Bigger Results with Simpler Visualizations

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Have you ever learned a new ritual or visualization, done each step correctly, but the result was so small, you weren’t sure it had worked at all?

Here’s the secret: Magick isn’t in the ritual. It’s in unconscious parts of your mind called “mental muscles.” The ritual just directs them. But magick only works if your mental muscles are paying attention.

Another secret: Once your mental muscles are paying attention, you can direct them in seconds with simple visualizations.

This post will show you how to engage your mental muscles at will, so you can:

  • Replace time-consuming rituals with instant magick.
  • Get your entire mind behind your magick for bigger, more noticeable results.
  • Guide your mind through new techniques so they work the first time.

Before you begin, you should be able to maintain an energy meditation for 10 minutes.

By the way, I sometimes teach this as a class. The next one is Saturday April 30, 2011, at Blue Eagle in Albuquerque NM.

Step 1: Feeling Your Mental Muscles

Engaging your normal muscles controls your body’s posture. Similarly, engaging different parts of your mind controls your mental posture. We want a particular mental posture: The one where your mental muscles are engaged and alert. The first step is recognizing your mental posture by feeling your mental muscles.

The Exercise

First, make a simple visualization for your mental posture. Most people visualize different parts of their brain lighting up. (You can use any image that speaks to you. Visualizations just communicate your intent to your unconscious).

Relax your mind, and notice how your mind feels. Not your face, not your scalp, but your mind. Don’t force it, just let your mind relax and notice how it feels. Let your unconscious guide you through the details of the visualization: Visualize your brain, relax your mind, listen to your unconscious, and let it show you which parts light up.

Optionally, do some other task, like reading, and again notice how your mind feels.

Now you’re ready for the mental posture for doing magick. Do your energy meditation, and notice how your mind feels. Put the energy in your chest, not your head. (Otherwise you’ll notice the tingling of energy, rather than the mental posture). Visualize your brain, and let your unconscious show you which parts light up.

I doubt the areas you visualize would match what an MRI would show. That’s OK. You’re just trying to communicate the intent “engage my mental muscles” to your unconscious, not do neurology research.

Do this a few times until you’re comfortable noticing your mental posture. Then, watch your mental posture through a whole session, from relaxed to energy meditation and back again. Once you can watch your posture as you engage and relax your mind, you’re ready to move on.

Remember to release the energy (“ground”) after each energy meditation.

Step 2: Maintaining Your Mental Posture

It’s easier to maintain your mental posture than to change it. So before using your new visualization to engage your mental muscles, use it to keep them engaged after completing your energy meditation.

The Exercise

Do your energy meditation to engage your mental muscles, and notice your mental posture. Hold the mental posture visualization in your mind, alongside the energy meditation. Then ground to release the energy, still maintaining the mental posture visualization. Finally, stop thinking about grounding or energy, and just maintain the mental posture.

Most people can feel the mental posture, so they know right away if it worked. If you’re not sure, start another energy meditation. If you’ve maintained the mental posture, you should notice your energy responding instantly, instead of the normal several-second lag most people have between visualizing energy and feeling it.

Second Exercise

This is a half-step toward engaging the mental posture from rest. Repeat the previous exercise to maintain your mental posture, then rest (stop holding your mental posture) for a few seconds, then re-engage the mental posture visualization.

Practice this until maintaining and re-engaging your mental posture becomes easy.

Step 3: Engaging Your Mental Posture

This is the point of the class: Engaging your mental posture for magick anytime you want, for any visualization you want.

The Exercise

Using your posture visualization, engage your mental posture for doing magick. Don’t use any other visualization (like energy meditation). Once you’re in that posture, do any visualization you want. It should produce a bigger effect more quickly than normal.

Step 4: Make Sure It Works

Never believe magick techniques work until you can demonstrate them to yourself.

Test 1: Easy

Pick a new visualization for your energy meditation: White light, fire, stars, water, plants growing, or anything else that could mean “energy” to you. Use your posture visualization to engage your mental muscles, then try your new energy visualization, holding in your mind that “water = energy” (or whatever your visualization is). It should work roughly as well as your normal energy meditation.

Test 2: Hard

Pick a new skill you’ve never tried. One that’s about as difficult as things you can do, like energy healing, shielding, something like that. Not teleportation. Memorize the visualization, then engage your mental posture for magick and try it. Again, it should work the first time.

