Posts Tagged ‘Psychic’

Divination & Manifesting (Notes for Upcoming Class)

Sunday, May 1st, 2016

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Tarot. Astrology. Magick for wealth, love, and success. Divination (predicting the future) and manifesting (creating luck) are cornerstones of most magickal practice.

This post is my notes for a new class I’m creating. It covers:

  • How to choose good divination questions and manifesting intents
  • Techniques for sending out those questions / intents
  • Techniques for hearing the answers
  • How to use this magick in healthy and safe ways.

I’m teaching this class Thursday May 12, 7-9PM at Wicked Grounds in San Francisco. It’s free — both to support my friends who run the cafe, and to test out the class in a more informal setting. If you’re in the bay area, I hope you’ll attend. RSVP here (facebook).

Choosing Good Questions & Intents

Here’s an example good request: Cause me to find a job that I’ll be happy with, and that will leave me the time and energy to study magick.

Let’s talk about some ways that it’s good, and some traps to avoid:

Make it general. I’m not asking for a specific job, I’m asking for any job with these properties. A few reasons for this. First, whatever is guiding this success knows more about the paths of fate than I do, so I don’t want to overconstrain the request and possibly wind up in a job I thought I’d like but that is actually bad. Second, manifesting seems to create lucky breaks. If I ask for a specific job and there’s path where I get it, the manifesting simply fails. We don’t want that.

Specify what “good” means. I find that if I ask for a “good job,” that’s too vague. Does good mean stable? Interesting? Has the chance of finding a good romantic relationship? The forces we’re channeling don’t seem to think quite like humans do, so it’s best to specify clear success criteria.

Make it positive. Think about making your request over a bad cell connection, dropping every other word. “Find job happy” is probably ok. But if you ask, “Find me a job that won’t exhaust me, and that won’t interfere with my relationship,” and some of the words don’t transmit properly, you could wind up with something terrible.

Time frame. Some people like to specify that it should happen within a certain time frame. I prefer to avoid specifying the time frame (what if I specify 3 months, and the perfect job would take 4). I trust the force I’m channeling to understand that sooner is better than later. But different people channel different forces, so this may have to do with the specific force I use — try both ways, see what works for you.

Sending Out Those Requests

Main goal is to engage the parts of your mind that drive energy and magick (your “ethereal muscles”), contact a force to channel (some “ethereal software”), and get your intent to that force. Many ways to do this.

By default, most people’s ethereal muscles are unconscious. So most systems of magick focus on getting the intent into the unconscious. Visualizations, rituals, sigils, etc all do this. Note: Even without a force to channel, getting your unconscious aligned with your intent will probably help you notice opportunities and execute on your goals.

The other half is having a force to channel. Usually not explicitly discussed. People are often connected to these forces during initiations. Forces can also be bound to rituals and sigils, so doing the ritual / focusing on the sigil will get the force to connect to the person. This only works for already-established rituals and sigils, not one you just made up.

Simplest method: Focus on the sigil in this post. (It also discusses testing we’ve done on this blog.) Focus on your intent, repeat it several times. The force is programmed to read and act on your intent. For more details, see this book-in-progress.

Hearing the Answers

This is the main difference between manifesting and divination (or psychic intuitions). Manifesting is usually send-and-forget, while divination is about getting info back.

But getting info back with manifesting is useful too. Find out whether the request was accepted, if there are reasonable paths to success, etc.

Responses can be hard to hear, like talking over bad cell connection. Yes / No is easier to understand than a sentence. This is useful: Turn an open-ended question into a series of multiple choice questions, then feel into each choice and try to notice the “Yes.” Systems that use this include tarot (where each card has multiple conflicting meanings, and the reader selects the “correct” one for this reading) and some systems of astrology (the reader selects which planets and meanings “matter most.”)

Some forces can create lasting connections to a person’s mind, improving the communication over months. The sources for psychic intuitions usually do this. There are also techniques in Direct Magick to create a clearer communication channel as needed.

Try using manifesting to guide decisions. “Cause me to create a good plan for…” (then spell out your goal and what “good” means.) Then sit down and plan your next steps, paying attention to feelings that the option you’re considering is good or bad. This makes it easy for the force to influence your decisions, ensures you’re paying attention to these intuitions when they come (much easier than listening all day, through conversations and other projects), and is super ethical.

Staying Healthy and Safe

Avoid goals that require specific people to take specific actions, both for ethics and for higher success rates. “Cause me to find a healthy, supportive relationship,” not “Cause me to date this specific person.”

