Posts Tagged ‘Book Excerpts’

Book Excerpts: Awakening Your Mental Muscles – The Command

Friday, November 30th, 2012

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Another excerpt on awakening your mental muscles. Make sure to read the other excerpts on the topic so you know what to expect.

The command is, “Awaken my mental muscles.” Yes, it really is that simple. Most of the commands for this book’s ethereal software will be.

Note: The ethereal software is actually listening to the concepts and ideas in your mind, not the words themselves. So, if “mental muscles” doesn’t mean much to you yet, try replacing it with the definition: “Awaken the parts of my mind that drive magick,” which has produced better results for friends who weren’t familiar with my terms.

You only need to give this command once. It will run until completion, with no further interaction required. But there’s no harm in giving the command multiple times — the software will just ignore the later instructions. And if you already have some mental muscles awake, the software won’t affect them. It’ll only activate new ones.

When you give this command, remember to first connect to the ethereal software by looking at the sigil, focusing on it for 30 seconds or so, then repeatedly thinking the command for another 30 seconds or so. Once that’s done, rest for a few hours (to let it awaken a few mental muscles), then start your daily direct magick practice routine.

And a reminder: This beta testing post covered how to connect to the ethereal software.

The Exercises (Not an Excerpt)

The next several chapters will cover the daily exercises. It starts with building and moving energy, then with working with connections, and finally with communicating with the ethereal software. Those links go to old posts covering the topics — there will be some changes to the exercises, and tons of editing, but they should work well enough for those of you who want to get started.

And a quick book update: I’m mostly done making the full outline of the book. I know, I’ve been posting excerpts for a while, but I’ve been writing with only a vague outline. This past week, I’ve been working on a chapter-by-chapter outline of the book, where one chapter roughly equals one long blog post (~1000 words, or 4 print pages). Expect a couple posts as I think through how to present topics, followed by more rapid progress on the book. Thanks for your enthusiasm and patience, everyone.

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Book Excerpts: How Awakening Your Mental Muscles Feels

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

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Today’s excerpts are from the chapter on awakening mental muscles. Next week, we’ll get to the command to awaken them.

Awakening your mental muscles doesn’t feel like much of anything, at least, not until you get the first few muscles awakened. Once you do, you’ll start feeling the energy they move, the messages they receive, or whatever other magick they do. But in general, unless you awaken a great many mental muscles all at once, awakening mental muscles itself doesn’t feel like anything.

But don’t worry: I’ll tell you how to know you’re doing each exercise right. And when you feel that, you’ll know those mental muscles are awake and engaged.

Surprised?

If you’ve read other books on magick, or attended classes for beginners, you might be surprised that awakening mental muscles doesn’t feel all tingly. After all, you’ve probably gotten exercises like this:

“To feel your body’s energy field, bring your finger to almost touch your forehead. You’ll feel a tingle. That’s your body’s energy field.”

I got an exercise like this in an energy healing class. It’s impressive, and makes you feel confident about the energy you’ll be learning to use.

The problem is, that’s not energy. The tingles are from proprioception, your brain’s natural response to knowing that something is almost touching you. There’s no magick there.

How do I know? Well, try this:

First, have a friend move their finger to almost touch your forehead. Since you can see their finger, your brain knows you’re almost being touched, and you’ll feel tingling.

But now, close your eyes, have your friend flip a coin, and if it’s heads, almost touch your forehead. If it’s tails, they do nothing. Have them be sure not to step or make noise, as hearing a creak or a footfall also creates a map of the world around us and can set off proprioceptive sensations.

If you were feeling energy, it wouldn’t matter if you saw the finger or not, you’d still feel the energy. But when I tested this, I felt nothing with my eyes closed, and neither did any of my friends, because the tingles weren’t energy, they were ordinary, non-magickal proprioception.

Why am I telling you this? So you know that producing genuine magick you can feel is more like playing the violin than playing an mp3. It takes time, and practice, and it won’t happen today. And that’s perfectly fine.

Here’s my promise to you: Everything I tell you to look for will be actual magick. If it’s an ordinary non-magickal sensation, I’ll make that clear. I’ll do my best to do that, and if you think I’ve missed anything, I’ll welcome that feedback and issue any corrections needed.

And with that, we’re ready to start awakening mental muscles.

