Meditation and Consciousness

For the most part we are unaware of how much of our minds are focused on processing sensory information. Our brains are filled with interconnected circuits responsible for coordinating our sensory information into a unified whole. The fact that we can catch a ball being thrown at us is a marvel when examined closely. Our eyes process a series of images that one region of the brain interprets as being a ball, other circuits determine that the ball like shape that is growing larger is actually moving towards us. Then our brain must tell our muscles (lots of them) exactly how much force needs to be applied to move our arms and open our hand to catch the ball. And we can do all this in less than a second.

So when we meditate, our consciousness isn’t tied up with this vast array of sensory networks to coordinate. This is why an activity such as running or watching tv can go by very quickly but even a few minutes sitting down in a quiet room with one’s eyes closed can be experience a taking more time. When our other senses are for the most part unoccupied, or at least not sending attention arousing signals, our entire awareness is focused on our internal thought processes. Of course, this does not happen immediately.

For me at least, there are several regular predictable stages that occur when starting to meditate. First my body spends some time shifting into a comfortable position, muscles relax and as the tension is relieved by body weight is distributed differently. As I shift into a more comfortable position, much of my attention is directed towards my vision, or lack thereof. As primates, our primary sense for orienting ourselves is vision, so naturally it is the sense our minds keep trying to use even when deprived of discernible visual input. The patterns seen when the eyes are closed are random firing of photoreceptors, the cells that detect light in our eyes. The patterns we see are the attempts our minds make to detect recognizable shapes in the chaotic weak input. After awhile the brain realizes that visual input isn’t going to occur, it shifts to the other sense, most prominent being the sense of touch. The random firing of sensory neurons across the body give rise to a whole host of sensations, from hot to cold, itching, pain and occasionally pleasant sensations as well, though they are often overlooked because the mind does not treat them with the same urgency as is provoked by sensations of pain.

If these sensations are ignored, the mind eventually stops focusing on external input and enters an interesting state, where the mind is able to experience thoughts through the senses, almost like a dream but without the lapses in memory the usually accompany dreaming. The mind is now in what some call a trance like state, able to recollect information that is usually inaccessible to the regular waking state. The mind is experienced as much more creative. It isn’t any more creative, but rather it is experienced as more because it is not occupied with having to process all the addition information that the five senses provide almost continuously during our waking lives.

This focused state is still new territory. It is well known that some people are able to accomplish incredible feats of mental calculation and others may experience near perfect recall of visual information. It seems likely that these people are more used to accessing information that is for most only available in this trance like state. It is certainly worth experiencing.

Systems of Magick, let’s start over

There are so many systems of magick to choose from it can be overwhelming for the new comer to find their way to a system which they can work with harmoniously. This problem is compounded by the fact that a system that has an underlying philosophy that be work very well for a person may not posses a magickal system that said individual can work with easily. For example, consider hermetic kabbalism, a system whose fundamental goal is individual spiritual development through the training of magickal/psychic abilities. Astral travel, evocation, energy work, and divination have been thoroughly explored from the perspective of hermetic kabbalism. Yet this very individualistic system of development is highly structured and ritualized. Strong structural elements in a magickal system can be very valuable for the right people, but can be confining to others who prefer a more free-form practice and still desire a system of development. Other systems such as neo-paganism can have a very free-form approach to magick which may be perfect for some, but it’s philosophies concerning spirituality can be seen as wishy-washy by those who want a little more of a roadmap.

In essence it can be very difficult to find a good fit. It seems like systems need to be meshed together so that an individual can have a system which suits their needs. This can be a problem when the systems have inherent conflicts or contradictions. For example, imagine someone who is focused on the spirituality of the new age global consciousness movement, what if the magick that feels right to them happens to be Lovecraftian themed rituals… seems kinda tricky to mesh those together without ripping one system apart. And people are tricky like that, we are by no means consistent. Hypocrisy and contradictions are what make up individuality. If we didn’t contradict ourselves, we’d just be stereotypes.

