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Erotic Energy Tips

Sunday, September 17th, 2017

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This week I discussed erotic energy techniques with some friends. Here are a couple tips that came from that, starting with the easier one to learn:

Head, Not Pelvis

In my 20s, I happened to build a type of energy that was well-suited to erotic energy. While making out with a partner, usually while clothed, I would build energy in my body, move it into my hands, then send it into my partner. Depending on how much energy I used, and how long I sustained it, results ranged from arousal to energy orgasms.

Being a man in his 20s, I assumed I should send energy to my partner’s pelvis. That turned out to be mostly useless.

What worked well? Sending energy to their head would reliably produce arousal and energy orgasms. (Once I was sending energy to their head, adding some to the pelvis, chest, or elsewhere could enhance it. But only a slight improvement, maybe 10% (if there were some way to measure it), not anything remarkable.)

A few follow-up questions from friends:

Did I try different regions of the brain, or the difference between the forehead and crown chakras? No, I haven’t yet. Targeting different regions of the brain is difficult, so I probably won’t for quite a while. But testing different chakras sounds interesting. In practice, I usually touch the side or back of the head, not the forehead — you know, the normal places you touch while kissing a partner. And to make a few guesses: The forehead chakra probably corresponds to the frontal lobe, where conscious thought occurs, while the top of the head corresponds to the parietal lobe, which processes touch, among other things. So I would expect that the top or sides of the head would be most effective, though I haven’t tested it, in part because of the second tip below.

What about Tantric practices where a person focuses their own energy in their chest, pelvis, etc? I asked my friend for more detail about these practices, and she described focusing her awareness in her body, how becoming aware of the sensations in her body can heighten them, and that her teacher often used “energy” and “awareness” interchangeably. And that is true: Quite often, we are not fully aware of the sensations in our bodies, or of exactly what we’re feeling. The limbic system (in the brain) doesn’t communicate emotions directly to the conscious mind; instead, it creates tension or relaxation or other somatic sensations in the body, which the conscious mind interprets as emotions. And there are a lot of great practices to tune into those sensations and become more aware of what’s driving our emotions.

But I’m talking specifically about sending energy to a partner — that is, energy as an external phenomenon out in the world, not energy as a synonym for awareness. And when we’re sending energy to a partner, it turns out to be far more effective to send it to the brain, and let the person’s brain create whatever bodily sensations are needed.

Projecting Energy Through Their Head

This tip is from exploration I did this year. It involves how to send the energy.

You’ve probably sent energy to a partner through the air. When I do that, and slow it down to watch each step, I find that I first send out a stable pathway that the energy then follows. And, noticing that, I learned to consciously create that pathway, so I could test it in other situations.

I tried using that pathway with erotic energy. While touching the back of my partner’s head, I projected that pathway through her head, then sent my energy along it. This way, instead of just sending the energy into the part of her head I was touching, I could energize her whole head. And it produced stronger, more pleasurable sensations for her.

If you aren’t to the point of consciously stepping through techniques like this, just think about sending your energy to the far side of your partner’s head. And if you want to practice sending energy like this, practice sending energy through a foot or so of air to a friend — that’s the same skill we’re using.

Troubleshooting:

I usually leave erotic energy in my partner. If she wants, she can ground (or ask me to ground her), but remember that grounding is about resetting one’s energy signature. We both prefer to just let our energies slowly reset on their own, rather than forcing our energy back to normal. So after this session, I just removed my hand from her head and left my energy where it was.

Ten minutes or so later, when she got up, she said she felt odd, similar to being aroused but not quite right. She grounded, but it didn’t work. I offered to help, but she wanted to do it on her own. Two tries later, without success, she let me help. Those pathways I had created were still in her head, still tuned to the signature of (aroused) energy I was using. Pathways are sturdier than energy (that’s the whole point of pathways, to be stable so they can carry energy), so pathways don’t dissipate like energy does. I withdrew and dissolved the pathways, and then she grounded herself successfully. So remember: When you’re projecting energy through your partner, especially with a partner less experienced than you are, be sure to withdraw the pathways afterward. (But leave the energy, so your partner can come down gradually.)

