I can’t sense anything right now. I close my eyes and open my mind and there is nothing. Not the exquisite silence of heavens, or the empty hum of reality, but nothing, a lack.
I run my exercises, focusing energy in my hands and running it down my arms and across my chest. I draw in from my arms to my belly. Through all of this I feel nothing. I feel the results, a growing pressure and warmth in my belly, but not the energy itself.
I gaze at the candle obscured in the smoke, and I don’t know if anyone is there, but my life shifts, so I know Behrat is listening.
This happens to me from time to time, I don’t know if there is a reason, I don’t know if the reason is personal or situation. For some reason from time to time, a week or few every other year or so my perceptions just vanish. It’s very disconcerting. While I might not be the most psychically sensitive person in the world, I still tend to live in a world populated by spirits whom I get impressions of, I navigate a world filled with currents and eddies of energy that I feel as I move through them, but right now, it’s as if that sense is shut off.
I still get results within reason when I work magick like this. As I tell my students just because you don’t perceive a spirit doesn’t mean it isn’t there, so continue your work. None the less I know how awkward it can feel to not be sure if you’re just yattering at the darkness or if the spirit you seek is hiding beyond vision.
On the other hand I know too many people place too much emphasis on the whizzbangs of magick. They’re so into sensing thoughts, spirits, and auras, that they never apply themselves to making changes, or direct more energy to honing perceptions than they do to living a good life.
It’s hard, and I want the other half of my world back, but I take times like this to remember that seeing spirits doesn’t make me a sorcerer. Sensing the blue fire I call from my hearts and run through my body doesn’t make me a sorcerer. Knowing how or why someone is damaged just by being in their field doesn’t make me a sorcerer. Knowing what I want in the world, moving towards it, effecting change through magick, moving forwards and enjoying my life as I take each step on a journey taking me deeper and farther within and without, that’s what makes me a sorcerer.
I’m writing this not because I feel the need to share for its own sake, not because I want someone to tell me how to bring my senses back (but suggestions and theories are not unwelcome), I share this for two reasons.
As mentioned too many people focus on the shiny lights in their magick, not on the planning and execution and getting results. I want to remind them that’s not the point of magick, and I want to encourage those who have never lived in the threshold worlds with spirits and flows of energy just beneath the surface, you can do magick too, even if you can’t sense it. Sensing doesn’t make it work. I know a handful of competent sorcerers who need to be hit with an energetic transport truck before they sense anything, but they still work.
Secondly, this isn’t something I see talked about too much, and when it first happened to me in my late teens I didn’t know what to do. Had I lost my gifts? Did someone Bind me? Maybe I was delusional and finally coming to my senses. If I had the reassurance then that this happens, it would have been easier the first few times. So to anyone out there, who it seems like half of the world just went silent, or goes silent from time to time, don’t worry. I can’t say why it happens, in general or in any specific case, but it doesn’t mean it’s permanent. Take a break, or keep working, it’s up to you, but chances are it will come back. Let the silence remind you next time you complain about being too empathic or whatever. If you want it back, you can eventually work towards it, or it will happen on its own.
This too shall pass, and I await the world to bloom around me anew, but I know not to worry and through all this, I’m still a sorcerer.
Lack of Perception