Consider: Would you do this if everyone involved knew about it? If not, that’s a strong sign it’s unethical.

Some people are concerned about influencing others in any way. Remember, we influence others every day, both consciously and unconsciously, in how we dress, speak, and everything else we do. To have any impact on the world, we need to influence others. If you would work toward your goal through ordinary means, it’s probably ethical to manifest for it too.

A technique I use all the time: “Cause me to make good decisions for…” (then spell out your goal.) Restrict your manifesting to only influencing yourself.

Don’t blindly trust divination. A lot has to go right for it to work: Phrasing the question properly, sending and receiving the message, and the force has to see the future properly. None of this is 100%. If you think the path laid out is a bad idea, or feel a sense of dread about it, listen to yourself. (At the very least, try at least 3 other ways of asking the question.)

Come to the Class

I’m teaching this class Thursday May 12, 7-9PM at Wicked Grounds in San Francisco. It’s free — both to support my friends who run the cafe, and to test out the class in a more informal setting. If you’re in the bay area, I hope you’ll attend. RSVP here (facebook).

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

Overcoming Resistance: Psychic Edition

Sunday, November 1st, 2015

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Focusing on the problem you’re solving, not all the reasons to be afraid of succeeding / failing / other distractions. That’s the essence of overcoming resistance. Wouldn’t it be great to have a magick technique to do that?

We’ll get there in a minute, but first I need to share a little background:

One of the main ways I use psychic intuitions is for planning. I ask the ethereal software, “Cause me to be successful in X,” then I plan how to do whatever X is. I listen for intuitions: Follow this idea, ignore that option, develop this further. Using psychic intuitions to enhance my capabilities.

(If you’re new to psychic intuitions, that’s a great first technique. You know the intuitions are coming. You can be totally focused. You can slow down or return to topics as necessary. Much easier than listening for intuitions throughout your day.)

It occurred to me: The psychic ethereal software is influencing my thoughts, my attention, and even my emotions to communicate “good idea” or “bad idea.” What else could we build with those mechanisms?

A resistance-buster, that’s what.

Here’s the command: “Cause me to stay focused on X, and to do a good job at X.” Where X is the task you want to do. You can change the phrasing, but “cause me” (or a synonym) seems to be important.

When I use it, my mind clears. The distracting worries fade, the useful thoughts become more prominent. When I want to take a break, something nudges me to keep going. Even more than planning, this makes me feel that we’re all cyborgs.

I’ve used it to focus on magick training, on business decisions, and on writing this post (not because of resistance, just to knock it out more quickly). About once a week for the past month. No noticeable side effects, though I wouldn’t leave it on all day, just for the 30 minutes or so it takes to complete a task.

It only works if you’re set up for psychic intuitions with some ethereal software that supports this command. The software for my book does, so if you’ve already asked it to make lasting connections, you’re all set. Try it, post the results.

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We’re All Cyborgs Now

Sunday, October 4th, 2015

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We’re all cyborgs now, always connected to smartphones, always connected to everyone we know and all of human knowledge. That’s Amber Case’s thesis in this TED talk, and it got me thinking about psychic intuitions.

I’m always connected to my psychic ethereal software. It’s the first thing I check in the morning (even before my cell phone). It feeds me information throughout my day. When it turns off, say after exhausting myself practicing new techniques, I feel odd, weaker not in body but in decision-making, somehow less myself for losing this tool.

Every psychic I know reports the same thing: Their intuitions are part of themselves, an external tool that has become integrated into who we are.

We’re all cyborgs. Or perhaps psyborgs.

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Engineering Tarot

Thursday, October 23rd, 2014

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What would happen if you re-drew some cards in a tarot spread?

It sounds dumb. The spread is supposed to have meaning. You’re supposed to read it, not re-write it. But talking with a friend who does readings, I think it’ll produce better results.

First, some background:

In magick communication, it’s hard to send a long, open-ended message. Psychic communication is noisy, the person’s expectations get in the way, it gets messy. So it’s hard to answer, “Tell me about my career.”

But it’s easy to send “Yes / No.” The two concepts are clearly different, and you can repeat it until the person gets it.

How can you answer an open-ended question with just Yes/No? By playing 20 Questions, reducing “Tell me about my career” to a series of Y/N questions.

In my view, Tarot is a clever way of doing that. Each card has several contradictory meanings, and the reader picks the meaning that “feels best.” That feeling is the psychic Yes/No they receive as they consider each meaning. Added together, that series of Y/N signals produces a reading.