Exploring Erotic Energy

I hope this gives you some ideas for exploring erotic energy yourself. Got an interesting result, or a question? Leave a comment below.

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Energy Shielding: Keeping the Third Eye Closed

Sunday, December 4th, 2016

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“On my way here, my third eye was forced open,” a friend said at a recent event. “I was driving, it was distracting. I hate it when that happens.”

The phrase, “my third eye was forced open,” didn’t mean anything to me. I asked how it felt, to see if I’d experienced the same phenomenon and called it a different name. She described a pressure in her forehead and her perception shifting sideways.

That’s what I experienced years ago when spirits would forcefully create a connection to me.

“I think I know what it is. If you’re willing, I’d like to try opening your third eye, and if that works I can show you how to keep it closed.”

I connected to her, built energy, pushed on the connection. It worked, she felt that same shift. Hypothesis confirmed.

After I disconnected, she kept experiencing that perception shift, and it kept growing. I guessed that she was making her own connections, now that she was opening. “Find the connections from you to the area around you, and close them,” I told her. After a few seconds, she said the shifting sensation stopped, and that her third eye was closed again.

Next, we practiced stopping the process, so she could prevent her third eye from opening, prevent that shift in perception. I connected to her again, and had her feel those connections. “Notice the pressure, feel the connections, feel where they’re entering your field. Squeeze down on the connections, like tightening a fist or squeezing a sphincter. Close the pathways they’re entering through.”

She did. I felt the connections shut. She didn’t experience the shift in perception, and her third eye stayed closed. Success.

And a note for anyone teaching this: I got a bit of a headache after. I felt into my connections, and noticed some of them still in her field, crushed in her closed pathways. I’d withdrawn my connections before, but like a leg that fell asleep, the crushed parts didn’t move well, and didn’t withdraw properly. They also didn’t have much feeling, so I hadn’t realized they were still there. The headache abated when I slowly, consciously engaged the connections and withdrew them.

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A Road Map to Learning Energy Healing / Magick

Monday, November 21st, 2016

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Today I want to lay out a road map for learning energy healing / magick, from zero experience through your first system then into peeking under the hood and exploring how energy operates. It’s a generic map, useful for learning energy healing or ritual magick or most other systems. You can use this map to get started, or to figure out what’s next, or just to put all these techniques in context.

Learning that First System

The first step is awakening the parts of the mind that drive energy and magick. We call those parts ethereal muscles. Other systems call them the unconscious, or just don’t name them.

If your ethereal muscles are already partially awake, they will respond to visualizations and other standard techniques (rituals, adopting temporary beliefs, etc). You can awaken them further through practice. This seems to work for many people.

If your ethereal muscles are fully asleep, they will not respond to you. In this case, you’ll need an outside force to send them energy and help them awaken. We call these outside forces ethereal software. Other systems call these forces egregores, matrices, or simply the Universe.

Options for connecting to ethereal software:

  • Get trained or attuned by an experienced practitioner.
  • Use rituals or sigils that have ethereal software bound to them. Standard, widely-used rituals are a good choice. A ritual you invented is unlikely to have ethereal software bound to it.

Most ethereal software will automatically get to work. It’ll establish lasting connections to the person’s mind to help it communicate, reading the person’s intent and sending them intuitions and other information. Most ethereal software will also start preparing the person’s mind for that communication, awakening the necessary ethereal muscles.

Once your ethereal muscles are awakening, you can study that system of healing / magick: Learn its rituals and techniques, and learn to channel its forces (its ethereal software). This is actually optional — I didn’t learn an established system of magick, and lots of practitioners skip this step. But reflecting on the problems I encountered, this probably would have been worthwhile. Plus it’s probably the fastest path to useful manifesting and healing techniques.

Under the Hood

From here, there seem to be two main paths: Either go deeper in that system, or learn other systems.

I’m trying to lay out a third path: Explore how that system functions, how the forces respond to your intention, and the steps they take to create change in the world.

