personal work

07
Apr
2018

Self, Mind, Brain, and Drugs

As some of my readers may know my health has been…questionable for most of my life.  I was born dead and out for about fifteen minutes before resuscitation.  I spent the first month of my life, save Christmas day, in an incubator.  The only reason I’m alive is thanks to the fact I was born in a country with universal healthcare.  My parents would not have been able to afford me and all my complications and I wouldn’t have made it past the first week if I had been born in the States.  I drowned when I was four, resuscitated.  I spent much of adolescence in pain and discomfort in and out of hospitals, I spent a lot of my preteen and teen years as a frequent guest of the Hospital for Sick Children, the best pediatric hospital in the world.
 
It is not surprising considering these issues, and several other issues, that I don’t exactly identify with my body.  I always think of myself as a consciousness driving a meat suit, like a kid in a robot in an anime.  It’s not me, I’m the consciousness.  The body is broken, it’s decaying and falling apart the moment it’s born, that is not me.  My mind, my consciousness that is pure, that is disconnected from my body and its corruption.  That’s how I viewed myself for a long time.  Something above and beyond my body.
 
Then more recently I was diagnosed with depression.  Now I shouldn’t have to say this, but depression is a physiological problem in the brain.  It is not about “feeling sad” and can’t be fixed with happy thinking, any more than anemia is fixed with thoughts about iron.  The brain has problems processing and creating specific neurochemicals.  When I was diagnosed with depression it really hit me that I am not above and beyond my body, because depression is a problem in the brain, but it affected me, even though I thought of myself as beyond it.  My consciousness, at very least, gets translated through the physical brain.  As “pure” as my consciousness might be it gets distorted by the interface with my brain.
 
It was actually hard for me to admit that a problem with my body was affecting my mind, and that my mind wasn’t separate.  It seems like nothing major, but to someone who was more in their head than their body it is upsetting to see how it can be distorted and influenced.  Then when I started taking anti-depressants I again had to admit how the brain affects me, as my moods and clarity improved again.
 
I got to “trigger” more of this discomfort to force me to deal with it.  I began to experiment a year ago with cannabis.  Yes at 33 I’ve probably been high less than the average 18 year old.  The first experience knocked me out of the meat suit, it was a very potent edible.  I got what some call body heaviness, but it was to the point where I didn’t feel like I was interfacing with my body, and actually had mild spasms as I couldn’t completely control my  body. I was still piloting a meatsuit, but all the controls were sluggish or crosswired. I was just my conscious sitting in my head.  My ability to focus goes out the window, and that’s again what made me have to deal with this brain interface.  It wasn’t just moods, my brain could actually interrupt my ability to think.
 
When you think of yourself as a non-physical consciousness, it’s actually a troubling thought to see how chemicals can affect you, that your consciousness isn’t as inviolate as you think.
 
My purpose in writing and sharing this is twofold. Firstly it is allowing me to process some of my humility around this, coming to terms with the fact that however “pure” my consciousness might be beyond the body, as long as I’m in the body the physical brain can and will influence me. In fact we’re learning more and more about how much of our personality is physically rooted in the brain, which then makes me wonder about who “I” am? How much of the personality I identify with is “me” in the sense of my consciousness beyond flesh, and how much is based upon my genes, my neurochemicals, and events that shape the way the brain function. My one lama used to refer to this is our biology and biography, but I feel there is one more piece, that Beyond the flesh consciousness. Secondly I write this because sadly I see a trend in the various magick communities to ignore or look down on mental health issues. Pretending, thinking as I did, that the brain/body couldn’t influence the consciousness. Sadly this plays out with people not seeking professional help for mental health issues, or assume that medications aren’t the route to follow.
My Rinpoche fled Tibet during the Chinese invasion. As a child he fled through the mountains of Tibet, being chased occasionally by Chinese military, losing people on the way, living a horrible story. That was over sixty years ago, but he still has PTSD and can’t watch military movies. That was a reassuring conversation for me, here is a Rinpoche, a great teacher who has spent his life meditating, but he admits there is a wall where he cannot control the damage that was done. If a reincarnate lama in his 70s can still deal with mental health issues, it’s not a failing when you can’t magick it away. As a subculture we don’t imply someone is a failure because they can’t magick away anemia or allergies or whatever, but we treat mental health problems as personal and magickal failures, and that’s bullshit. As competent sorcerers we have to be willing to engage reality as it is, not how we want it to be, and use any resource we can to make our journey better, more productive, and more functional, and for some of us, part of that is realizing we are more of the body and brain than we think, and that’s okay.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
09
Aug
2014

