Posts Tagged ‘Mental Activation’

The Essence of Direct Magick

Sunday, August 2nd, 2015

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

Follow-up to Four-Dimensional Magick.

I’m often asked what it’s like to do Direct Magick. What do I see? How does it feel? I want to share some of those details today.

Previously, I wrote about four-dimensional magick. Not “beings from another dimension,” but the higher-dimensional spaces used in math and physics. My example was energy healing, but 4D views come up everywhere. And these make great examples of what it’s like to do Direct Magick.

Creating Sensations

The previous 4D post grew from my current work with creating sensations.

A little background. You know how people who work with energy feel energy, and people who don’t work with energy don’t feel it, and how that’s not great for our credibility? I’d like to fix that. If we can understand why non-energy-users don’t feel energy — what the differences are and which is the active ingredient — we could build a technique to bridge that gap, producing sensations in most of the population. I did some work on this in early 2014, learned to create unpleasant headaches in a non-mage friend, then got distracted with other projects.

I’m resuming the project now. While I was re-awakening my ethereal muscles from the months of rest, I asked my spirits to test sensation techniques on me. It let me contribute even while I recovered, and it let them see which approaches produced which types of sensations. The goal was to learn to create pleasant sensations in me, so I could feel better asking friends to be guinea pigs.

We’re making good progress. Our focus is on the paths from aura to mind, and that’s where we run into four dimensions. Remember last post we talked about the ethereal paths from the nerves up to aura? Well, there are also ethereal paths from aura to the mind, and these aura-to-mind paths seem to be responsible for sensations.

The spirits had been starting at a single point in my aura, finding the paths from that point to my mind, and doing the effect on them. It worked OK. Then as I recovered, I tried connecting to a whole region of my aura, and to all the paths from that region to my mind. It was hard, and I couldn’t apply the signature very well, but it still created a clearer, more obvious sensation. That was 2 weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been practicing connecting to larger regions and finding all the paths to my mind. Soon, I’ll call the spirits back and we’ll test the technique.

But this post is about 4D views, and that’s what we have here: My aura is 3D, just like my physical body. From each point within the region of my aura, we have paths to my mind, a series of 3D snapshots as we follow those paths. That’s a total of 4 dimensions.

(For anyone practicing this at home: It’s actually 5D. Each point in aura has multiple paths, probably one path to each receiving point in my mind. Remember, one path is a 1D line, and multiple paths are 2D, a set of lines drawn on a sheet of paper. So each point has 2D worth of paths. And we have those paths flowing out of each point in a 3D aura, for a total of 5D. I’m not good enough at this to handle 5D yet, so I group the paths-to-mind together and pretend they’re just one path, giving me a simpler 4D view. But just a heads up: This doesn’t stop at 4D.)

So, this comes up in sensations. Where else?

Awakening Ethereal Muscles

I spent much of my 20s awakening my ethereal muscles, which involves two different 4D views.

The first view will feel familiar: We have my brain (3D) with ethereal paths leading to my ethereal muscles. Like the paths to aura, this is a 4D view, which you can see as a series of 3D snapshots. I used this view to connect my ethereal muscles to my brain, which let me guide newly-awakened ethereal muscles.

Ethereal muscles also have pathways that provide them power. Think of them like blood vessels, providing nutrients to the (ethereal) muscles. In newly-awakened ethereal muscles, these power pathways are often closed. To open them, you start from the ethereal muscles (3D), trace up the power pathways (series of 3D snapshots = 4D view), and open any blocked areas.

A related technique to find new ethereal muscles: Start from an awake ethereal muscle. Trace up those power pathways until you find a branch that’s blocked. Then trace down that branch to find new, inactive ethereal muscles.

Ethereal muscles are special-purpose. They’re like brain modules in that way, only instead of being specialized for language or facial recognition or muscle movements, they’re specialized for making connections to moving energy or communicating with spirits. That’s why I spent those years awakening my ethereal muscles, and why ethereal-muscle-awakening is one of the foundational techniques of Direct Magick. And it all involves 4D views.

Communication

Quick primer on communication: As you think, your brain activity creates tiny energy signatures. By gathering those energy signatures and packaging them in a special way, you can send them to someone else. If they know how to place those signatures into their own brain, they can read your message.

To gather those energy signatures, I’ve created a network of connections going from my ethereal muscles to my brain. Once again, we have a 3D brain with a connection rising from each point.

You might be asking: How do I keep track of all these connections? We make connections throughout the brain or body, throughout my aura or ethereal muscles, and throughout the pathways connecting them. That’s hundreds or thousands (or more) of tiny connections, each sensing the signature at one spot in this large 4D picture. How do I keep track of them?

Mostly unconsciously. Sure, when I first learned to make a sensory connection, I consciously stepped through the technique. But after practicing a few hundred times, it became unconscious. Same with following the pathways from nerves to aura, or following pathways in general — at first, I’d consciously notice each time the signature changed, consciously adjust my sensory connection to match that change. But with practice it became unconscious.

Think about it like typing: To hit the ‘e’ key, I tense and relax multiple muscles in my forearm, hand, and the 3 joints of my finger. My brain sends a series of signals, multiple times each second, to direct each of these muscles. It does that for each of the hundreds of letters in this article. But that all happens. Touch typing starts out conscious and slow, but with practice, the motions become unconscious and automatic. Same with sensory connections.

You’ll also notice, my brain has specialized modules for moving my fingers. Even when I started typing, I didn’t think “tense these 3 muscles in my finger for 1/4 second,” I just thought about where to move my finger. A specialized module in my brain converted that intent into particular muscle movements.