Start with sensing the ethereal structures involved. Not an intuitive sense that they’re there, or an image / impression / intuition of how they operate, but techniques to feel them as they function. This is sensory connections.

Also talk with spirits. Ask about specific techniques: “How can I communicate with you more clearly? How can I improve my sensory connections? I think sensory connections work like this, is that correct?” The more specific, the better. Learn how they do things, so instead of asking them for help, you can ask them for training and then solve the problem yourself.

At some point you’ll want to do something new with your energy. Perhaps making more sensitive sensory connections, so you can see ethereal structures more precisely. Or you’ll want to do a healing technique by changing a person’s energy signature, rather than channeling energy from a force. When this happens, you’ll want to awaken additional ethereal muscles to handle those tasks.

Shielding and protection will also be useful. Sometimes readers ask, “Is it safe to [talk to those spirits] or [channel that ethereal software] or [whatever else]?” The short answer is but my real answer is: Learn protection, learn shielding, learn to hit a spirit back so it leaves you alone, and then you can explore without worrying about staying perfectly safe. Because the more unusual things you explore, the more likely you are to run into un-friendly spirits. At least, that’s been my experience, and the experience of people I work with. (This is part of why I suggest starting with an established system, so you can get your bearings before exploring unusual places that can attract energy-draining spirits.)

These skills (sensory connections, talking with spirits, awakening more ethereal muscles) apply to all systems of energy and magick. Once you learn them, you can take any system you know, or any system you’re learning, and watch it operate. You can ask the spirits involved how it functions, and awaken additional ethereal muscles so you can follow what they teach you. I personally use these skills as their own system, but they can also inform and enhance any other system you know or learn.

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A Common (But Useless) Safety Measure

Sunday, September 6th, 2015

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Prav asks:

I am using your sigil from here:

Help Beta Test My Ethereal Software

I have to know if the software has any name and what spirits it uses. I don’t work with things I don’t know about…

I’ve talked about safety before. Repeatedly. And not just defense, because sometimes a spirit won’t leave you alone until you bother it right back. What I’m saying is, I’m serious about safety.

But I haven’t discussed names. Why?

Before I answer that, let me share a story.

When I worked in India a few years ago, I got lots of safety advice. Wear mosquito repellent (they carry terrible diseases). Only drink bottled water, and check if the bottle has been re-sealed by melting it. Haggle for everything (it’s fun!)

One tip I didn’t get? “Only trust street vendors with friendly-sounding names like Deepak.”

Because a person’s name doesn’t tell you if they’re safe, right? Same with the names of spirits and ethereal software.

Names are for marketing. They’re the brand. They’re how we appeal to a particular audience. I could call the software Holy Light, made by the Holy Order. Or I could call it The Corruption Vault, made by Skarnax, Devourer of Worlds. Or The Universe, made by The Ancients.

Names don’t get you safety. Names are just words.

So if not names, what should we do? The same as you’d do in business or sales or relationships: Talk with the person (me, in this case, by reading my blog), see what you think of them, and decide if you think they know what they’re doing and if it’s important to them to keep you safe. (I do, and it is, but you shouldn’t take my word for it, you should read me over time and make up your own mind.)

And long term, follow those links and learn to protect yourself. If you know you can keep yourself safe even if the spirit is hostile, you can explore so much more.

That said, I should probably name my software and spirits for branding purposes. Thoughts? Leave a comment. Thanks!

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Spirits, Ethereal Software, and Artificial Intelligence

Wednesday, August 20th, 2014

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Last week, I compared spirits to artificial intelligence:

Implement [an] intelligence with nerves and living tissue, and you have a human. Implement it with transistors and silicon, and you have an AI. Implement it with ethereal structures like magickal connections, and you have a spirit.

Several readers had excellent comments. Ananael brought up some larger questions that I want to answer today. (His text in italics, my replies in normal.)

This post brings up a question that’s been on my mind for awhile. How, precisely, does your model define the difference between these sorts of “AI” spirits and ethereal software? I don’t necessarily think your artificial intelligence analogy is a bad one, but I do think how you explain it here blurs the line a bit.

