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This is part of An Initiation into Direct Magick – Book 1.
This chapter covers three Direct Magick techniques to help strengthen your ethereal muscles.
First is an energy meditation, to build and move energy in your body. This is the same exercise you’ll find in many systems of magick, so if you already know it, feel free to skip ahead.
Second is mental posture, a way to engage your ethereal muscles any time, at will. This is a core Direct Magick technique, and we’ll use it in everything else we do.
Third is an improved communication technique, to help you send your intent to ethereal software. This is another technique we’ll use everywhere, and that may help your other magick, too.
Once you’ve learned these techniques, we’ll cover energy healing, manifesting, and shielding with Direct Magick.
Energy Meditation
This section is an example energy meditation.
If you haven’t worked with energy before, practice it for 5-10 minutes a day until it becomes easy to build energy. This will probably take 2-4 weeks. See “Success,” below, for how to recognize energy.
If you already work with energy, skip this section, and just use whatever visualization speaks to you.
The Visualization
We’ll represent energy with a glowing mist. If that doesn’t speak to you, try fire, water, stars, or anything else. The point is to communicate your intent to your unconscious, so use whatever images speak to you.
Begin by sitting comfortably. Focus on your breathing. With each breath in, imagine a white glowing mist entering your lungs. Imagine it leaving its incandescence in your lungs, so you exhale a dim mist. Do this for several minutes. If you’re feeling adventurous, try moving the glow to different parts of your body, so you can feel the energy move.
(I like to imagine this like I’m watching myself from the outside, like watching a movie of myself.)
When you’re done, release the energy. (This is called “grounding.”) Imagine breathing the light back out into the room. Alternately, imagine the light leaving your body into the ground. Either works well — use whatever images speak to you. Start by grounding for a full minute. Later, once you can feel the energy, just ground until the feeling dissipates.
If you don’t ground, you may get a headache. If that happens, just ground, then rest for a few minutes to half an hour.
Feel free to modify the visualization. The point is to communicate your intent to your unconscious, so use whatever images speak to you.
Aside: What About Non-Visual People?
What if you’re blind, or otherwise don’t like visual images? How can you do an energy meditation?
Instead of imagining how the energy looks, imagine how it might feel to have energetic mist enter your lungs. Or how it would sound, or taste. Use whichever senses are most active when you imagine your day.
If you want more ideas, you can find excellent reader comments at magickofthought.com/2012/04/visualization-for-the-blind/#comments
Success
It’s hard to say how energy will feel for you. Every energy is different, and every person is different, so your energy might not feel like my energy. But here are some common sensations:
- Energy sometimes makes your skin tingle, like when someone almost touches you.
- Energy sometimes fills your body with warmth from the inside, like drinking hot tea on a cold day.
- It’s easier to feel energy as it moves and changes, so move the energy through your body.
How can you be sure you’re feeling energy, not placebo? Like with the obvious connections, you’re going to work with a friend. This time, you’ll need a friend who’s also experienced with energy, because it takes some skill to feel energy.
First, practice with energy yourself until it’s easy to feel it and move it in your body. Then meet with your friend, touch them, send your energy into your hands, then visualize it moving out your hands into them. Verify that they feel the energy.
Now you’re ready to test. Touch them, and either send energy or don’t send it. Don’t tell the — have them tell you if they felt the energy. To be more thorough, blindfold them, so they don’t just notice subtle changes in your body. Keep track of successes and failures — a few failures are to be expected, and accuracy over 50% means you’re detecting the energy.
More Info
For more reader comments on energy meditations (and my replies), see magickofthought.com/2010/07/how-to-begin-magick-for-complete-novices/#comments
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.
Tags: Energy, Learning Magick, Mental Muscles
A good tactile sensation for this might be inhaling steam. The best way for me to describe this is if you’ve ever turned the shower on without being in it while having the water on the hottest temperature possible. Let that run for a bit and you’ll have some nice steam. If you want a cold mist instead, imagine how it feels when it’s raining mist rather than raindrops.
Thanks! That sounds like a great solution for blind readers. Anyone (blind or sighted) who tries this, let us know how it works for you.
