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Mike asked a bunch of great questions about mental muscles and learning direct magick. It sounds like he’s starting out with magick, learning to move energy around his body, and finding his mental muscles, so this will probably help a lot of readers.
Let’s start with the first question:
What is the litmus test for knowing that our ‘mental muscles’ have been full engaged?
First, let me say how cool it is to see questions like this from someone just starting working with energy. I didn’t know enough about the inner-workings of magick to even ask this question until I’d been practicing for 10+ years.
Now, the answer: Realize that it’s not one mental muscle for all your magick, just like it’s not one muscle for your whole body. Different tasks use different muscles, in your body and in your mind. The mental muscles for moving energy around your body are totally different than the mental muscles for communicating with spirits.
For one mental muscle, you’ll know it’s fully engaged when you can use it without feeling tired. That’s because the fatigue is caused by the mental muscle waking up (which uses a lot of power) and by it connecting to the rest of your mind (which causes your mind to make new pathways, also using a lot of power). So, the mental muscle is more or less fully active when the thing you’re trying to do is easy and non-tiring. And successful — no prizes for not being tired but also not getting results.
How to know when all your mental muscles are awake? My advice is, don’t make a big deal about that. Nothing special happens when you engage all your mental muscles.
Instead, focus on activating all the mental muscles involved in the task you want to accomplish. For example, if you want to learn communication, you’ll need the muscles specifically for communication, and a few involved in connecting to a person’s mind (to help the communication muscles put thoughts in your mind). But you can skip the muscles involved in other tasks like energy healing. This will help you focus on the task at hand, get useful results sooner, and motivate yourself to keep practicing.
Next question:
When I practice engaging my ‘mental muscles’ my focus is pulled towards the center of my brain, my mental state become less cluttered, and locked in. In this state I have practiced directing energy from one hand to the other, and mentally controlling the flow of energy with success. Am I close?
What you describes sounds like focusing, which is good. And being able to easily move energy around mentally, without making a big production of the visualization, is also good. It sounds like you’re on the right track.
You seem like you want to know where you are and what the next steps are. So, I’d guess that your mental muscles for controlling energy are awake and active. Which is awesome. Next, you’ll want to activate some other mental muscles, so you can work with other aspects of magick. Here’s what I’d recommend next:
- Mental posture. Learn to consciously engage the mental muscles you’re using.
- Learn to make connections. That will awaken a different set of mental muscles.
- Also, check out this series on awakening mental muscles. The first few posts should have useful tips, and the later posts will give you something to work toward.
If those are too basic, I can point you to some advanced posts. (Which I totally have).
Also, let me know if those answers answered you, and keep me posted on your progress. Most of the techniques I gave you are a simplified version of things I use, or things I’ve taught to friends, but I haven’t taught mental activation to someone just starting with energy yet. So let me know how they work.
I’ll do the second half of Mike’s question — about manifesting with ethereal software — tomorrow.
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Mental Muscles