First, I want to acknowledge a way that my metaphors are confusing. When talking about spirits and ethereal software, I say that spirits are like humans, and ethereal software is like a computer. But I also say that spirits are like an artificial intelligence. What gives?

Partly, it’s that metaphors are limited, and spirits are like spirits, not humans or artificial intelligences.

But partly, this is keeping with science fiction around AIs, where computers are tools, but AIs are people. They just happen to be people made of computers, as opposed to people made of cells. So, keep this distinction in mind as we discuss spirits (human-like AIs) vs ethereal software (unintelligent computers).

Before going on, I need to make sure everyone has experienced a certain corner of computer science geekery. In the 90s, people made computer programs you could text with. They weren’t brilliant, but they could have a conversation. If you haven’t tried one, talk with Eliza for 30 seconds.

Texting with Eliza is clearly different than texting with a penpal in China, right? But imagine your grandfather has never used a computer, and try to explain that difference. You text with both of them. (He’s never texted with anyone, so they already seem pretty similar.) Neither uses English quite like you do. (Your penpal is Chinese, remember?) You can cite some simple differences: Eliza replies right away, your penpal sometimes misspells words, and so on. But that’s not really the essence of the difference.

That’s the situation with spirits and ethereal software. They just behave differently. Spirits have emotions. They think, take a different direction, give useful advice. Ethereal software executes commands. When I talk with them, it’s an obviously different experience. But I can’t easily define that difference for you.

Also, a question I’ve been pondering: Are spirits and ethereal software made of the same thing? I don’t know. Both are made of ethereal matter. But both humans and computers are made of ordinary matter, and we’re not made of the same stuff. So I don’t know. Spirits and ethereal software might be made of different types of ethereal matter. (Or not. I don’t know either way.)

That’s because it seems to me that in your model ethereal software has to do a lot of recognition-type information processing. We had that discussion awhile back of how you think a massively modified LRP is still the same LRP because the “LRP ethereal software” recognizes the form even if it’s been almost entirely rewritten.

I’d like to clarify how I think about sigils and rituals, and how they interact with ethereal software.

Remember that sigil I made for my book? A grid of six symbols, each repeated twice, to form a sigil. When I did that, I tied each symbol to the ethereal software. You can focus on any one of them, and it’ll probably work. Any four of them, and I’m even more confident it’ll work. You don’t need all , that’s just there for redundancy. You could take 3 of them, arrange them into a triangle, add a big circle around them, and it should still work, as long as you still have the individual symbols that the software recognizes.

That’s how I think of rituals: A bunch of components, each recognizable to the ethereal software. You can re-arrange them, remove a few, and they’ll still be recognizable. Will the re-arranged ritual issue the same command as before? I have no idea. But each component should connect you to the same ethereal software, and that ethereal software should still respond to the ritual as a whole.

That’s never struck me as very plausible for “software” that you describe as essentially unintelligent, simply because as I’m sure you’re familiar, modeling recognition tasks like that on a computer requires an enormous amount of processing. For that reason recognition algorithms are a big part of current AI research and seem to require some sort of “intelligence” of their own in order to work at all.

I think I muddied the waters by talking about “intelligence.” Like computers, ethereal software can do complex information processing. They recognize commands, sigils, ritual elements. They even reads minds. They’re definitely complex.

Also like computers, ethereal software isn’t self-aware, doesn’t have emotions, doesn’t seem to do original thought. That’s what I was trying to get at by saying that it’s not intelligent.

So what would really help ceremonialists like myself understand your model better is if you could clearly delineate where “ethereal software” stops and “spirits” start. Or are they the same thing? If that’s the case, we may have just have been arguing about terminology this whole time.

For me, it’s not a continuum. It’s two categories. Like humans and computers.

I also want to mention: Sometimes, ethereal software gives you a vision of an angel or other avatar (just like computer programs sometimes use a human avatar). So you can’t assume that anything offering a vision of a spirit is a spirit.