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Book Excerpts: Awakening Your Mental Muscles – How It Works

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

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Today’s excerpts are from the chapter on awakening mental muscles.

(Soon, we’ll get into how to actually do it. But you need to know what to expect first.)

How Traditional Styles Awaken Your Mental Muscles

It’s possible to awaken your mental muscles simply by trying to use them. Daily energy meditation, Tai Chi practice, or other energy work will eventually produce results. But it takes months, and it only awakens the mental muscles required to move that energy.

Most styles of magick want to awaken more mental muscles, and want to do it quickly. The key is ethereal software. When you receive an initiation, whether it’s an OTO initiation ritual, a Reiki attunement, or a tradition with some other name, the master will connect that style’s ethereal software to you. The ethereal software helps awaken your mental muscles, and then usually stays connected to you so you can use it to perform magick.

(The practitioners wouldn’t say it quite like that. They might not even be aware of this aspect of their initiation. But awakening your mental muscles is one of the primary benefits of initiation.)

I’m not one for rituals or ceremony, but when I see an elegant solution, I copy it. So, I’ve programmed this book’s ethereal software to awaken your mental muscles. I’ll tell you the command after explaining how to use it and what to expect.

How The Ethereal Software Works

Before we start this work, I need to make one thing clear: Magick doesn’t “work like magic.” It doesn’t provide instant, dramatic results, at least, not as a beginner. Like any other exercise or training program, learning magick is a series of small improvements, built up over time, that eventually results in valuable skills. A good training program can accelerate that process, but awakening your first set of mental muscles still takes several weeks.

Here’s what happens: The ethereal software sends energy to your mind to awaken a few of your mental muscles, then it waits for you to use them. When you do, through an energy meditation or communicating with a spirit or some other magick practice, that strengthens and solidifies those mental muscles, which lets the ethereal software awaken a few more mental muscles.

The key, then, is daily practice, so the software can repeatedly awaken a few muscles, which you then use, allowing it to awaken more. It only has to be a few minutes, but practicing 5 minutes a day will result in faster gains than practicing 60 minutes, once a week. And practicing a variety of skills will awaken more mental muscles than practicing the same technique day after day. The coming chapters are designed to provide a daily training program with a good variety of skills.

After each chapter, you’ll learn to consciously engage the mental muscles we just awakened. I call this “mental posture,” and we’ll get into the details after awakening a few mental muscles.

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Book Excerpts: Getting Started with Direct Magick

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

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Two excerpts from my book today. The first is the intro to Part 2: Getting Started with Direct Magick:

Direct magick has two main tools: Ethereal software and mental muscles. In Part 2, we’ll set you up with both.

Specifically, we’re going to connect to some ethereal software designed for this book, and learn the very basics of commanding it. Then we’ll use it to awaken a few mental muscles, and learn to engage them at will. If you put in 5-10 minutes a day, it should take 4-8 weeks.

For experienced magick practitioners, you’ll find this takes much less time. But every style of magick uses slightly different mental muscles, so most likely, a few of the mental muscles you’ll need for direct magick are still hibernating. So please follow these exercises to make sure you have all the tools for effective direct magick.

The next couple of chapters cover the basics of using the book’s ethereal software. The next excerpt is the intro to awakening your mental muscles:

So far, we know how to send instructions to ethereal software. And with this, we can ask the ethereal software to send healing energy to someone, cause lucky events to happen, shield us from spirits, and do other useful magick.

But there’s a lot more to magick than sending out our intentions and requests. For energy healing, what if we could receive information about the injury, and help guide the ethereal software to the best healing technique? For manifesting, what if we could receive information about how the event would happen, and adjust the request based on that new information?

And beyond that, what if we could reprogram the ethereal software, adding new capabilities that other mages could use, test, and help us improve? Then we could build a more robust style of magick. That’s one of my reasons for writing this book.

To do all that — to receive information back from the ethereal software, and to add new techniques to its repertoire — we’ll need to awaken your mental muscles. That’s what this chapter is about.

It feels good to be writing again. More excerpts coming soon.

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Awakening Your Mental Muscles – Intro

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

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I’m writing my book again. Part 1 is mostly done, and I’m working on Part 2: Awakening Your Mental Muscles. Today’s post is the introduction to that section.

