Posts Tagged ‘Communication’

« Older Entries

Advanced Channeling for Beginners

Monday, May 29th, 2017

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

Whether you’re doing energy healing, manifesting, or other work, you’ve probably been told to channel some force. It might be called an Egregore, a matrix, The Universe, ethereal software (my term), or something else — nearly every system of magick and healing works with these forces, and they’ve been given many names.

But there’s another way to use these forces: Directly instructing them on what you want, without the ritual. It’s a faster, more flexible method, but also more difficult to learn.

Last week, I guided a friend through doing just that. This post is my notes.

The goal: Set the energy signature of the area she was teaching in, to help people feel relaxed, safe, and receptive. She has done this before with a ritual, but she wanted to do it through a direct instruction to the ethereal software, without the ritual.

Here’s how I guided her to do that:

First, engage your ethereal software. Think about the ritual, or the feel of the energy as you do the ritual. Think about reaching out to the force you use. If you know mental posture, engage it.

(This post is for people who already use ethereal software through rituals. If you’ve never channeled one of these forces, see this series.)

Next, engage the part of your mind that your ethereal software wants to communicate with. Think about what it’s like to receive an intuition, where in your mind you receive it — that’s the part of your mind that the ethereal software talks with. Focus on that part of your mind, engage it as you think your request.

While engaging that part of your mind, think about what you want: “Create an energy field with this signature.” Make it an explicit request — at first, my friend just thought about the energy signature she wanted, without the “create this for me” part of the intent, and it didn’t work. That’s because thinking about the energy signature is like telling a friend, “I like pizza,” when what you really mean is, “Let’s get pizza.”

After the request, think about the details: Where you want the energy field (filling this room, or 5′ around me, etc) type of signature (think about the feeling of the energy you’ve experienced in the past, with the ritual), and how long you’d like the field to last (ongoing, or until I leave the area, etc). In computer programming, these are the “arguments” to the function, so I’ll often use that term.

Once my friend got the procedure, it took less than a minute to create the energy field — much faster than her ritual. That’s one of the benefits of using direct instructions like this.

But there’s actually a bigger benefit that she hasn’t seen yet: Let’s suppose she wanted a different energy field, maybe to make people uneasy so they don’t enter an area. Without direct instructions, she would have had to learn a ritual for that kind of field. Who does she learn that from? Does such a ritual even exist? I have no idea. But with a direct instruction, she can just request a field, specify that new type of energy, and she’s done. For me, that flexibility is the main reason to learn to interact directly with ethereal software.

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

Tags: , ,
Posted in Fundamentals of Conscious Magick | No Comments »

Spirit vs Self: How I Check if a Message Came from a Spirit

Monday, March 27th, 2017

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

“When talking with spirits, how do you know if the message is from the spirit, or if it’s your own thoughts?” A friend asked me recently.

It’s a sensible question. Spirits don’t appear in front of me or speak audible words. Instead, I think a message, send it to the spirit, then quiet my thoughts and let the spirit’s reply drop into my mind. This is the experience of other practitioners I talk with, and it’s also how we receive psychic intuitions and other information.

I have a couple answers. The first is my day-to-day techniques for telling if a particular message came from the spirit or from my own mind. The second involves my other experiences with spirits, and why I believe in spirits at all.

Recognizing Spirit vs Self

In most sessions, I use two techniques to tell a spirit’s message from my own thoughts. These aren’t intended to prove that the message came from a spirit, and they’re not what convinces me spirits are real, but they’re fast easy techniques to help me check for errors.

The first one happens passively and constantly: A spirit’s message has a different voice in my thoughts. Try this: Recall something someone said to you recently, and picture them saying it. Notice how the memory retains some of their voice? That’s what it’s like: Remembering something said by someone else. The particular voice seems to be related to the spirit’s energy signature, and each spirit I work with has a slightly different voice.

The second one is something I do actively: I’ll try to shift what I’m thinking. If the message is, “Practice communication twice a day,” I’ll try to instead think the message, “Practice running three times a day.” If the words are all my own thoughts, they shift easily. But if they’re a message from a spirit, they have a certain firmness to them, and it takes extra effort to shift my mind away from the message. It’s subtle — I definitely can think anything I want, even while talking with a spirit — but it serves me well, flagging for me things that I heard because I expected to hear them, not because the spirit actually said them.