In lieu of trying to piece together a system of magick from where others have tread before, why not start anew? Primitive man was fortunate in not being overburdened with the multitudes of assumptions and structures placed upon the universe that we all inherited. Our progenitors were free to explore their universe with very little preconceptions.

Imagine two people meeting without language and being attracted to each other. Having no words or prior experiences to classify the effects they have on each other. They don’t know anything about each other or the sensations they are experiencing for the first time. They would experience being drawn to each other without understanding why and yet feel it as the most natural thing in the world.

This is the same approach our proto-shaman ancestors must have taken towards what we now consider the supernatural/magickal/occult and whatnot. First not being burdened with a materialistic mindset, they would not have seen “magickal” experiences as other. They would experience it as yet another wondrous facade of existence, another mystifying experience. Magickal structures came through experimentation starting with almost no preconceptions towards what was possible and what would work.

By using the magickal system of another, you assume that those who have come before you have had the same goals as you and that these methods are universal, what works for one should work for all. Most occultists have had the experience of that very first spell working out great, thus drawing them into the work of magick. But they assume the spell worked because they saw the desired results. But really, did the spell work because it was a good spell, or because we open ourselves up to the possibility that the events could be manifested, or maybe something else happened, who knows? But from then on, most people put their faith in that magickal system because it worked.

The next mistake comes in assuming that the person who wrote the spell knows more about spirituality and stuff than you do, because they can cast spells and get results (allegedly). But just because a physicist can show you how to smash atoms and release energy, that doesn’t mean you should listen to the dating advice they give you.

My suggestion, approach magick as though you were falling in love for the first time. No preconceptions, just enjoyment of the experience without knowing where you’re headed, but trusting your instincts. Don’t approach with fear, don’t approach with expectations. You don’t have those when you first fall in love, everything is new, seen through new eyes and the experience rocks your whole life for years to come. After your first love, you’re never the same. If you trust in yourself and you trust in magick, you’ll never find yourself pouring over arcane tomes looking for the lost knowledge of another when you can be obtaining better info from the source. Why go with second hand material? Unless of course pouring through forgotten tomes is how magick really manifests for you, then you’ll find all sorts of things in there. More or less, if you do what feels natural and trust you instincts, you’re way better off than following a system that may only be hindering your magickal development.

Good luck and keep up the good work,

N.

It started off as a rant, then it got interesting

The first three paragraphs here are a bit self’righteous, but if you plow through them, it gets good, I promise.

Do you remember the early 2000s? When the internet was still just starting up, before facebook and all that social crap, there were a lot of quality websites discussing the occult. Pagans, shamans, magicians and all sorts of heretics jumped to the internet as a means of finally being able to connect with each other, as well as freely discuss magick without fear of persecution. It was a time of hope and excitement for the future of modern magick.

Most of those quality sites are now gone, some live on but have not been edited in years, and a whole lot of crap sites have come up. We went from good websites with people discussing their ideas to blogs upon blogs of the holier than thou types.

These pompous self-declared adepts are insufferable. It’s bad enough that they’re so arrogant they make Crowley seem modest. But it’s even worse that I can’t read one of their “orginal posts” without recalling which book I read that “original idea” in over a decade ago. They speak with great authority of the astral planes and the properties of magickal energy, and yet they seem to avoid relating any actual experiences with magick. The ones that do usually talk about the fluffy feeling of being embraced with universal love, sure that’s a trip, but when they speak of it, it sounds like bullshit.

If they really have experienced those moments of bliss, shouldn’t they know about the counterparts? About what it’s like when you’ve drained your reserves on a magickal working, you’re laying in bed in that open pre-sleep state, you haven’t done a banishing in a few days, and something nasty sneaks under your defenses and hits you with the primordial terror. How you react to that tells you more about your magickal abilities and progress than all the adventures in astral land put together.

And how bout the synchronicities? To me there’s no greater indication that my magickal practice is having an effect on me than when I see those damn synchronicities where ever I go. Or how bout noticing things that you never saw before in a place you’re familiar with, something which would have had to have been there all along… That’s a really weird one, occam’s razor would point to the simplest explanation, being that magickal and meditative practice had lead to an increase in awareness so I now notice more in my surroundings, but hell, depending on how flexible the universe is, what if I’m waking up each morning in a slightly different universe, that’s almost identical except for some small changes. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s possible to deliberately slip between parallel universes and reach ones that are more and more different than the point of origin.