The biggest difference between experienced magick practitioners and everyone else isn’t a knowledge of rituals or symbols. It’s not having the favor of spirits or deities. And it definitely isn’t the ownership of wands or cloaks.

No, the biggest difference — and really, the only important one — is that experienced magick practitioners have awakened their mental muscles, and know how to engage them to a particular purpose.

Everyone has mental muscles, but most of them are hibernating and atrophied. If you’ve never practiced magick, then all your mental muscles are probably asleep. But even if you already practice magick, that only awakens those specific mental muscles used in your practice. The others are still asleep.

This section will show you how to awaken the mental muscles you’ll need to start practicing direct magick, which may include some mental muscles you haven’t yet used or awakened with your other styles of magick.

In my own practice, I spent about a decade awakening mental muscles. At least once a month, I’d find new ones, awaken them, and discover that they made some aspect of magick a bit easier. I’ve developed techniques to awaken mental muscles, then improved those techniques, and then discovered more about how mental muscles work and developed whole new techniques to awaken more of them faster. It’s a large portion of my own research.

But those techniques will take several books to teach. To get you started, I’ve programmed my ethereal software to awaken the first few mental muscles you’ll need for direct magick. Even if you already practice magick, I recommend working these exercises to awaken any additional mental muscles you’ll need to start learning direct magick. It’ll make the rest of this book go much smoother.

And, if you’re learning magick for the first time and want to explore several styles, working these exercises will help all of them, because you use a lot of the same mental muscles in all styles of magick.

In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to use my ethereal software to awaken your mental muscles. If you already practice magick, read that chapter, then skip the rest of this section. For everyone else, I’ll show you a basic energy meditation to practice as your mental muscles awaken, so you can feel them working and strengthen them from day one. And, for anyone who doesn’t want to use my ethereal software, I’ll give you some other ways to awaken your mental muscles and start practicing magick.

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Examples of My Model: LBRP

Monday, May 28th, 2012

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Another excerpt from Part 1 of the book, explaining my model by walking you through the LBRP. As always, feedback is welcome.

I don’t do rituals myself, but I sometimes join friends for rituals, so I’ve seen the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) a bunch of times, from several different groups. Here’s what I observed each time:

During the Kabbalistic Cross, ethereal software would connect to us. It first connected to the people who regularly practice the LBRP, then connected to me and the other guests. I continued looking for other connections from spirits or other ethereal software, but did not find any, so I’m fairly confident it’s only that one ethereal software connecting to everyone.

As we performed the pentagrams and invoked the angels, the ethereal software communicated with everyone’s mind. Because I was performing the ritual, I wasn’t focused enough to read the messages and images the software was sending to my friends, but in similar situations (such as Enochian magick, psychic visions, and astral projection), other ethereal software sends intuitions and visions. Since some of my friends described visions of angels after the ritual, I assume the ethereal software was responsible for those.

At the close of the ritual, the ethereal software stayed connected to everyone, presumably so it could respond to the next ritual we might perform. For example, if we asked for luck in some activity, the ethereal software would read that request from our minds and cause the actual changes to make that lucky event happen. The software can also connect us to other ethereal software or to spirits for assistance with other tasks.

How did the ethereal software know to connect when we started the ritual? In the rituals I participated in, my friends were experienced in that ritual style. They performed LBRPs regularly, and knew the ethereal software’s signature so well that they didn’t even notice its connections. They could probably connect to the software simply by focusing on its signature (without performing any ritual), and they probably reached out to the ethereal software they’d worked with so many times as they started the ritual.

In my experience, focusing on an ethereal software’s signature is most common way to contact it. That’s how I contact most of my ethereal software. But there is a second way: The rituals and symbols you use can connect you to the ethereal software for that style of magick. I’ll tell you about that next section.

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Trust Your Experiences, Not My Words

Sunday, May 27th, 2012

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This is part of the introduction to my book.

When I read someone’s model of magick, I always wonder how much of it is really out there, and how much of it is just their way of explaining their experiences. Are they really putting their intent into that energy, or is that just what they consciously think about as they do their magick? When you see an Enochian angel, are you seeing the angel’s actual form, or just an image projected into your mind by a spirit with no physical form at all? And so on.

Even if someone tells me that they really see these things, I still wonder how much of that “seeing” is their imagination. It’s incredibly hard to separate actual experiences from your expectations projected onto the outside world, and I’ve gotten it wrong myself. So, no matter how confident a person seems, I always want to see it for myself and make up my own mind.