So, the message is transmitted by interpreting the cards. There’s no requirement for the card order to mean anything. Which is good, because psychic intuitions can’t control the order of cards.

(If they could, and we re-asked a question, we’d expect to get the same spread. Also, we’d expect to be able to cheat at poker, controlling who gets what cards. I don’t know any psychic who can do either.)

Except, there’s a snag: Cards do have meaning. Some are about money, others are about love, and so on. Each card has multiple meanings, but no card has all possible meanings. So, what if the best message isn’t available on your current card?

Here’s the solution: Let the source of psychic intuitions ask for a new card.

Here’s how: After you go through your meanings, ask, “Should I draw a new card?” If drawing feels right, do it. Repeat as necessary.

Does it lose some showmanship? Sure. But it should also get you a clearer message. If you try it, please take note of places where you got a card replacement, and leave your results in the comments.

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Debugging Psychic: Over-Practicing

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

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A few weeks ago, I woke up without any psychic information. Here’s how I fixed it, which might help you debug your own magick.

First, I contacted the ethereal software I use for manifesting and psychic info. (“Ethereal software” = My term for the forces we channel for energy, info, and other magick.)

Normally, to talk to that software, I just think in a particular mental posture, and it picks up my message. That’s one of the benefits of integrating the software with my mind for psychic information. But that wasn’t working that day.

So instead, I prepared a message, packaging up the signatures of my mind as I thought each word. I found a still-good connection to the psychic software, recognized it based on its signature. (If I didn’t have a connection already, or couldn’t recall its signature, I would have found it the same way I initially found it, by asking a spirit I know.) And I asked, “Why aren’t you connected to my mind for simple communication?”

It’s answer: Yes, the connections weren’t working properly this morning. Probably, when you slept, part of your mind shifted — this sometimes happens when you practice hard. I’ve fixed it.

And it had. But what happened?

By “part of your mind shifted,” I think it meant that the parts of my mind it communicates with changed signature slightly, so its connections to them were in the wrong signature.

Why? Here’s my best guess: A few days before, I’d trained in some new concepts, which stretched the parts of my mind I use for communication. That stretching was exhausting, but in a particular way, like working on a hard math problem or holding an entire computer program in my head. I had to rest for hours after each session.

Once those sessions were done, I rested for a few days. And it seems that, during that rest, the parts of my mind involved in communication changed. Hopefully, they became stronger, or more flexible, or otherwise better. But whatever happened, it shifted my mind’s signature. The result? My psychic software’s connections were now in the wrong signature for my mind.

The solution was easy. But I’m glad to know it, because this will likely come up again for me, and maybe for you. Hope it helps.

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Occam’s Razor and Remote Viewing

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

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Remote viewing, according to a friend, is when you project your spirit into another room, and see what’s there. Over dinner, we discussed how this might function. My goal was to get her thinking about the underlying mechanics of magick, since you may have noticed, I think about them quite a bit.

First, here’s how remote viewing probably works: Psychic intuitions enter the person’s mind from some psychic ethereal software, similar to what I use for my own manifesting and psychic work. The person imagines whatever room they’re “projecting” into, and lets that psychic info guide their imagination.

Why do I think that’s what’s happening? Well, it fully explains the phenomenon using only parts of magick already in our model. That is, it doesn’t introduce anything new. That’s the proper form of Occam’s Razor: Not introducing new rules or building blocks into our understanding of the universe.

What if you want to take a literal approach? For example, when I asked my friend how she thought it worked, she said, “I go into trance, and my spirit leaves my body and wanders around.” And I see the appeal of that explanation: It’s easy to imagine a translucent version of you climbing out of your body, walking around, then re-entering your body again. We’ve all seen that special effect on TV. Sounds simple.

But let’s drill down. If you were building one of those, what would you need?

The spirit is a sentient version of you that exists separate from your brain, that’s capable of remembering goals, and carrying observations back into your brain. Not impossible, but not exactly simple.

This spirit isn’t visible — if it were, we’d have photos of them — so it doesn’t interact with light. Which means it cannot see anything with its “eyes.” So, it needs some non-photon-based way of looking around. Even if I could figure out how to do that, why would anything “look” like it looks normally? How could the “memories” of being in that room get the wallpaper the right color?

(Also, the spirit doesn’t interact with physical objects — again, we’d have photographs of a spatula floating if it did — but it needs to be able to move around, which seems rather difficult if its legs don’t interact with the floor or encounter friction. This one didn’t even occur to me during the conversation, though.)