Pushing the Plateau


Last week I talked about how most of the time it’s the practitioner and the practice, not the tradition that makes for a good occultist. I’d like to build on that now, with part of what makes a good occultist, dealing with the plateaus and moving beyond.
SONY DSCHrafn from the Weaving Wyrd (who needs to post more) wrote a good piece on The Okay plateau and the Occult. Now I recommend you read what they wrote, but I’ll give you the Abyss Notes Version.
With any skill -physical, mental, or magickal- we practice and train up until a certain point, and then we tend to slow down or slack off. We often think that we’ve gone as fair as we can, that we can’t improve, but really there are a lot of factors to why we stopped improving.
Anyone who has been doing magick for several years probably knows this feeling. You feel like you aren’t progressing, or you can’t progress. Maybe you feel like there is nothing else to learn. Perhaps it has become so normal in your life that you’re no longer enamoured with your Arte. We go through the routine daily practices, but go nowhere.
Hrafn suggests four great ways of dealing with it
• Keep a Journal
• Back to the Basics
• Attend a Periodic Workshop
• Find a Group
I would give a resounding yes to all of them.
I’m writing this because I feel I’ve been at an Okay Plateau for several months, and it’s only in the last month that I’ve gotten through it. (Dread Lords of the Abyss have I gotten through it…)
So without trying to copy Hrafn’s plan, I did all of the above. During my Saturn Retrograde hell I stopped journaling. Journaling is tedious, and boring, but it’s also magickal accountability. Any magick that didn’t work during the months I didn’t journal, I don’t remember, so I can pretend everything went awesome. Now that I’m journaling if something doesn’t work, I can’t forget it, the record exists. This forces me to face it, reevaluate it, and figure out why it didn’t work, and thus improve. (Also, reread your magickal journals every once and a while, you’d be amazed as the wisdom you’ve forgotten.)
Under orders from my HGA I’m not allowed to buy new books (something about apples and fields and trees) so I’ve been rereading old books, like Magus of Strovolos and Hands of Light, and it’s refreshing to touch base with old important books, much like your journals seeing the wisdom and skills you’ve forgotten.
I attended and presented at the same occult convention Hrafn mentions, took great classes, and spent a weekend talking shop with great occultists and experimenting.
I found some nifty new occultists online to talk to. Personally I’d rather a group in Toronto to work with, but I’ll take what I can get.
That all said, there are a few things additional ideas I’d like to suggest for the Okay Plateau.
• Different directions/model
• Work a system/book
• Combine systems
• 110

This model needs to change...