And so, throughout this book, I’ll walk you through the techniques and experiments that make me confident in my model, so you can see for yourself and make up your own mind.

But, you can learn a lot faster if you already know the answers. So, for now, treat this as a hypothetical model that produces some useful results, learn the basics, and trust that I’ll show you how to see everything for yourself in the coming chapters.

This post is dedicated to Ananael, whose questions have made me better at explaining direct magick.

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How I Became Psychic

Monday, May 21st, 2012

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This is a chapter from Part 1 of my book, where I explain my terms by describing common styles of magick. Feedback and questions are always welcome.

In 2012, I became psychic. It took about a year to learn all the skills, then an afternoon to actually become psychic. Seeing how I did it will let you see direct magick in action, help you understand how all the parts work, and show you what you can do once you learn to use them.

Let me give you a bit of background first. Most psychics started as kids. You often hear about someone’s mother or grandmother also having intuitions, so I think that most psychics connected with their ethereal software through family members. This means that most adult psychics have had years to learn to listen to those intuitions, and the software has had years to connect to their minds.

I didn’t know any psychics as a kid. So, while I started working with energy at age 11, I never had psychic talents. In my early 20s, I tried becoming psychic, but couldn’t pull it off. It turns out, you need three components:

  • Ethereal software to provide the intuitions. And not just any ethereal software — ethereal software specifically programmed for this type of work.
  • Skill in communication, so you can continuously receive intuitions without getting exhausted. (Most psychics get this naturally from growing up with the ethereal software.)
  • The right settings for the software, so it knows which intuitions to give you.

I wasn’t focused on becoming psychic, so I solved these problems slowly over the next decade as they came up in other work.

In my late 20s, I helped to friend improve her psychic intuitions by finding better ethereal software for her to use. (I’ll show you how to do that in Part 2.) That got me the software, but not the skill.

Then I spent a year learning detailed, accurate communication. It’s useful for getting training from spirits, reprogramming ethereal software, and a few other things I wanted to do.

One of those other things was manifesting — magick to predict and influence events. I’d ask questions of the ethereal software, consciously read the answers, and get help with important decisions. But I didn’t have the stamina to get a ongoing stream of like psychics do.

After about a year of that, I was ready. I sent the software the command, “Continuously monitor my thoughts and actions, and guide me to be successful in all my goals.” Simple as that, once I had all the prerequisites in place. I felt the software make a ton of connections throughout my mind, rested an hour or so, and since then I’ve had continuous guidance, just like any other psychic.

I’m not telling you this to brag. I’m telling you this so you can see what I do with direct magick, why I’m confident my model is on the right track — if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t lead me to new techniques like this — and so you can see that it’s a matter of months and years to get good, not just the weekend it would take you to read this book.

But by the end of Part 2, you’ll have all the tools you need to become psychic. If you focus on that, it will probably take 3-6 months.

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Examples of My Model: Psychic Intuitions

Friday, May 18th, 2012

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This is a chapter from Part 1 of my book, where I explain my terms by describing common styles of magick. Feedback and questions are always welcome.

If you’re psychic, you know that your intuitions come from somewhere outside of yourself — from some external force that reads your thoughts and actions, and gives you intuitions and visions to help you. Most psychics I know don’t name that force. Some call it an impressive-sounding name like “The Universe.” I call it “ethereal software,” because using a pedestrian name makes it easier to explore how it works.

Psychic ethereal software (which I usually call “psychic software”) works pretty much like other ethereal software: It connects to your mind, listens for questions, and puts intuitions into your thoughts. While some ethereal software only connects to you when you do a specific ritual, psychic software stays connected to you 24/7. That’s how it can provide the continuous stream of intuitions.

From working with a bunch of psychics, I know that different psychics channel different ethereal software. And many psychics use multiple pieces of ethereal software, each one for different types of queries. That’s because most psychic software specializes in one field, and is often not programmed for others. One might be great with imminent physical danger, but doesn’t understand what money is, while another could guide you to romantic success, but has no concept of traffic accidents. If you’ve ever had trouble asking certain types of questions, this may be why.

I’ve helped several psychics get better intuitions by replacing their ethereal software with software better suited to their needs. We’ll cover that in Part 2, along with techniques to get clearer messages from any ethereal software.