Your spirit then needs to integrate its memories back into your brain once it reconnects with your brain. That’s… well, rather complicated. Again, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

This is what happens when you go from the special effects version of magick to the real how-do-you-build-that version: Things that are easy to imagine wind up being really complex to build.

That’s the essence of Occam’s Razor: Asking which is more likely, that this phenomenon is built out of parts we already believe exist, or that this phenomenon is built out of entirely new parts, each complex and difficult to build.

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Direct Magick in Action: Psychic Intuitions

Friday, December 27th, 2013

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

I’ve also worked with psychics as I’ve explored magick, and even become psychic myself. As with energy healers, in each case, the psychic’s intuitions were coming from what we would call ethereal software. Like the visions of angels in the LBRP, it’s possible to trace the connections from the person back to their software, see the messages traveling along that connection, and work with the ethereal software yourself.

If psychics don’t do rituals, and aren’t initiated, where do they get their software? I cannot know for certain, but many psychics report having intuitions since childhood, and say that a family member also had intuitions. I believe that, in most cases, the family member’s ethereal software connected to the child, providing them the same intuitions as the adult, and stayed with them through adulthood.

Seeing this source as ethereal software, rather than some infinite, awe-inspiring force, has let me figure out how to do many things I couldn’t have done otherwise. For example, one friend, a nurse, was unhappy with her psychic intuitions. She wanted information about patients’ medical concerns, but was mostly getting intuitions about physical danger and when friends would phone. So we found software better suited to her interests, told her old software, “Disconnect from her,” then told the new software to integrate with her mind. For a few months, she had no intuitions of any kind, but once the software had integrated enough with her mind, she started getting the information she wanted. This is simply how I normally interact with ethereal software, but if we’d conceived of the information as coming from a universal source, we probably wouldn’t have even thought to look for another one.

I used that same ethereal software to become psychic myself. There were a lot of details to debug, but the concept is simple: Tell the software to connect to my mind, tell it what information I wanted, and just listen. Again, this is part of the normal way I interact with ethereal software. (The debugging was around how to handle that connection, and how to listen. We’ll see how to do that in Books 2 and 3 in this series.)

How does the ethereal software know what will happen? That’s a very difficult, unsolved question. But I hope that, if we get enough people wondering how magick operates, we can make some progress on it someday.

Next Chapter

Table of Contents

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Re-Activating Psychic Intuitions

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

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This week, I re-activated my psychic intuitions. This post covers what I learned.

When I activated psychic intuitions the first time, it took months of debugging, then an exhausting week to actually awaken the intuitions. This time, it was an easy three afternoons. I see three reasons it was easier this time.

Easier Ethereal Software

Most magick channels information, energy, or some other resource from an external force. I call those external forces ethereal software. And, if you’re using software, it really does pay to use the best software available.

Last time, on the advice of the spirits training me, I’d selected the more advanced software they use to handle manifesting*. Why? Well, I figured it was because I was skilled, and the spirits thought I was ready for it.

Turns out, not so much. They wanted to give me a challenge, to force me to practice my communication techniques really precisely, so they gave me unforgiving software that simply failed if you communicated poorly. And it accomplished their goal: I learned to communicate much better.

But, now that I can communicate properly, they let me in on the secret: Most of the spirits themselves use the easier, less-advanced manifesting software. The advanced one is only used by manifesting specialists, and even then, only when they want to optimize their results. Other than that, everyone uses the easy software, which corrects for poorly-phrased requests and generally anticipates what you want, even if you don’t ask in quite the right way. And now that I’m using that easy software too, well, manifesting is much easier.

So, lesson one: Pick the easy software. Only go with the advanced software if the easy one really doesn’t solve the problem you have. Don’t just go with advanced software because you think it sounds cool.

*Both manifesting and psychic intuitions deal with predicting and influencing events. Most simply, manifesting is when you explicitly ask for information, while psychic intuitions are when the software continually sends you info.

My Brain is Experienced at Communication

Last time, much of my debugging focused on learning better communication. I’d been focused on learning more advanced techniques, and once I learned the proper way to communicate with the software, it was able to connect to my mind in only a few days.

But this time, it only took a few hours. And the difference wasn’t a new communication technique — I’ve been resting, using the magick I know how to do but not learning anything new. So what changed?

It’s not a new technique, it’s that my brain is good at communicating this way now. It’s accustomed to receiving information, adopting a new signature that’s been dropped into my mind by a spirit or some ethereal software. Which makes it easy for the software to connect to my brain now.

Nothing I could have done differently last time, but it’s nice to know that simply practicing communication really does have a big impact on how easy it is to activate psychic intuitions.