Using It

Before doing magick — a ritual, a visualization, giving an energy healing, asking your psychic source a question, etc — engage your mental muscles with this mental posture. The results should come more quickly, with less mental effort.

Next

If this is your first time on my blog, start with this series explaining everything about direct magick: What it is, how it works, and how it will help you become better at magick.

If you’re working through the step by step guide, click here to return to it.

Or check out my other classes.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Classes by Mike Sententia

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I teach direct magick at Blue Eagle in Albuquerque, NM. I’ve also taught at The Occult Bookstore in Chicago, IL.

Upcoming Classes

My next class is Simpler Visualizations, Bigger Results on April 30, 1:00-2:00, $10. Details here.

Class Reviews

See what folks are saying about my classes:

Amorah

Tiffany

Classes You Can Teach

Erasing Self-Doubt. This world makes it hard to believe in yourself as a mage. Is magick real? Can I really learn it? Erase that doubt by demonstrating real magick to yourself in this class.

How to Get Bigger Results with Simpler Visualizations. Learn to awaken the parts of your mind that create magick so you can:

  • Replace time-consuming rituals with instant magick
  • Get your entire mind behind your magick for bigger, more noticeable results
  • Guide your mind through new techniques so they work the first time.

Feel free to teach these classes yourself. Just credit my site (MagickOfThought.com) during the class and in your handouts.

Learn More

If you want to learn more, start with How To Learn Faster, More Effective, More Reliable Magick . It explains everything you need to know about direct magick: What it is, how it works, and how it will help you become better at magick.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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How To Create an Effective Magick Class

Monday, September 27th, 2010

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

In this post:

  • Why effective classes use exercises.
  • How to build a bridge from what students can do and what they want to do.
  • How to lead exercises like a pro.

Intro

I’ve taught professionally for over 10 years. Martial arts in high school, metal working in college, computer security after graduation, and magick classes along the way.

The best classes focus on exercises — on students doing something — rather than lecture. Here’s why, how to design a good class, and how to assess it afterward. It applies to magick classes, but also everything else you might teach.

Classes Teach Skills

Ask a novice teacher what students should get from a class, and they usually focus on concepts students should understand. Then they lecture on those topics.

Ask an experienced teacher the same thing, and they’ll usually focus on things students should be able to do. Then they get students doing that in the class.

No one goes to a class to understand something. They go because they want to do something. Sure, understanding is part of that, but the best understanding comes from doing something yourself, not from listening to a teacher.

The Benefits of Exercises

1. Exercises produce mastery in the class. Once students do something, instead of just hearing about it, they understand it much more completely. This cements the concepts and skills, so you can build on them later in the class.

2.  Exercises reveal gaps in understanding. When you lecture, everyone will nod and say “that makes sense,” even if it didn’t. They won’t realize the gaps until they try to use that knowledge. By putting exercises in class, you immediately see what works and what doesn’t, and you can fix it right away.

How To Build Good Exercises

Exercises should build on something students can already do, and teach exactly one thing.

If you need to teach students to do 2 new things at the same time, that’s 3 exercises:

  1. Teach the first thing in isolation.
  2. Teach the second in isolation.
  3. Combine the 2 new skills.

You’ll be tempted to put more into exercises. Don’t. Paradoxically, those 3 exercises will go much faster than 1 exercise teaching both skills at once, because students will succeed the first time at each simple skill. You get three 1-minute exercises where students succeed, instead of one 10-minute struggle.

It will feel like the steps are excruciatingly small. But that’s only because you already know how to do them. Sure, some students could take larger steps, but they’ll forgive you as long as they learn something by the end. And most students will love you for going at their pace.

For an example, see this post on my magick connections class.

Leading Exercises

Here’s the pattern I use for leading exercises:

  • Explain the big picture: What they’ll learn, what they’ll do, etc.
  • Demonstrate the exercise, explain the visualization, etc. Students just watch and listen, so they can focus on the ideas, not on implementing them.
  • Repeat the demo, slowly, with students copying you each step. Verify everyone was successful.
  • Have students do a very similar task on their own.

This last step is the most important. Students must use the technique on their own, or they won’t retain it.

If you drive with a GPS, you know what I mean. You can drive all over, and as long as someone walks you through each turn, you never learn to navigate yourself.