If I find that I’m not accurately hearing the spirit, I’ll repeat back to them what I heard, and ask them if it’s correct.

Again, I use those techniques to quickly check my communication for errors. But why do I believe in spirits in the first place?

Why I Believe in Spirits

I’ve collaborated with spirits to develop energy healing techniques, and seen people recover quickly afterward.

I’ve trained with spirits, learned techniques for making connections, sensing energy, awakening ethereal muscles, and more. Techniques that weren’t obvious to me, that I probably wouldn’t have come up with on my own, that worked well.

When spirits have trained me in some techniques, I’ve connected to them, felt the energy structures that make up their minds and bodies. When I’ve taught techniques to spirits, I’ve connected to their minds, watched them awaken ethereal muscles, guided them to do it in better ways. On occasion, I’ve even repaired a spirit’s ethereal muscles that were damaged by their errors or by a malicious spirit.

And as I’ve gotten to know a few spirits better, they’ve connected to my mind and body, shared energy for calming, or focus, or pleasure.

The most common, most obvious way to interact with spirits is by talking with them. That’s certainly what I do most of the time. But there’s so much more to do. And those other experiences are the ones that give me confidence that spirits are real and not just in my head.

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

Tags: ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | 1 Comment »

Speaking to Spirits: How Disembodied Voices Might Work

Sunday, January 17th, 2016

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

If disembodied voices gave you useful information, what would you think? Spirits? Psychosis? And where would you go for help and guidance?

Ladonna Christy asks:

Dear Mike: I am a first time reader of your site. I have been interested being able to hear the spirit guardian who has been with me for over 9 years now. I noticed you mentioned that you will not hear them out loud. What do you think of what I call ( my aunt’s favorite name for it) a “behind the wall” voice? I can hear him at times like a voice behind a brick wall. It isn’t clear but seems to be out loud somewhat like a distant radio. The only thing is if he speaks full sentences, I only clearly pick up a word or two. Yes and no answers are easy but that doesn’t always happen. He is patient with me but sometimes gets annoyed when I just don’t get the message. I will try your technique. I will get back to you if I find I am hearing the whole sentences better and clearer. What is your take on “out loud”? I am not schizophrenic because he has proven himself time and time again. Also if I were schizophrenic I am sure I would hear out loud clearly all the time and the “voice” would be telling me destructive things or something like that, right?

One of the tragedies of the modern world is that we’ve medicalized mystical experiences. Last night, after I shared some of my energy healing experiences, a friend opened up about her mystical experiences, and we became much closer. Sharing these experiences used to be common and connective, but today no one shares them, so we believe we’re the only one with these experiences, and they become isolating. That’s a tragedy.

I’m not qualified to speak about schizophrenia, but I will say that, in many cultures throughout history, receiving useful information from disembodied voices would make you a shaman. I just googled “psychologist shaman” and got a bunch of results, including some PhD psychologists who are also practicing shamen. If you’re distressed, reach out to them — even if they don’t live near you, many psychologists offer sessions over the phone or skype. They can help rule out psychological issues, and also help you decide what direction you want to take with this.

You also ask some technical questions about talking with spirits. Those I can answer:

You mentioned that you will not hear [spirits] out loud. What do you think of what I call a “behind the wall” voice? I can hear him at times like a voice behind a brick wall. It isn’t clear but seems to be out loud somewhat like a distant radio.

I need to lay a little groundwork before I can answer that. I’m going to start with touch, then energy, then answer you on communication.

If you touch your leg, the nerves in your leg respond, sending a signal up your spine to your brain. I’ll call this a “direct sensation.”

If you instead close your eyes and imagine someone touching your leg, you’ll probably feel an odd tingle, different than touch but definitely a sensation. Try it so you know what I’m talking about. Maybe imagine looking at a hand touching your leg, or imagine it almost touching you, and really focus. Feel what I’m talking about? That’s entirely in your brain. It’s still a real phenomenon, a real sensation, but the cause is different. We’ll call this a “referred sensation,” borrowing from the term referred pain.