I did this and I felt something but im a beginner so idk if its really the energy but I did visualize the mist in and out and I grounded it with no headaches or pain at all so where do I go from here
When I started doing Qi Gong (a form of energy work like Tai Chi) I would start feeling hot and sometimes start sweating when I wasn’t doing much physical activity. Humans are bio electrical beings so while you are alive there is ALWAYS energy flowing. A lot of people doubt that they are feeling energy because it doesn’t feel different. I would say that yes, you absolutely feeling energy Brendon. Now its probably time to just get used to playing with it. All people HAVE energy, most people don’t acknowledge this fact. But some people go out on a limb and start experiencing their energy. This alone will make you more in touch with the world around you!
Hi Patrick, thanks for cheering Brendon on. Encouragement is awesome.
I want us to keep in mind how important it is to be clear about what we’re talking about. Here, we’re talking about magickal energy, not biological or electrical energy. They’re different phenomena, and it’s mostly a coincidence that humans have assigned those different phenomena the same name.
Why does that matter? To develop better healings, we need to understand how magickal energy interacts with biological cells. If we start assuming that magickal energy behaves the same way as electrical or biological energy, we wind up with an inaccurate idea of how magickal energy behaves, which will prevent us from finding more effective healing techniques.
More: https://magickofthought.com/2012/02/understanding-energy-healing-are-you-making-this-error/
That said, I would agree that everyone has magickal energy, and it’s largely a matter of learning to work with it. Whether any particular person is feeling magickal energy, or proprioception, or suggest, or something else, that’s a question larger than I can fit in one comment.
Awesome! Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and correct my assumptions on energy. I love your open source and scientific approach!
Why is it that we want to ground out the energy when we are done? I guess I would assume that more energy is better. I understand ground out energy that is vibrating weird or doesn’t have the signature I am looking for. But if I create a nice feeling glowing field around me why would I want to ground it when I can just have it circulating through me?
If it feels good, keep it.
Most of the time, when someone builds energy, it’s in the signature of “alert and focused.” If they then relax, the energy will be the wrong signature for their body, causing headaches or similar.
How do u move the energy to different parts of ur body? For me the imagination is hard at first but then I jus don’t know how to move it around my body
Take whatever represents energy in your visualization — light, fire, water, whatever — and visualize it moving around your body. The goal is just to communicate your intent to your unconscious ethereal muscles, which will actually move the energy, so you can use whatever visual language speaks to you.
Hi Mike!
You mentioned in the lesson that you visualize yourself doing the exercise as if you are observing yourself from the outside. Is it possible that I do the same thing but instead of seeing myself, i am seeing a human figure? Something like a diagram of some sort?
Sure, that should be fine. The point of a visualization is to communicate your intent to your unconscious mind, so use whatever visuals feel most natural to you.
cool! thanks.
Just had my first time trying this and I must say I could feel the energy clearly (I expected not to feel a lot because of lack of experience). It’s a feeling I can’t describe as being either hot or cold or tingly or whatever. There is probably a way to describe it but English isn’t my first language, so uhh… Very unique, but not in a scary way. The way I envision the energy is as light coming from an orb in front of me, bending into a stream and forming back into a ball inside my body. Also, the grounding part went a lot faster than I had expected.
How do I know when my Ethereal muscles are ready to actually do stuff? (Is this site still active?)
That’s excellent. It sounds like you’re ready for the next step.
Yes, I’m still posting every week. See “New Posts” in the nav bar. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve worked on the book, between work and starting a company to research energy healing, but I’m hoping to return to the book later this year.
That reply came quick. Guess that means this place isn’t dead after al :) Reason I thought that is cause I didn’t see any recent chapters to the book. Guess I’ll take a look at those “New Posts” then.
Good luck with whatever business is keeping you busy (and also just good luck in general)
Hi, just started this practice yesterday and I have a question? I notice my head to hurt slightly after a few minutes and also my stomach, when I will the energy to move it seems to stop, does this sound like I’m on the right track? Thank You
Hmmm, it’s probably a good sign that you’re getting sensation — that’s usually a step up from getting nothing. But pain isn’t the sensation we’re going for.
A visualization can communicate different things to different people. Maybe this visualization guides your mind to create an intense, painful energy for you. Experiment with different visualizations and see if you can get pleasant (or neutral) sensations.
Good luck!
Ok thank you, I will try some others and give feedback