Also, applying the technique to a new situation helps ensure students master the technique. Often, students can copy you, but don’t know what each step does, so they can’t apply the technique to new problems. You want to uncover that before you move on.

Summary

Effective classes ensure students learn skills by taking small steps. Only add 1 new skill per exercise, and slowly build from demonstrating the skill to letting students do it on their own. This lets you cover each step quickly, allowing you to get through more material in your class than if you had fewer, larger exercises.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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How To Prove Magick To Yourself In 90 Minutes

Monday, September 13th, 2010

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

This post outlines a 90-minute class I’ve taught in Chicago and Albuquerque. It will show you how to:

  • Sense other peoples’ energy with a magickal connection.
  • Determine a person’s emotions based on their energy.
  • Prove to yourself that you’re really doing magick.

Before taking this class, you should be able to:

  • Build energy in your body (using an energy meditation).
  • Move energy around your body.

Intro

The class is a series of exercises.  For each exercise, I explain what it is and why we’re doing it.

You can use this for your own practice, to review after taking the class, or to teach the class yourself (send students to this page afterward, it’s like their notes).

Warm Ups

It takes time to leave the stresses of your day behind and focus on magick.  Start with some warm ups to help transition, and to make sure everyone knows the pre-reqs.

Warm up 1: Energy Meditation

I explain a simple energy meditation, and why it works, in this post.

Warm up 2: Move the Energy

Move the energy around your body.  Touch your leg (or arm, shoulder, etc) and move energy through your arm and into your leg.

Suggest a visualization, but don’t lead the meditation.  Students will need to handle their own visualizations soon, and you want to see if anyone has trouble with that.

Handling Connections

These exercises teach students how to make connections to sense energy.  They will be new for most students.

Sustain a Connection

The Exercise

Start by moving energy through your arm into your leg.  Sustain this energy flow as you slowly move your hand a few inches away.  You’ll make a magickal connection.

What You Learn

How to make a connection.

You’re telling your unconscious to keep the energy flowing.  Your unconscious knows that the only way to do that is by making a connection, so it does.

Make a Sensory Connection

The Exercise

Make a connection again (the previous exercise), then visualize the connection as something separate from the energy.  A hose, glass tube, etc. work well.  Stop the flow of energy, but sustain the connection.  Then release the energy from your body, so you’re not full of energy, but sustain the connection.

What You Learn

How to make a sensory connection.

If your connection is full of your energy, you can’t sense with it.  All you see is your own energy.

By sustaining the connection while quieting your energy, you can sense the energy of whatever you’re connecting to.

Connect to a Partner

The Exercise

Work with a partner.  Touch their shoulder (or their temple if you know them well), make a quiet connection (as in the previous exercise), then have them make energy.  Draw the energy into you (visualize the energy in them flowing up your connection and into you).

What You Learn

How to work with other peoples’ energy.

You’ll need this to sense their emotions based on their energy, and for a lot of other magick.

Reading Emotions By Energy

These exercises will teach students to sense the energy a person produces, and how that changes with different emotions.

Recognize Emotions

The Exercise

Connect to your partner as in the previous exercise.  Have them focus on a memory that triggers an emotion, then make energy.  Their energy will have a signature (or type) matching that emotion.  Have them tell you the emotion, so you learn what the signature means.

Repeat this with several different emotions (go for opposites like happy and sad, not similar ones like angry and nervous).

What You Learn

You learn the feeling of the energy corresponding to different emotions.

When I last taught the class, this was the point where all the beginners could feel the difference between different energies and knew they were doing everything right.

Identify Emotions

The Exercise

Same as above, but your partner doesn’t tell you the emotion.  Instead, you tell them, based on the energy.  Close your eyes so you don’t read their facial expression.

It’s easiest to do this with a partner you just practiced with, so you know their exact signatures.  For added challenge, do this with a new partner, without the Recognize Emotions exercise.

What You Learn

This step isn’t about learning, it’s about demonstrating a skill, and proving to yourself that you’re doing magick.

Want More?

For more details, more exercises, and some advanced techniques that build on these skills, see this series.

FAQ

Can You Sense Emotions At Distance?

Yes.  But that requires making those connections without touch, and probably being able to sense a person’s normal energy, without them building it up.

Most experienced mages can do that, but it’s more than I can teach in a 60-90 minute class for people who’ve only done energy meditations.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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