And years ago, before I became good with shielding, I’d sometimes encounter spirits who drained my energy. These spirits were more animalistic, less intelligent. Still very different than ethereal software, but not the human-without-a-body that I normally associate with spirits.

So, two categories. Human/AI vs computer, spirit vs ethereal software. Does that help?

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Overcoming Doubt through Mental Posture

Wednesday, July 30th, 2014

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“Be confident in your magick. Eliminate doubt.” That’s standard advice for mages of all levels.

Except, my experience contradicts it:

  • I’ve done tons of healing sessions for knees. But occasionally, instead of steeping my ethereal muscles through the full technique, I’ll just confidently think, “Heal my knee.” My unconscious should know how to do the rest, right? Anyway, I’m quite confident (because of past successes), but the energy healing totally fails. Confidence gets me nowhere.
  • I’ve also done healing sessions I doubted would work. I expect failure with roughly every new technique, because my first guess so rarely works. But, as long as I have an accurate picture of what I’m working with, these techniques work great. Doubt doesn’t hurt me.
  • I do more energy healing than manifesting, but I’ve done plenty of manifesting and expected failure. But it works just fine. And I’ve done manifestings that I confidently expected to work, and they’ve failed. Zero correlation with doubt. (Manifesting success does seem to correlate my levels of fatigue, distraction, and the types of things I’m trying to manifest, though.)

In my experience, doubt doesn’t matter. All that matters is accurately guiding your ethereal muscles through the technique. (That’s not “Doing the ritual correctly,” but rather, “Making connections to the right tissues and ethereal structures, sending energy with the right signature, and so on.”)

Why is the common advice so different than my experience? I’ve recently come to a new idea, while talking with George. But first, I want to review what I previously thought.

Years ago, I just figured the common advice was wrong. I mean, to get a success, you need manifesting plus ordinary efforts, and we all know that doubt can sabotage your ordinary efforts. So doubt would cause a failure of the overall effort, and it’s easy to see how people might ascribe the failure to the magick rather than the ordinary efforts. (For energy healing, doubt reduces the placebo effect, so same deal: Worse results, but nothing to do with the magick side of things.)

And yet, scientific-minded mages like Ananael say that doubt affects their manifesting. I trust him to consider those problems, and he doesn’t buy the “ordinary efforts” explanation. So, while it still might be true, I find it less likely.

Until recently, I figured that doubt interfered with the messages we send to the ethereal software. (That’s the force you send your intent to, or the ether your thoughts float into when you “send out your thoughts.”) When the ethereal software reads your thoughts from your mind, maybe it also picks up your doubt, gets confused, and doesn’t seek out the right things. That wouldn’t affect me because I package up my thoughts and actively send them to the ethereal software, so I can avoid sending doubts.

But that explanation hasn’t sat right with me for a while. Ethereal software has protections against harmful requests. And communication isn’t that messy — when I receive messages from spirits, I sometimes get their emotions along with their words, but I can tell the difference. The ethereal software should be able to sort out doubt from intent just fine.

Which brings us to my new thinking: Maybe doubt just disrupts communication with the unconscious.

First, it’s obviously true that doubt affects the unconscious. That’s why it interferes with placebo, and makes your body language betray you on interviews and dates. So the explanation is likely.

Second, most magick works by sending the person’s intent to their unconscious, which then sends it along to whatever forces the person channels. So I can see how interrupting the communication with the unconscious would interrupt the magick.

Third, it explains why doubt doesn’t affect my magick. One of the identifying features of Direct Magick is that we make our ethereal muscles conscious, so we’re engaging them directly. The unconscious is still in there somewhere, but it’s not at the center of everything anymore. It all seems pretty plausible.

Also, I’ve found that, if I doubt magick in general, it can be hard to engage my ethereal muscles. Because that’s the one step that still heavily involves the unconscious. Which again resonates with this explanation. So, while I’m not 100% certain (or even 90%), this is my best guess at the moment.

Why does this all matter? By understanding the problem, we can begin to fix it.