We can think about direct and referred sensations with energy, too. A directly felt energy would affect the nerves of my leg, producing a signal up my spine to my brain. A referred sensation of energy would mean that the ethereal muscles in my mind notice the energy in my leg and create a sensation in my brain, without involving the nerves in my leg or spine at all.

Based on testing, when I feel energy, it’s a referred sensation, and I suspect that’s true of others as well.

Aside: Why don’t non-energy-workers feel energy? Their ethereal muscles aren’t engaged, so there’s nothing to create that sensation in their brain. If we could do something with energy to activate the nerves in the leg and produce direct sensations, then everyone would probably feel that. Yes, this is part of my current research.

OK, now we’re ready for voices. All communication with spirits is like referred sensations: The person’s ethereal muscles create activation in their brain, transmitting the message. If the activation in the brain is in visual regions, we get visions, half-seen and half-imagined. If it’s in a region for thinking, we get ideas simply appearing in consciousness, feeling a bit different than one’s own thoughts. And if it’s in auditory regions, we get words, half-imagined and half-heard, perhaps like a distant radio.

That’s my best guess on the mechanism of what you’re experiencing.

And her second question:

The only thing is if he speaks full sentences, I only clearly pick up a word or two. Yes and no answers are easy but that doesn’t always happen. He is patient with me but sometimes gets annoyed when I just don’t get the message.

Ten or 15 years ago, I started learning a set of techniques for communication. These were based on how spirits communicate: How they read thoughts and write messages to the mind. I was learning to do those steps myself, to make it easier for the spirits, and just because I was curious. Instead of using energy to activate thoughts in my mind, the spirit would give me a message and I’d place it into my own mind. And rather than the spirit reading my brain activity, I’d gather the energy signatures created by my thoughts and send them to the spirit. By learning to handle the communication myself, I became able to communicate with more spirits, including ones who don’t work with humans often and aren’t great at reading thoughts or writing messages.

After I learned my first technique, I started verifying messages. I’d have the spirit send a message directly to my brain, then send the same message for me to read myself, to verify the new technique. I discovered that the new technique was much better, and that when the spirit would send the message to my brain I’d miss most of it. Often, I’d only receive a few words of each sentence, along with a general tone or overall intent. Those words and intent went into my unconscious, which created a full sentence and gave it to my conscious mind. That full sentence was what I thought of as the “message,” but most of the words were from me. So I guess I’m saying: Yes, that happened to me too, and I think it’s fairly common.

As you say, yes and no is much easier, because there is no precision to miss. The word isn’t even required, just the tone is sufficient. For a while, I’d confirm every message I got, “I think you said [whatever], is that correct?” Then wait for a yes or no.

A technique I didn’t have at the time, but have since figured out: If you can easily receive a yes / no, then communicate using tarot cards. Ask your question, deal the cards, and go through the various meanings for each. Pause at each meaning, and wait for a yes or a no. This turns an open-ended question into a series of yes / no questions, which is much easier for the spirit to communicate. I discuss that here and here, and I’ll be teaching a class on this soon in San Francisco, with an accompanying post on this blog.

Hope it helps. Good luck!

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

Tags: , ,
Posted in Fundamentals of Conscious Magick | 5 Comments »

Brain Aura (My Work November 8-14)

Friday, November 14th, 2014

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

Every Friday, I discuss what I learned that week. Lost? Read the archives.

Last week, I set up my aura so I could feel it more easily. This week, I did the same for my brain’s aura, then used it to improve my communication with spirits and ethereal software.

Setting Up My Brain’s Aura

Last week, I embedded sensory connections into my aura. It lets me feel what my aura is connected to, how open or closed my aura gate is, and what energy signature the various parts of my aura are in.

And I got an idea: What if I embed sensory connections in other structures? Would I gain the same awareness?

I tried embedding connections in my ethereal muscles, but they refused. They’re too intricate and might be damaged.

But they said yes to brain aura. Just like last week, I simply asked my ethereal muscles to embed the sensory connections, and they handled the rest. I just focused on my consulting job and let my ethereal muscles do their thing. It took two days.