I could imagine doing this in small planned jumps. I figure in a universe of unknown amounts of parallel universes, only the ones that resemble our own the most can be reached without using some serious juice. But by jumping to one of those, you shift a little bit a now other some parallel universes that were too far to reach can be reached from this new one. A warning, this may very well be the kind of journey you can’t return from. But don’t take that too seriously, the only difference here from what everyone else does is attempting to make it more deliberate. This is just another way of applying the mechanisms through which magick affect reality.

I imagine there are others out there who practice travel magick, though they may use a different name for it. I have found sleep, walking around on psychedelics, and conversations with the right people to be the most effective ways of entering n-space. In n-space the regular laws of space-time do not apply, you may have experienced n-space in a ritual, within the magickal circle, but in a ritual n-space is confined. To me it’s that heightened state where ideas flow with the greatest of ease, a state of clarity where calm and excitement are experienced simultaneously… there’s a lot more I could say but I’d imagine it varies from person to person. Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to remain in n-space, but what occurs within n-space will affect where you come out.

Some magick you learn by hearing about and trying, and some magick that just comes to you, you live and learn it. This is magick my closest friend and I discovered. This is magick that works, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprises, but I would love to hear of any adventures in n-space you might have. Also just leave a comment if you’re having trouble getting into n-space and I’ll be happy to give you some pointers that have worked for me.

Back to the Basics

Making progress with magick can seem difficult at times. There is very little information out there on advanced magickal techniques and most of those are lengthy hermetic rituals requiring intense memorization and oratory, not to mention some serious blacksmithing and woodworking experience. I’d like to destroy that revolting imprint that so called high magick has left on the occult community and declare once and for all that those so called advanced rites, the ones to be performed after the pentagram has been repeatedly banished and invoked, after hexagons, trapezoids, and a plethora of polygons and n-dimensional forms in non-euclidean space have been drawn down, those rituals are bullshit.

Magick is about mindset, if you think a ritual that involves complex mystical symbols in foreign languages is really powerful juju, then it will be. But if you’re trying to make some magickal progress, everything you need is in the first few chapters.

The great rituals don’t do half as much towards developing awareness and magickal abilities as do those so called beginner exercises and meditations. It’s by doing those that you improve your abilities to focus and manipulate your awareness. Take for example body awareness, by focusing on your body, you gain a greater sense of your internal state. By focusing on your emotions, you are in dialog with your subconscious, where your inner self is reacting to your experiences, those reactions manifest through your emotions if you choose to listen. And yes simple mantras and actions can do more to manifest one’s desires than importing rare incense and gemstones to appease the deities.

Ritual magick is a path yes, and it works for some, sure. But let’s be honest, it’s a path for sadists. Memorizing meaningless gibberish and assimilating volumes of lore to perform long rituals which are all seriousness and no fun is only something I would recommend if all else fails. After all, we’re not trying to be self-flagellating monks right?

So to all the ritual magicians I say that you better be having fun with what you’re doing, cause all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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An interesting meditation

I’ve often found that in the practice of magick there are times where is seems like all one’s efforts aren’t doing much. Sometimes progress is difficult to see. And there are other times when magick likes to surprise with unexplained events or strange feats.

I just had a moment where magick made itself felt, in a gentle way (spend enough time doing magick and you’ll see, it’s not always gentle). I was meditating in an uncomfortable position and instead of changing my posture I stuck with it with some difficulty. After some time I had the most unusual experience, the pain became pleasurable. It was unusual not because I have never had that particular experience before, I have, but never while meditating. If I had to describe it, I’d say it was almost exactly like the way pain can be pleasurable during sex. To have that happen during meditation was, for lack of a better term, pretty freaking cool.

Yep, that’s right, put up with enough pain and the body releases the endogenous opiates enkephalin and endorphin. So there you have it, the science behind the magick and the magick behind the science. Like I said, pretty freaking cool.