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The Major Parts of Direct Magick

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

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This is the first non-introduction chapter of my book, defining the terms. Should be particularly useful for new readers. Feedback is welcome. Enjoy.

Before we can work together, we need to learn each others’ terms. Well, I’m a book, so I can’t learn anything. But you’ll need to learn my terms. That’s what Part 1 is for.

Chapter 1 (today) is a quick overview of the major parts of direct magick. I’ll also put this into the Glossary (link at the top of the page) for easy reference.

Ethereal Software

Ethereal software is my term for the external forces that drive most magick.

When you do a ritual, visualization, or send out your intent, you’re sending out instructions about what you want to happen. Those instructions get picked up by ethereal software, which then drives the actual changes in the world. You can think of ethereal software as the force that implements magick’s natural laws, or as the provider of the energy and intuitions you channel.

Like a computer, ethereal software is intelligent, but doesn’t have feelings or emotions. (Spirits, in contrast, are intelligent and sentient, like people.) Ethereal software was programmed, and can be reprogrammed by spirits and mages. We’ll do that in Part 5.

If the concept sounds similar to Chaos Magick’s “egregore,” that’s because it is. In fact, both terms probably refer to some of the same actual forces. But the term “egregore” also tells you how to create and strengthen those forces, how to find concepts with strong egregores, and so on. I use my own term because I don’t want that baggage.

Mental Muscles

Mental muscles are my term for the parts of your mind that drive magick. Engaging them makes the difference between imagining something vs doing actual magick, just like engaging your leg muscles makes the difference between imagining moving vs actually walking. We’ll explore how to awaken and strengthen your mental muscles later in this book.

In most magick, your mental muscles will contact the ethereal software, then get out of the way. But in direct magick — that’s what this book is about — we make our mental muscles conscious, then do magick with just our mental muscles, without relying on ethereal software. You’ll see how that helps us do new magick and get better results later in this book.

Energy

Energy is widely used by mages and healers to refer to “that thing that makes you feel tingly.” I use it the same way.

One trap to avoid: Just because it’s called “energy” doesn’t mean it has any similarities to other things called energy. The physics definition of energy (which we’ll write as physics::energy) is “the ability to do work,” but that doesn’t mean that magickal energy (which we’ll write as magick::energy) has an ability to do work. Why? Because we arbitrarily chose to name it energy, and could just as easily have named it something else. Naming a rock “barbecue” wouldn’t make it delicious, and naming the thing that makes you feel tingly “energy” doesn’t make it able to do work.

Have you ever seen a question like, “Does energy healing work by giving cells the energy they need to grow?” It sounds pretty plausible, right? Well, try it with that notation: “Does healing with magick::energy work by giving cells the bio::energy they need?” No, no it doesn’t, because magick::energy isn’t bio::energy. (Remember that the name “energy” was an arbitrary decision. We’ll explore how energy healing actually works in Parts 4-5.)

In this book, assume that “energy” refers to magick::energy.

Connections

Connections are how mages interact with most of their magick. Think of them like your arms. You connect to someone to send them energy. Ethereal software connects to your mind to read your intent. You’ll eventually follow the connection from your mental muscles to your mind, so you can connect to more mental muscles. I’ll say “connect to X” a lot, and every time I do, that means you’re using a magickal connection.

Structure

Structure is an overarching term for “stable, long-lasting magickal stuff.” It’s like saying “solid” or “made of molecules”: It covers most things you’ll see. Examples of magickal structures: Connections, mental muscles, ethereal software, and so on. Energy is the only non-structure we’ve touched on so far, and it’s not a structure because it’s not stable: It flows through connections and other structures.

Basically, I say “structure” so I’m not saying “magickal stuff” all the time.

Signature

You know how each person’s energy feels different? And how some energy calms you, while other energy makes you excited, and so on? I call that feel the “signature” of the energy, or sometimes the “type” of energy. You can think of it as a color, but it’s more similar to a Jackson Pollack painting than a solid green or a rainbow. Some people use the term “vibration” instead.

Structure also has a signature, which determines the types (signatures) of energies it will interact with. That’s not something most models of magick discuss, so don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense right now. We’ll explore it throughout this book, and by the end, you’ll be able to see what I mean and use it for practical techniques.

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