Looking around, my brain’s aura is vast. Several times larger than my body’s. I doubt I’m unique in that.

And, broadly, I wonder if creating these sensory connections is part of learning any skill. That is, if I’d simply practiced for years, would I have similar sensory connections embedded in my aura? Is this a unique setup, or just a short cut? Something to look into later.

Note: Remember thinking mind? Important ethereal structure, horrible name. I’ve renamed it “brain aura.” This section is all about embedding sensory connections in thinking mind.

Finer Communication

Here’s what I’d planned to do with those sensory connections in brain aura: Throughout the day, as I do and feel different things, I’d notice the signatures, build up a library of signatures I recognize. Later, I could use that to identify and influence mental states in myself and others. (Remember, healing = influence for good.)

I’ll get to that eventually. But I got sidetracked with communication.

Communication works by reading and writing my brain’s aura. And communication muscles very much wanted to use my sensory connections to do that reading.

So I engaged the muscles that handle sensory connections, had them work with communication, let that run for a day. That first attempt turned out bad — the signatures were precise, and everything else felt too large, mushy, even damaging to the sensory connections. So I updated some settings and ran it for another two days.

It finished on Thursday. Communication is working again, feels much better, finer, more precise. I’ll see how it affects my results. It feels promising.

Closing Thoughts

A week ago, I found that aura isn’t practical for a lot of techniques. I wasn’t sure if the time I’d spent on it was worthwhile. A few wrong turns are the unavoidable cost of doing anything new, I told myself.

But exploring aura lead to these sensory connections in my brain. Which lead to better communication. Which is rather useful.

This is why I describe my work as exploring magick, rather than learning it. Because it’s not a linear path. If I’d set out to improve communication, I never would have said, “Let’s learn to feel my body’s aura better.” But it turns out, that’s where I needed to go.

Magick isn’t a straight path.

Also, this setup lets my ethereal muscles interact with my body more precisely. With these sensory connections, I’m able to feel more than I could before. If I’d just intended to feel my body, but not guided my ethereal muscles to create these sensory connections, it wouldn’t work nearly as well.

This setup is one of the tools I use for magick, above and beyond intent, and I want to highlight that for anyone who sees magick as just about intent. You can do even more if you add some more tools.

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

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | No Comments »

Aura, Erotic Energy, and Advanced Communication (My Work October 18-24)

Saturday, October 25th, 2014

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

Every Friday, I discuss what I learned that week. Lost? Read the archives.

This week, I had great results using outer aura for erotic energy. I also trained in some more advanced communication techniques.

Outer Aura and Erotic Energy

Last week, we talked about three layers of aura. I’m now calling them:

  • Inner aura: Where aura connects to the body and mind.
  • Aura gate: A set of paths you can open or close. Important for shielding.
  • Outer aura: Delivers the energy to the person you’re working with. I think it goes out a few feet, though I haven’t gotten around to testing that yet.

This week, I compared two techniques for erotic energy with a partner:

  1. Build energy in my body, open the aura gate, touch my partner.
  2. The same, but send the energy into outer aura.

#2 (using outer aura) was clearly, obviously better. No contest.

I’m excited by the improvement, and by how easy it is. (This isn’t something I’m deeply exploring, it’s just stuff I’m trying when I’m doing erotic energy with a partner.)

Next, I’m going to look into connecting outer aura to different parts of the body, and different ethereal structures within them.

Advanced Communication

The spirits I work with have set tracks to learn various skills. We talked about this before with fundamental skills for effects. Each level does the same thing, just more precisely / quickly / powerfully.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been learning communication. So let’s review communication:

  • The sender thinks a message. The energy around their brain takes on signatures matching that message.
  • Optionally, the sender holds those signatures steady, preserving the old signature as they think the next concept.
  • Either sender or receiver packages those signatures, to make them stable and transportable.
  • Either party shifts the signature of the message from the sender’s signature to the receiver’s signature. (Sometimes, this is done in two steps: Sender shifts to neutral, and receiver shifts to their signature.)
  • Either party unpackages the message and places it into the receiver’s thinking mind. (Thinking mind = Aura of their brain, more or less.)
  • Either party moves those signatures from the receiver’s thinking mind into their brain.