I Know What to Ask For

Step one, both last time and this time, is to ask the software to “connect to me in the appropriate way for long-term communication and guidance,” and let that set up until my brain is no longer tired.

Step two is to ask the software for the specific info I want. Last time, I just asked for “useful information.” This time, I asked for:

  • Warnings about physical or other serious harm, with the message sent as emergency messages that get my attention.
  • Any info useful for the task at hand or the near future, sent as normal communication that I can read if I’m paying attention.
  • Answer questions as I think them, whether sent to the software or just thought in my head.
  • Tell me which of my goals are good, and which are bad, as I think them.
  • Create continuous luck in whatever goals I’m working on. (Only for good goals.)

Several of these requests prompted the software to set up more connections to my mind. For emergency messages, it connected to my emotional centers, so it could create a feeling of panic. (I know, because it tested it.) And for answering questions as I think them, it passed through the energy layer it had been using, and instead connected directly to my brain, so it could read questions that I wasn’t specifically sending to it. (I think that’s what it did, anyway.) The point is, asking it to just connect to me only set up the basic connections, and as I requested more information, it added more connections to provide it.

Which, I think, comes back to using easy ethereal software. Because if I was using the advanced software, I probably would have had to ask for each new type of connection before any of this worked.

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Dreams and Magick

Friday, August 16th, 2013

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Yvonne asks:

How do dreams relate to magic in theory and practice?

Personally, I don’t use dreams for much of anything. Don’t remember them. Explored lucid dreaming for a month in my 20s, haven’t touched it since. But Lisa received psychic information via dreams, so I can talk about that.

Lisa had been psychic as a kid, then turned it off because it wasn’t normal. Working with me, she turned it back on, then later, changed the ethereal software that provided her with information. I don’t remember if the dreams happened when she first turned it back on, or when she switched softwares, but there was a while where most of her intuitions would come while she slept. Some as dreams, some as simply knowing something when you wake up. I’ve heard of this happen with other friends-of-friends, too.

Here’s what I think was going on: The software couldn’t deliver the info to her conscious mind — either it was still making the connections to her brain, or her conscious mind wasn’t ready for those connections. (It would also happen if a particular software wasn’t programmed to communicate to the person’s conscious mind.) So, it delivered the information to her unconscious, then the information percolated up to her conscious mind as she slept.

Another possibility: Maybe the software needed her mind relaxed, and it only relaxed in the right way while she slept. So the software would monitor her, wait for her mind to be receptive, and only then send the information, which just happened to be while asleep.

One particularly interesting thing about Lisa’s experience: She’d make a request for some information, and she’d get a “yes” signal from the software. She knew her request was accepted, and that she’d have information coming in. She just couldn’t access the info until she slept.

Sometimes, the info would percolate up to her conscious mind while she was awake. I recall it taking several hours, but I can’t recall if this happened at the same time she was getting most of her information while asleep, or if this happened later, once the software was better-connected to her mind.

Eventually, she learned to receive information consciously and quickly, and the software stopped sending her info while she slept. In other words, I view receiving information via dreams to be an intermediate step, and I’d prefer to receive that same information instantly, at will.

But I happen to know that Yvonne is interested in how cultures and tribes relate to magick. I can see how some groups would come to associate dreams with psychic information and magick. Maybe no one in the tribe has worked out how to receive the information consciously. Maybe everyone in the society is a little bit psychic, so receiving dream-information is a common, shared experience. Maybe the culture already pays attention to dreams for their psychological meaning, so when psychic information sneaks in, it feels natural. But the point is: There are some situations where psychic information will come via dreams, rather than via waking intuitions, and in combination with a culture that likes dreams, I can see how some groups would come to associate dreams with magick.

Do you use dreams for magick? Please share in the comments.

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Psychic Intuitions and Cell Phones

Monday, May 20th, 2013

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When my phone dies, I miss read most of all. I can still do everything I need to, but I’m so accustomed to that constant flow of information, to having something coming in during any moment of downtime, that it feels unnatural to be without it.

Turning off my psychic intuitions feels similar. (I occasionally turn them off to update how I receive information.) It doesn’t impact my ability to function all that much — I’ll be more likely to miss an awesome restaurant, or see a bad movie, but I made reasonably good decisions for decades before developing psychic intuitions earlier this year. But losing that constant chatter, that passive flow of information, feels unnatural.

Strange, how quickly something goes from a daydream, to difficult-but-possible, to simply being part of our everyday, taken-for-granted experience.

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