I’m thinking that mental posture might do the trick. That’s a way to consciously engage your ethereal muscles. So, rather than sending your intent to your unconscious, you would consciously engage the parts of your mind that drive magick, then send your intent to them. I can’t be sure it’ll work, but it’s the simplest solution to my best-guess explanation. So it’s worth a test.

(Also: Wow, that post is old. We’ll cover mental posture in my book soon, with much better writing.)

Want to help? Please try it out and post your results below.

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Manifesting for Career Decisions

Monday, September 9th, 2013

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Last week, a job offer fell into my lap. I did manifesting, asking about the job vs my current path vs some other options. Then I did it again, with spirits helping me, and got the same answers each time. But I was asking the wrong questions, and the accurate (I assume) data was leading me to the wrong choice. Here’s what happened, what went wrong, and how I fixed it.

Thursday morning, I got a call from a computer consulting firm. They knew me by reputation, and wanted me full time for a year or more, flying to their client every Monday, home every Thursday. Not as brutal as some consulting schedules, but not easy. But I’m in a slow period, steady work is nice, and 3 days a week at home isn’t bad. I was interested.

I started manifesting right after that call. Questions: Tell me what will happen if I take the job. Tell me what will happen if I keep doing what I’m doing.

Answers (summarized): Your life will be about the same, but if you don’t take the job, you’ll be worried about money, about not having enough work. So take the job. Also, make sure to push for a high salary, at the top range of your standard consulting ask. (Note: I don’t actually make what I ask, no one does, it’s just how you negotiate rates.)

I said OK, and manifested for success on the recommended path. (The command: “Make me successful on that recommended path.”)

An hour later, I was talking with their HR rep, negotiating salary. Their offer was good, she was friendly, I felt awkward asking for more. But manifesting had said, so I asked for an additional $40k, because if you’re going to ask, might as well ask big, right? With very little fuss, we settled on $30k over their initial offer. Score one for manifesting.

But the question remained: Did I actually want the job? Time for more thorough manifesting. I asked about this job vs the freelance work I’d been doing. I asked about a potential job with another former colleague, and about starting a business developing healing techniques. I did some of the manifesting myself, then checked with some spirits I know, and got the same info both times: Take the job, save up, then use that money to start the healing business in 1-2 years.

My normal decision was in alignment with my manifesting: Maybe not the perfect job — I wasn’t wild about the travel — but a good rate, reasonably interesting work, and a steady paycheck. I’ve had worse years.

But I forgot to ask something. Any guesses? It took me a couple of days and a friend prompting me, so don’t feel bad if it hasn’t jumped out at you.

The missing question: What about other jobs in San Francisco? I never asked the broad question to catch all the other paths I might take. Which probably has to do with my relative inexperience with manifesting — I needed this experience (and maybe a few more like it, since I’m a slow learner sometimes) to build up the reflex of asking broad questions like that.

When I did, both manifesting and my ordinary logic agreed: A local job is the best option, if I want a job. So that’s the plan: Keep doing what I’m doing until I’m bored, then get a normal job in San Francisco. And when I do manifesting, make sure to ask broad questions, otherwise accurate data can lead to poor decisions.
Do you have a similar experience? Share it in the comments.

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Manifesting: Where to Start

Monday, August 26th, 2013

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Last week, I started training in manifesting. I’d been manifesting for years, but had simply done what made sense to me. Now, I’m learning the proper way to do it, (at least, according to the spirits I work with.) And it turns out, I was starting in entirely the wrong place.

(Manifesting = Magick to predict or influence events. Creating luck, basically.)

I’d thought the simplest manifesting would be asking,”What will happen if I do X?” or “Will I have fun at this event?” or “What should I do?” Predicting events, rather than causing them.

After all, predicting seems strictly simpler than making events happen. I mean, to cause me to find a good job, you need to know which events will lead to a good job, and then make those events happen. But to tell me what will happen, you just need to know which events lead to what. So, causing events seems like “know what will happen, plus some other stuff,” meaning it should always be more complex and difficult.

Except I forgot two parts:

Communication: If the ethereal software is causing an event, the communication is one-way. I tell the software what to do, and that’s it. But to ask what will happen, the software has to send me information. And it turns out, communication is non-trivial.