This model needs to change…

First off: Switch your Model. If you’re unfamiliar with the Models of Magick proposed by Frater U∴D∴ you can read this article on Spiral Nature (A more complete explaination is in his book High Magic which I recommend, but isn’t necessary for this post). Basically all forms of magick can be framed through four different lenses. (And it’s become vogue to bash his system by people who haven’t even read the works, advanced or simple on the models, and don’t know know what they’re talking about) Chances are your practice or world view focuses on one of them, switch it up. That can mean either including new practices, or reframing what you do. If you do pure energy work, try using a spell format for what you want to do instead, make an incantation and use physical material in your work. If you do conjurations try interpreting what you do via the information model or calling the spirit by drawing/attracting their energy. If your work is psychological magick, switch the process/interpretation to energy work. Do this for a week, a month ideally. The intent isn’t to convert you, but more broaden your perspective a bit, and even if you go right back to what you were doing before, you very well might find that period has pushed you forward when you thought you were stalled.
When I was working on my physical fitness I plateaued at being able to do 120 pushups, just couldn’t break that point. So what I did was I started changing my hand positions, sometimes I did pushups with my hands touching, or father apart, or unevenly spaced with one farther up than the other. These new pushups sucked! I couldn’t do nearly as many, because they were hitting a lot of different, but related/connected muscles, that I didn’t use. After a few weeks of toying around like that, I went back to normal pushups and beat 120. In some ways the models are like that, and when we shift our model work, just for a while, you work magickal muscles you rarely use, which in turn strengthen and support the muscles you have, letting you break your plateau.
Work a new/old system or a book. The rational here is pretty much the same as the above. Pick a book, or a system, old or new, the less related/connected to your system the better, and work through it. I recently did this with Christopher Penczak’s Inner Temple of Witchcraft. That book is frankly and politely not my style in the slightest. But I read it, and performed every exercise in the book, albeit in a shortened period of a week and a half when he suggests a year and a day. So I tried all his meditations, called the Goddess, did some candle magick, wrote petitions, practiced basic energyballs. It’s a 101 book for his version of witchcraft, completely different from what I do, and what I like* so it was perfect. It forced me to do new things, different things, and the basics and while there may be only one thing in the book that I go back to (which was ironically one of my first energy techniques I stopped using), I found it useful to work through it. It flexed my muscles in new ways, and over that week and a half I felt my daily routine pick up steam it hadn’t in a long time. Or if you’re a tarot reader for instance grab all those little white books that you hate that came with your deck. Most decks have a unique/cheesy theme spread, work your way through all of them, use the book to re-reference the meanings, see how that goes.
*I find it odd, most interviews with Christopher I adore his stuff, and he’s a friend of a friend, and the friend vouches for what he can do and what he knows, but his books just don’t cut it for me.
Not all combinations are good, but at least you learn.

Not all combinations are good, but at least you learn.

Combine systems and practices. More of same rational, do something old in a new way. Plateaued? Combine two of your practices. Ceremonialist who reads tarot? Summon the spirit of a card they way you would an Angel. Rootworker and Mindfulness practitioner? Sit on the cushion with an herb, breathing it in and out, see what it does. Maybe you’ll find something awesome to teach and share, maybe you’ll feel like an idiot for the attempts, but it both flexes though related muscles, and has you experiment, the best way to do magick. Mix traditions, mix practices, meditate on the Name of your patron god, invoke an herb spirit, use your kitchen witch baking for divination, whatever.
110%. So obvious, so cliché, so true. We plateau because we think we’ve hit the limit, shift the limit. It’s easier with some practices than others, but you can always push harder. If you pray for 10 minutes a day, make it 15. If you meditate for 20 make it 25. If you perform offerings for your spirits include something new on top of the usual. If you say 400 mantras a day, make it 500. Whatever you do, just do it a little bit more. It has to be enough that you notice (10 minutes of meditation becoming 11 does nothing, 15 is noticeable) and it pushes you. Again, you don’t have to stay this way, just do it for a week or month and it will help things come into place. (Also, yes, those are not literal 110%, the point is increasing your effort)
Having just broken through an Okay Plateau, I know they’re one of the most frustrating periods you’ll go through as a magickian, but it happens to us all. The key is as a good and wise practitioner, we know this, and we know how to break through. Keep going, Work harder, Work smarter, Work more, and you’ll break through the plateau, and oh from there the places you’ll see.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
03
Aug
2014

