Being magical

Created on 06/15/2008

Hello, I want to talk about practicing magic today and how it relates to what I called “breaking the walls”. Breaking the walls inside our mind is easier than we are accustomed to thinking. It is almost effortless, if we can find a path outside of established mental conventions. This is the magical path. As some of you know, for years I have been involved with experiential study of shamanism and esoteric practices in Siberia, Central Asia and North America. After years of extreme experiences and searching, I have found nothing. No concepts, no recipes, no solutions, no mysteries solved. I have arrived at this point in my life with more confusion, bewilderment, and amazement for life and its riddles than I ever had before. And I like it. Because all of those things - concepts, solutions, and resolutions are truly just the building blocks of more walls inside the mind. I had enough to begin with, and as I said before, my intention has been the opposite – to break the walls and to create inner freedom by liberating mental space. And for me that means, first of all, liberation from concepts. That’s where I believe the true magical act occurs, because the person who conceptualizes is not the same as the one who performs the magic. Shamans know this quite well. A lot is written about dissociation and multiple subjectivity in shamanic practices, but I don’t want to lecture on that. What matters for me, is the fact that if something is available for one human being to experience, it can be experienced by anyone of us. Not all of us can become initiated into serving as a tribal shaman, but essentially each one of us can shift and transform the internal structure of our mind and experience the same magical reality that shamans in Siberia fly to on a daily basis. That is the stuff I like, because it feels good. And I want to keep sharing with you the path to feeling this way, (the magical path) as I have experienced it, so it can become available for those who want to taste it. So you can start discovering the presence of other beings inside of you, who are You and who are free, magical, and know how to feel good.

Comments

We live in a state of confusion. In the one hand there are those strange feelings about a different sort of reality we all have experience as children –even if sometimes not remembered- and, in the other hand, the “reality” provided by our social environment. As this one is shared by a huge amount of people, whatever it denies easily permeates our minds and becomes our own convictions, for we are gregarious animals and we are afraid of being separated from the rest, as it means fewer opportunities for survival.

Even as adults we still receive constantly signals from a different kind of reality. Stepping back, just a little, from our convictions would reveal the impossibility of blindly applying the intellectual conceptualization supplied by the society to all events surrounding us. For instance, the continuous repetition of serendipity-like events, the very common fact of calling someone whom we have not heard of from long time ago, just to find the other person was trying at that same instant to reach you by phone or, in a different setting, when mentally searching for something difficult to find and then someone brings you the item..., and so and so.

There is much in life, much more, than meets the social eye. Each society produces its own conceptualizations. In doing so it helps the group survival under certain agreed schemes and provides some sort of protection against wild stupidity, but too frequently it also prunes individual explorations which could have been even more interesting for that same task of promoting the collective survival. That task is especially relevant in periods of intensive change where new forms of social organization are urgently needed and social adaptability is just unable to keep the pace of change. Today is one of such moments. Not just Global Warming is hanging over our heads: we live an impossible population explosion where trade, goods and ways of life cannot be handled as they where fifty or a hundred years ago.

More than ever we need now to explore, for personal growth yes, but also to share the explorations and its results –if any- with as many people as possible. Old receipts were designed for old situations; and we need not being afraid of finding and providing new ones, as that was exactly what that much admired people from the past did at their due time. Be it magic or whatever we may fancy to call it.

By Antonio Pou (if possible omit complete name and em on 06/17/2008

Wish you the best in this new outlet as a bridge between ordinary lives (ordinary hells sometimes) and human potentiality.
In your book “Master of Lucid Dreams” you describe the sprit of trauma almost as an embodied force within life. In certain Central Asian tradition they speak of “angels” as the hidden potentiality within human mind. So, perhaps “hell and heaven” are about HERE and NOW.

By Francisco Martinez on 06/18/2008

I am really pleased to see this new website.

I have that feeling of trying to break
out all the time.I often have dreams
of prison wardens,border guards,and such
like preventing me from moving to freedom.
Real freedom is what we yearn for isnt it ?
What would that freedom be like?
As you say it seems whatever concept we have
of ‘getting there’ it will suddenly unravel
and we are left realizing we are no more
knowledgable as to how this magical maze works.

By Graham Leick on 06/22/2008

The choice of letting go has certainly led to the most lucid experiences of magic I have yet to discover.  In those situations, there was also a considerable build-up of… tensions, and they made the action of letting go so very noticeable, tangible, real.

In those moments of magic, I was sensitive to and with a beneficial command of Nature.  The vision is that sensitivity and action with the elements of magic will empower an ability for ecological healing.  I am keen to gain more ready access to this power, that it may be used in service and along with intentions. 

I appreciate the wisdom here in this blog, and am enthused to hear more about the magical, free, and feeling good spirits within.

By Scott Fraser on 06/23/2008

I practiced Guru Maharaji’s meditation techniques for over 30 years.  Essentialy, trying to stop the mind thinking using four secret techniques given by a mahatma.  a close, old, old friend introduced me to shamanism and betty shines visualisation techniques a few months ago.  I have experienced some amazing things.  However, how much of this is just imagination???  & just my mind, which is the very thing the gm techniques seek to still???

By Roger Southall on 07/10/2008

There is no such thing as “just imagination.”

By foolsfolly on 02/24/2009

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