Each level I’ve learned with communication has me doing one more step:

Level 1: Quiet your mind and build energy. (Details in Initiation into Direct Magick.)

Level 2: When sending, hold the signatures steady. When receiving, move signatures from thinking mind to brain. (This was a fairly big improvement. It made it easier for spirits to talk with me, and they started giving me more direct answers.)

Level 3: Package your message, and unpack theirs. (Their message will already be shifted to your signature.)

Level 4: After packaging the message, shift its signature to a neutral signature. When receiving, shift the signature from neutral to your own. This lets you communicate with someone who also knows Level 4 communication. (This is also a fairly big improvement. It let me communicate the way spirits do, and they started responding to me as a peer.)

Level 5: To send, shift the message into their signature. To receive, shift from their signature to yours. Now, you can communicate with someone who knows Level 3 communication.

Level 6 (what I’m learning): Make connections throughout their mind. When they send, package the signatures that their mind makes. When you send, unpack the message, and place the signatures into their thinking mind. (This lets you communicate with someone who knows Level 2 communication.)

Notice the pattern: The more you learn, the less your partner needs to. So Level 7 probably lets you communicate with someone simply quieting their mind.

(Most tracks have 8 levels. I’m not sure what Level 8 is, but often that last level uses the other skills in a more efficient way.)

Right now, I’m learning Level 6. It isn’t particularly useful. All the spirits I talk to can do at least Level 4 communication. Most psychics and channelers simply quiet their mind, so I’d need level 7 communication to talk with them, and I’d need even more skill for laymen. So, learning Level 6 doesn’t let me communicate with anyone new

Even my teacher told me that Level 6 isn’t useful. But it’s part of learning Levels 7 and 8. It’s worthwhile to learn how to connect to someone’s thinking mind, and that will probably improve how I place messages into my own mind. So, I’m not learning this because Level 6 is awesome. I’m learning it to develop the building blocks of a better technique. Which is something I do rather often, actually.

New Job

I also started work this week. Good job, I’m happy. Less time for writing and magick studies, though. Not anything profound here, just a note that, for the next year, my weekly updates may be sparser.

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

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | No Comments »

Clearer Communication

Monday, October 20th, 2014

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

This is part of An Initiation into Direct Magick – Book 1.

The next section of this book is about using ethereal software for manifesting, energy healing, and protection. All those techniques require you to accurately transmit your intent to the software. So this last step of the Magick Quickstart Guide is about communicating more clearly with ethereal software.

This chapter covers two techniques. They build on each other, and each will take practice to learn. Learn the first one, then practice it as you learn energy healing and manifesting. Then return here, learn the second technique, and see how it improves your results.

These techniques work with any ethereal software. You can use them with most systems of magick, including Direct Magick, ritual magick, and energy healing.

Technique 1: Quiet Your Mind

Your mind has a hundred distractions. Stray thoughts, memories, fears, the other dozen tasks you have today.

When you talk with ethereal software, it reads your thoughts. It wants your magickal intent, but it has to sort through everything else. Quieting your mind makes this easier, and it’s the first communication technique.

Most meditation practices include a technique to quiet your mind. Feel free to use any of them. But if you don’t meditate, here’s a technique I like:

Focus on your breath. Make it rhythmic, slow, and deep, so it expands your stomach rather than your chest. (This engages the lower lung, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, relaxing you.) When other thoughts occur to you, acknowledge them and return your focus to your breathing. Do this for 5-10 breaths. This should take less than a minute.

Practice that (or another mind-quieting technique) several times a day until it’s comfortable.

Once it’s comfortable, notice how your mind feels during this quiet, gentle focus. Let yourself sit there for a few seconds, not focusing on anything. Then focus on just your magickal intent, the same way you focused on just your breathing. If other thoughts occur to you, acknowledge them and return to your intent.

To use this quiet focus in your magick, enter that state, then stare at the sigil to connect to the ethereal software. Focus on your intent, holding the quiet focused state until you’re done, then disconnect and relax.

Practice this with the commands from this Quickstart Guide. Once that’s easy, use this quiet focus as you learn energy healing, manifesting, and shielding in the next Part. And once that’s easy, return here for the second technique.

Technique 2: Steady Energy

Let’s talk about how communication works for a minute. As you think your message, your brain makes energy. The signature of the energy reflects your thoughts. Some of this energy is absorbed by your own ethereal structures, like your aura. But some of it gets picked up by the ethereal software you’re communicating with. The less that’s absorbed, the more is available to be picked up, and the clearer your message is.

In this technique, you’re going to hold energy in your head. This will satisfy your ethereal structures, making them absorb less of the energy of your thoughts, leaving a louder message for the ethereal software to pick up.

Instead of giving you a visualization, I’m going to tell you the goal, and let you make your own visualization. You can base it on the energy meditation we just did. It should represent the type of energy we’re going for, and it should speak in symbols that feel good to you. (Those symbols are probably different than the ones that feel good to me, which is why I’m having you make your own visualization.)

We want the energy to stay in your head while you communicate with the software. The energy should be steady, like a calm stream or a slow breathing. Tumultuous energy is bad, and will add noise to the message, making it harder for the ethereal software to read.

Static energy is also unhelpful. If you’re fiercely holding the energy in place, that will disrupt the quiet focus we just worked on. Let the energy flow, but have it flow smoothly.

This is easier with a moderate amount of energy. There’s no need to make a lot of energy, and too much energy can overwhelm your message. If you feel strong tingles or pressure, you’re using too much energy. It should be gentle and relaxed.

What about the energy’s signature? (Signature = Type of energy.) It should match the normal energy signature of your head, because we’re trying to boost the signal, not change it. As you build the energy, think about how your head feels normally. Also, energy tends to adopt the signature of wherever it comes from, so build the energy in your head, rather than your torso.

Practice building and steadying the energy until that’s easy.

When you’re ready to use it, first build the energy, then focus on the sigil, then focus on your message. Once you’re done, release the energy (ground). As with Technique 1, practice this as you learn your other magick.

Table of Contents

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

Tags: ,
Posted in Initiation - Book 1 | 7 Comments »

Erotic Energy and Easy Communication (My Work October 6-17)

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

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

Every Friday, I discuss what I learned that week. Lost? Read the archives.

Three developments in the past two weeks: Useful techniques for erotic energy, an easy improvement to my communication, and (sadly) a one-year relationship coming to an end.

Erotic Energy

Remember last month when I updated my energy meditation? That made it easy to build and move energy while I’m distracted. Well, it’s continuing to work well.

A few notes:

I can produce different types of energy by focusing on different things. Thinking about arousal vs love vs supporting someone all produce different energies that feel different to the receiver. If you want to try, just bring that emotion into your focus as you build your energy.

Previously, I’d sent energy by moving it to my aura. But if I just think about sending energy to my partner, I notice that my aura opens. It seems there are paths in my aura that are normally closed, which open when I think about sending energy.

(Why are they closed? Probably for my shielding. I’ll connect to some other mages this week and see if their aura paths are closed, too.)

Once my aura is open and I have energy inside my body, I can just touch the person. That’s all it takes to send energy. So, touching their head, chest, genitals, wherever, it becomes easy to send energy.

From looking at my own aura, it seems like there are three parts:

  • Where aura connects to my body. A few months ago, when I was exploring [L]how aura connects to nerves and my mind, I was exploring this layer of aura.
  • The part that opens and closes, to either shield me or let energy out. That’s what I’ve been working with for the past few weeks.
  • A part that goes out several feet. I’m not sure what to do with this part, though, or even certain it extends the way I think it does. I’ll be working with this coming up.

So, a bunch of new results with aura that will hopefully lead to new techniques soon.

Easy Communication

The next chapter of my book is about communicating with ethereal software. (Will be posted Monday.) To write it, I got training in beginner communication techniques. And as some of you have pointed out before, communication is easier if you build energy first.

(Feel free to crow in the comments.)