Multiple paths: This is the real key. When we ask for events, we ask for generalities. “A good job,” not, “Sales manager for California at Cisco.” The software doesn’t have to know what will happen right now, it just has to keep an eye out for opportunities and make some of them happen. It can fail 50% of the time and still make the magick work, and it can miss even better jobs that you’ll never know were an option.

That’s why the basic version of manifesting, (again, according to the spirits I work with), is, “Make X happen.” Level 2 manifesting is, “I want X to happen. Tell me about the paths you can take,” then you tell it if some of the paths are actually things you don’t want. (The old trope of manifesting money causing a relative to die, leaving you an inheritance.)

Which is harder, communication or knowing what will happen up front? I think the knowing is harder. Level 2 manifesting requires 2-way communication (to tell you the paths it could take), but the overall paths are not all the detailed. There’s still a lot of room to adjust the details and find multiple options to making a path succeed over time. So, I think communication is the easier of the two problems to solve.

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Mystery Solved (Book’s Ethereal Software)

Saturday, August 10th, 2013

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If you’ve followed the comments on the old post about beta testing the ethereal software for my book, you know there was a mystery recently. Today, I solved it. And, as is often the case, the answer is less of a deep revelation, and more of a simple technique I was doing wrong.

A little background: To teach readers magick, I had some spirits I work with make some ethereal software. I tied the software to a sigil, so readers can access it. And I posted the sigil, to verify that readers would, in fact, get the connections.

A week or two ago, a reader said she didn’t notice anything while looking at the sigil. That’s common enough, since non-mages generally don’t notice connections, but in writing my reply, I looked at the sigil too, and didn’t notice any connections myself. Odd, but I tied the software to the sigil over a year ago, and I’m no expert at that. Maybe it wore off?

Then another reader tested it out again. (This is one of the reasons I love blogging: Getting this kind of feedback and help from readers. Thanks, guys!) He found that everything was working. So I tested it again, and again found nothing. My guess was that his mind was used to contacting the software, and looking at the sigil simply reminded his unconscious of the software, and it made the connection based on his memory of the software’s signature, without actually using the sigil itself.

A few days later, another reader tested it, and also found it was working. Which makes it less likely that the sigil has faded. I tested it again, and again found nothing. But I kept at it, and noticed a very light connection being blocked by my shielding.

Yup, that’s the software’s connection. Once I let it in, everything’s working again. And once I told my ethereal muscles to trust that connection from the software, the sigil works again for me, quite quickly.

Here’s what happened: I hadn’t used that software in a year or more, and my ethereal muscles forgot to trust it. Like if you don’t visit a website for a year, and then you stumble on it again, and you’re not sure if you recognize it. Since they didn’t trust it, my shielding wasn’t allowing its connections in. A simple error on my part, and a nice reminder that magick is really complicated.

And once again, thank you to Grab, Nikki, and all my readers who’ve helped me with this testing.

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How Manifesting is Like Google

Friday, July 12th, 2013

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It’s easy to imagine Google as telling you the answer to a question. That’s accurate enough for most purposes, but it isn’t accurate. Google runs an algorithm on a bunch of data, and tells you that algorithm’s output. The people who programmed Google worked hard to make the algorithm’s output look like an answer to your question, most of the time. But not always.

Same with manifesting: It’s easy to imagine that your magick tells you what will happen, or makes some event happen. But it doesn’t. It runs an algorithm on some data about the past, present, and perhaps the future. It tells you that algorithm’s output, or alters a bunch of atoms in the world according to that algorithm’s instructions.

Like Google, whoever programmed that algorithm worked hard to make sure its output looks like a reasonable answer to your request, most of the time. But, just like Google, it’s running an algorithm, which is not the same thing as telling you the correct answer to your question.

Something to think about next time you’re debugging your magick.

(What are the particular quirks of manifesting? That depends on what ethereal software you’re using. And most likely, you’re using different software than I am. Once I’m farther along in my book, I’ll write about the details of the software tied to the book’s sigil.)

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