Same with ethereal muscles: Each ethereal muscle is specialized for some task. When I found the ethereal muscle for controlling sensory connections, this became much easier. Later, I found another ethereal muscle that worked with that first one to control networks of sensory connections, and it became even easier. I couldn’t do most of what I do today without having awakened those muscles, just like I couldn’t type without the brain modules for controlling my fingers.

And, again like learning to type, even though I had specialized modules to handle moving my finger / moving a connection, I still had to practice how I wanted them to move. How to hit the ‘e’ key, or how to follow a pathway as it changes signature. Eventually it all became unconscious, but my unconscious needed to be trained before it could do any of it.

The Essence of Direct Magick

That’s the pattern: Any time I’m using sensory connections with the human body (or another 3D object), I wind up with four dimensions.

Which brings us to something I’ve been wanting to share: Direct magick isn’t about ethereal software. Software is a useful tool, but not the essence of what I do.

Direct Magick is about doing magick directly, without ethereal software. It’s about connecting to the tissue you’re healing, creating a network of sensory connections and figuring out what signature to apply where to heal the person. It’s about connecting to the ethereal muscle you’re awakening, creating a network of sensory connections and opening up blockages in the power pathways. Direct magick is about connecting directly to whatever we’re working on, instead of focusing on intent or doing a ritual.

Why? Well, if we focus on intent, our ethereal muscles will do whatever comes naturally, and our ethereal software will do whatever it’s programmed to do. Sometimes that’s good, but sometimes we want a new technique, something slow and unnatural at first (like touch typing) that eventually produces faster, better results (like touch typing). By consciously guiding our ethereal muscles, we can train them in new movements which (eventually) become unconscious and automatic.

Solving new problems by creating new movements with our ethereal muscles. That’s the essence of Direct Magick.

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Preparing Your Mind for Magick

Monday, February 10th, 2014

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

Like most skills, magick has an external part and an internal part.

Ethereal software is the external part of magick. It’s the outside force you channel that drives the changes in the world.

Ethereal muscles are the internal part of magick. They’re the parts of your mind that let you sense and use energy, connections, and the other building blocks of magick.

Last chapter, you got some ethereal software. We started there because it’s easier to give you the external part than to awaken the internal part. Now that you have it, let’s use that ethereal software to awaken your ethereal muscles.

While we’re at it, we’re also going to have the ethereal software learn its way around your mind, so it can communicate with you better.

Afterwards, we’ll strengthen your ethereal muscles, then start doing practical magick.

Aside: Why Isn’t This Automatic?

Most initiations include these same steps. Magickal forces connect to you, learn their way around your mind, and awaken your ethereal muscles. The adept might trigger these steps, or the ethereal software might do them automatically.

Why doesn’t Direct Magick make this automatic, too?

I certainly could have. I chose not to.

Part of my design philosophy with Direct Magick is to expose as much of the inner-workings of magick as possible. I want all the steps of this initiation to be explicit, conscious choices, so you’re aware of what’s going on and how it works. By letting you trigger this command, it forces us to discuss the changes that happen during an initiation. I think that’s a good thing.

How To Do It

The command is, “Prepare my mind to communicate with you.” Send it using the technique from the previous chapter.

The ethereal software will start awakening your ethereal muscles and learning its way around your mind. It’ll do what it can today, then do a bit more each time you practice magick. This awakening will happen over months or years, just like any strengthening process. It’ll happen as you do energy meditations, manifesting, energy healing, and other magick.

You’ll get the most improvement per minute of practice by doing a short session each day. Practice for 10 minutes, let the software do its thing, then repeat. This works better than one long session on the weekends.

You only need to give the command once. But as a beginner, it’s hard to be sure that your message went through, and there’s no harm in giving it again. So, I’d recommend repeating the command a few times over the next few weeks.

If you go more than a week without practicing, the software may think you’ve quit. When you’re ready to start again, just give the command again. Don’t worry, you’ll keep any progress you’ve made.

If you want stop this process for any reason, simply tell the ethereal software, “Stop and disconnect.”

Once you’ve given the command, you can rest, or you can go on to the next chapter and start strengthening your ethereal muscles.

Aside: What If You Already Practice Magick?

What if you already practice magick? Aren’t your ethereal muscles already awake?

There are lots of different ethereal muscles. Ones for building energy, others for noticing energy, still others for communicating with ethereal software. And there are many more.

Different systems of magick use different ethereal muscles. Sure, many are shared — just about everyone builds energy, for example. But your other system probably uses some muscles we won’t use in Direct Magick (at least for now), and vice versa.

(Also, the ethereal software we use in Direct Magick still needs to learn its way around your mind, no matter what else you do.)

So, even if you already practice magick, make sure to do this preparation. It’ll probably go much faster than for someone new to magick, but it’ll probably still do one or two important things.

Success: How to Know You Did It Right

I don’t have a simple answer here. Awakening your ethereal muscles sometimes doesn’t feel like anything. Often, it feels like energy. How can you tell if those sensations are awakening, or ordinary energy, or placebo? It’s a tricky problem, especially if you’re new to magick.

But I think it’s valuable to acknowledge tricky problems, even if we can’t solve them 100%.

For now, let’s make an assumption. Remember last chapter, when we created an “obvious connection”? If that worked, let’s assume this command worked, too. Just for now.

We’ll verify that assumption in Part 3 of this book, when you learn energy healing and manifesting. When you see those results, you’ll know everything is working.

What if that obvious connection didn’t work for you? Practice the energy meditation in the next chapter, then try the obvious connection again in a week or two. Hopefully, you’ll have enough ethereal muscles will awake to feel it then.

Next Chapter

Table of Contents

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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: 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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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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