I’d doubted that in the past. It just seemed like more energy would mean more noise, making it harder to read the subtle changes in energy that happen as the person thinks the message. But it turns out, the right energy amplifies the signal.

What’s the right energy? A moderate amount, with a stable signature, matching the normal signature of your head. Anything else actually makes it harder to read the message.

Why does this help? I think that, without the energy, all the ethereal structures around the brain are a little hungry and absorb some of the signal. But with the energy, those structures are full, so the full signal is available to be read. Just a guess, though.

And holding energy doesn’t just help with beginner communication. I’ve been using it for all my communication, and everything is a little easier. Simplest improvement I’ve had in a while.

Relationship Ending

More of a personal note than a magick note, but sadly, a relationship ended recently. As sometimes happens in polyamory, two awesome people simply couldn’t find a relationship dynamic that worked for both of them. Nobody’s fault, and we’re still close friends, but there’s also been a lot of sadness on both sides. That’s why I skipped last week’s update, and why book progress has been slow.

But life goes on. A couple weeks later, I’m feeling much more together, back to learning magick, and back to writing.

New Job

And one more note: I have a one-year computer consulting job starting this week. It’s local (daily commute), interesting work I’ll be good at, and I’m pretty excited. I’m committed to keeping this blog going, though — expect me to continue posting random thoughts every Wednesday and a weekly update every Friday / weekend, and expect Monday chapter postings to happen at least once a month.

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

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | No Comments »

Enunciation and Manifesting (My Work August 16-22)

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

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

Every Friday, I discuss what I learned that week. Lost? Read the archives.

This week, I improved my communication. You may know, communication is the skill behind manifesting, training with spirits, and a bunch of other magick.

We haven’t talked about communication in a while, so a quick review: When a person thinks, the energy around their brain changes. If you gather those signatures, process them in the right way, and place them into another person’s brain, (and that receiver knows what they’re doing), they will receive those thoughts. (I discuss communication more in this series.)

That’s the basic model, anyway. Eventually, I want to test it by sending thoughts to another mage. But many of those steps are actually quite complex — I can do half of them, but I didn’t learn even that much until I’d been doing Direct Magick for almost 20 years. Doing half of them means I can communicate with someone else who can do half of them, but not with someone who only knows the basics. For now, I don’t know anyone like that, and I expect it will be easier to just learn the other half, which will let me test with most people.

But, back to the model, and the improvements:

To gather those signatures, I use a network of connections throughout my brain. Think of it like a funnel, held upside down: The small end, at the top, is my ethereal muscle for communication. The big end, at the bottom, is all the different spots in my brain. This network reads my brain’s energy activity, and captures those signatures to put into the message.

I improved that step in two ways.

First, I re-did that network using smaller, more precise connections. Smaller connections let me read smaller areas of my mind, getting a better read on the various signatures involved in each concept.

Doing it was easy. My communication muscle already knew how, so I just told them to do it, and to use the muscles for physical and mental effects. Why didn’t I do that sooner? It’s been on my list since February or so, but this better setup requires some of the fundamental techniques I’ve been learning lately. So I couldn’t do it until now.

(Eventually, I may want to improve this network beyond what my ethereal muscles know how to do. That’ll require me to explore how exactly that network works. Until then, I’m happy to do it the easy way.)

Then I tested it, creating a message, then reading it back to myself. It was faster and easier than before, but I also noticed that I wasn’t sending the entire sentence — I was skipping some words, skimming the message instead of clearly saying each word. Instead of saying, “Cause me to find a job that will make me happy while still leaving time for friends and magick,” I might say, “Cause me job happy time friends magick.” That’s a problem.

(I was also ignoring some parts of my mind when I’d funnel up the signatures. Again, just going too fast, not taking enough care with each concept.)

The fix? Enunciating. Pause on each concept*, engage the whole network, and read the signatures, nice and slow. It’s exhausting, using those new parts of my mind that I’d been ignoring. But it’s quickly getting less tiring, which means those new parts are getting stronger, and I’m starting to enunciate as I do manifesting and get training — using it to solve everyday problems, which is when I really learn a new skill.