Your Tradition Can't Beat Mine


“It is folly to suppose that the Black or the White Mass is of greater importance, it is but the Power enslaved in them that must be freed –the Power of their Belief that must be utilized and aligned unto Our Path.” ~Chumbley
Came across this quote again, and it resonated with something I’ve been thinking about off and on lately. Another potentially controversial statement: Your tradition isn’t better than mine.
Okay, not too controversial depending on how you read it. By which I mean to say what I feel is fairly obvious, and mostly true; that magickal systems in and of themselves aren’t superior to one another. Most of the time it’s the person working the system that makes the difference, not the system itself.
TLDR: Good sorcerers, not traditions.
I got thinking about this for a few reasons, but most evidently when watching a friend, who recently converted magickal traditions, talking about how amazing their new system was, that it was far superior than the last one they were a part of (or the one before that, as the middle tradition was superior to the first) and just worked so much better. She might be right, but to an outsider it doesn’t look like it. Why? She’s always been good at what she does, and even if the first two traditions she studied in were shitty, she made them work for her. I say in this case it isn’t so much her new tradition or initiation did anything, it’s the fact that she is a wise person (with her blind spots like us all) with great focus and discipline. It wouldn’t matter if she was studying Neo-Wicca, Khemetic Reconstructionism, Santeria, Buddhism, or whatever. As long as she is in a system that has room for magick and flexing willpower, I think she would be a good sorcerer.
Now, don’t get me wrong, some traditions have different advantages and niches. Want to evocate a spirit, I think Ceremonialism is the route, want to invocate a spirit, I think Buddhism has that down, want to be ridden by a spirit, get thee to a Santero’s house. The thing is these advantages are only there for people who have the capacity to use them, some hypothetical good sorcerer. Just because you work with the grimoires doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get spirits appearing, just because you have an empowerment doesn’t mean Vajrayogini is going to come dance in your mind, just cause you made Ocha doesn’t mean Oya is going to take your body for a spin. All systems have the potential for training and growth and magick, but it’s the person that does the work, not the system. Though again caveated some systems are better suited for different people and bringing out the desired traits.
The second thing that got me thinking about this was seeing someone automatically assuming that someone from a certain tradition couldn’t hurt them magickally because it was an inferior system. Two things can happen here, either your disbelief works wonders on your personal magick and deflects stuff, or more likely, you’ll leave yourself open because you assume that Goetic spirits or animal fetchs have nothing on your protective angel/spirit/Chihuahua and get your etheric ass handed to you. Again, some traditions have different advantages, some might have better offence, others better defence, but that is no reason to discount them. As much disdain as I might drip on the newage movement, if think a whitelight newager can’t curse you, you haven’t crossed many of them, cause some of them wield the most potent hateful energy you’ll ever encounter. I see with pagans a lot of disregarding Christians and their prayer/magick, but I know a Catholic priest who works as an exorcist. He’s the sweetest man, but magickally he is a force to be reckoned with. He’s nearly thrown a friend of mine out of body (and said friend is well trained and not exactly “fragile”) and I had him bless an object for me so I’d remember this lesson, and when he blessed it I felt like someone was crushing my heart in a vice, just from the pressure and type of force/energy he called upon.
Granted most of the time this isn’t an issue in the occult community, we get along for the most part. I’m a Buddhist ceremonialist and my closest friends and my magickal allies are everything from newage neo-Native shamans, to vampires, to strict Solomonic practicitioners, to Santeros, to atheists (they can do magick too), Cambodian shamans, witches, and whatever else I’m not thinking of. We learn to talk across the differences, and learn from each other, but the thing is, the traditions we follow, the techniques we learn, they’re not what make us good sorcerers. It’s the fact that we’re people of devotion, intelligence, focus, and drive.
The flip side of this is look at yourself and your practice. Is your magick not what it should be, do you not get the results you need or want? Is the problem the system you’re studying, does it lack the technology for the result you want? Or could it be the fact that you don’t have the Strength/Wisdom/Compassion to wield it? You might be better off working on your discipline and focus, redoubling your effort than adding in another tradition or technique. Crowley said “About 90 % of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline” (Magick without Tears, Chapter 70) but I think much the same applies for all magick. Magick, techniques, spells, and visualizations, they’re tools, and can be phenomenal, but if you don’t have the skill to wield them, then the world’s best written conjuration won’t really change that.
I’m not saying don’t try new things, I’m not sayin learning techniques from other traditions is useless or bad. I’m just saying that no matter how many spells you know, no matter how many meditations you’ve been taught, how many magickal techniques you have, or how many initiations you’ve taken, you’re the sorcerer not these tools. If you don’t have the focus, discipline, and drive, if you don’t have the Strength, Wisdom, Compassion to utilize these tools, then they’ll never be truly effective.
“Sorcery uses Will, Desire and Belief with such precision as is permitted by the talents of the Individual Practitioner.” -Chumbley

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick