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To really understand how magick works, it’s important to explore, figure out the mechanics, and solve problems yourself. If you don’t, you might read the answers somewhere, but it’s hard to know why they’re the answers.
And yet, exploring for yourself comes with a risk: You don’t know where the dead ends are.
Example: A few years ago, Lisa was trying to awaken her mental muscles. To power them, she brought power from an already-active mental muscle over to the new ones. It didn’t work, but she kept trying, because she wanted to figure it out on her own.
After around a month, she mentioned what she was doing. The answer, of course, is that each mental muscle needs its own power, and you shouldn’t power one muscle off another. Once we fixed that, she got back on track.
It’s even worse if you get something that sort of works, and build on it. Because fixing the first technique also changes anything you built on top of it, which means you’ll have to revise those techniques, too. I’ve done this. It’s a frustrating delay.
And yet, solving these problems is a skill too. You’ll need it later, when you want to build new techniques, when there’s no one to ask because no one knows. So, it’s bad to always ask for answers right away, because then you never learn that problem-solving skill. Lisa had a good intuition there.
What’s the answer? I don’t think there is a singular right approach. But here’s what I try to do:
- Consistently figure out an answer on my own. (Spend 1-3 days on this.)
- Before building on it, call a trainer and ask if I got it right, and what to improve.
- Also, verify the technique before using it for more than a week.
That’s not my approach to everything. But it is a good default. Hope it helps.
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