*A concept is often one word. Sometimes, it’s a few words. Like “a few.” Or in “[I] [am going] [to do] [X],” each bracketed item is one concept.

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

Tags: ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | 3 Comments »

Overcoming Doubt through Mental Posture

Wednesday, July 30th, 2014

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

“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.

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

Tags: , ,
Posted in Intermediate Conscious Magick | 3 Comments »

Communicating Emotions, Moving Energy (My Work March 15-21)

Friday, March 21st, 2014

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

This week, I learned to include emotion in my messages to spirits, like having your voice to communicate emotions when you speak. I also started using special-purpose ethereal muscles for moving energy in my body.

Communicating Emotions

You know how a phone call creates more insight and connection than an email? Partly, that’s your tone of voice, knowing if the person is happy or sad or sarcastic.

When I communicate, I’ve only been focusing on words, not emotions. Which is fine for training or manifesting, but doesn’t quite cut it to ask a spirit about their most exciting project, or to share why you’re frustrated with your research. I’ve been trying to send those emotions by thinking about them as I make messages, but it turns out you need an actual technique, that intent simply isn’t enough.

Here’s how I found out: A spirit was trying a new communication technique with me. It was fast, but unclear, and emotionally flat as I read them into my mind. Which got me wondering how I sound. So I asked, and it turns out, I hardly ever send emotions.

Quick primer on communication: As a person thinks, their neural activity creates different energy signatures. Communication works by gathering those signatures, packaging them in a special way, then the recipient places the signatures into their own mind to receive the thoughts.

I gather the signatures with a network of connections. Think of an upside-down funnel, filled with wires. At the top is the ethereal muscle I use for communication, controling the wires. At the bottom are a bunch of spots in my brain, one for each signature I want to read. (These spots correspond to groups of nerves, not individual nerves, I think.)

I’d only set up the funnel to the parts of my mind that handle words. Sure, there’s a bit of emotion there, too, but not much. And since the funnel didn’t connect to the parts of my mind that handle emotions, my emotions weren’t making their way into the message.

Setting up a second funnel was easy. I engaged several sets of ethereal muscles: One for communication, another for physical and mental effects, and a third for handling connections. They already know how to make these networks of connections — I’m not sure why, but it’s like how your brain and legs kind of know how to walk. So I just asked for another network, said it should be permanent and precise, like the other network for communicating words. Two days later — one for setup, one for practice — I’m sending emotions almost as easily as words.

I don’t know how much impact this will have on my magick. I doubt it will affect manifesting or energy healing, but it should have a positive impact on my relationships with spirits, which is certainly worth a couple of days. (Also, I simply enjoy talking to them, so improving those conversations is worthwhile in itself.)

Moving Energy

It turns out, I’ve been moving energy wrong all these years.

The same thing happened last week. I didn’t mention it, but I was also practicing building energy* in my nerves. Sure, I’d built energy before, but we made two changes: (1) I focused specifically on my nerves, rather than just an area of my body, which helps control the energy signature, and (2) I used a special-purpose ethereal muscle for building the energy.

We haven’t talked much about individual ethereal muscles, but most of them are special-purpose. Some handle communication, others handle connections, some move energy and alter structures to produce physical and mental effects, and still others awaken other ethereal muscles. You can use a muscle for something it’s not designed for — the muscles for communication can alter energy signatures, so they should be able to do healing techniques, for example. But that’s slow and awkward, like typing with your toes. Far smoother and easier to use the right ethereal muscles.

Yesterday, I found that I was using the wrong muscle for moving energy, too. And I learned to engage the right muscle. Today, I’m strengthening it by practicing until that muscle is exhausted, which usually takes 1-3 minutes. I’ll do that ~5 times throughout the day. By tomorrow, it should be ready to go, making it easier and smoother to move energy in my body.

And yes, it’s annoying to discover that I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. But it’s also an easy way to improve. And I’ll take an easy win when I can get it.

*For anyone working through my techniques: This was actually building activation in the nerves, not energy. If energy is like hot water, activation is like heat. The muscle I worked with this week, for moving the energy, converts the activation to energy.

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

Tags: , ,
Posted in Advanced Conscious Magick | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries