anxiety of monetary lack clutching at my brain and soul.  I was free.

I examined my new state curiously, happily, refreshed.  I reached down to the stack of bills, some of which were large, other small, and new, relaxedly, that the stack I picked up was only large bills.  Sure enough, I had three hundred dollars in five bills, with a five dollar bill left in the box atop the rest of my new money.  The knowledge that what I was grabbing was somehow important, because it solidified that I could relax into abundance as a state, and didn’t need to second guess it or fear for its lack.

It simply is there.

So this solstice, this lunar eclipse, I have let go of one of my greatest blocks over the last six years.  My fear of money, as useful as it was to me for that time, is no longer necessary.  And I bid it farewell, goodbye.

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.