Saturday, September 30, 2006

Experiment: Measured Improv 1

Find a quiet space where you can sing and create other vocal noises. Set a metronome to 60 bpm and a timer for 5min. (If you don't have a metronome or a timer, you can get either one for about $15 each at a local music store.)
Improvise with your voice for a measure of 8 counts (eight beats of the metronome) then maintain silence for four counts. Try to sing a melody that is not known to you yet somehow resonates within you. (Don't worry about sounding good or even in tune. The ultimate purpose of this experiment is not to sound pretty.)
Maintain a theme (a continuing thread or story) from measure to measure. Keep track of the beats by nodding your head or tapping your fingers or your foot.
Continue this pattern until the timer sounds.
Take three deep breaths.
Wait until the next day before you try it again.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Start Somewhere

Everyday is a new opportunity to create, to move. Each moment of opportunity is unique.The opportunities you missed today won't present themselves again, they are as unique as the moment that gave birth to them.Taking small steps everyday is critical. If we don't, we will drown in the overabundance of opportunities having actualized nothing. Being too tired or too obsessed with perfection must not prevent us from creating.
The objective of creation is the actual work of creation, the product of it is just a dead memory of the living Real Moment of Work.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Experiment: From Above

Find a tall building or any other tall structure, one where you can look at people walking and interacting below. Set your timer to 6 minutes.
Pick one person in the crowd, someone who is walking, or talking, or exercising, etc.
Place your full attention on that one person.
Insert your attention so deeply into them that you start to perceive what they are seeing, what they smell, what they sense around them, their inner motivations for what they are doing, the tiniest movement of your muscles.
Don't even try to distinguish between what you "imagine" that they feel and see and what is real. Just feel it within you and continue to feel it and explore it until the timer sounds.
At that point, remove your attention decisively from that person, take 3 deep breaths and close your eyes.
You can repeat this experiment a maximum of 3 times during one session but no more.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Magickal work with others

The most critically necessary condition for conducting Magickal work with another person or group is a strong Being to Being connection. It is not enough for individuals to have charming , friendly personalities with good or even excellent compatibility. Real Magickal work happens through Being to Being contact. The importance of experiments related to this (such as contact tag) are fundamental. They surpass all more elaborate rituals in importance. A group or pair can dance around in robes spouting incantations until the holy cows come home and it will amount to nothing without this contact. Conversely those individuals who have established and maintained such a connection will, as a byproduct of this contact, find themselves in a magickally charged space, even without all the frills.
The writers of this text maintain that Magick can not be found in a book or through worthless re enactments of the actions of others. It is through experimentation and experience alone that we may touch the fabric of existence. There is much that is real that cannot be touched by words. There is much that is real that cannot even be processed by our finite human minds. Finally, there is much that we can be brush up against when we unchain all of our senses and reach into the world with more than the mind.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Reverse Data Digestion

Common waking consciousness suffers from bolemia.
Things don't make it into the system.
We wish to reverse the digestive process.
Data goes to the subconscious first,where it is broken down and distributed to the entire body of consciousness, finally making its way to waking consciousness.In this way, the data has taken roon in the fertile consciousness and flowers in the waking consciousness.
Data doesn't take root in the waking consciousness.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Experiment: The Errand

Run an errand such as shopping for groceries or going to the post office or bank. It should be something that you are accustomed to doing, a task that is routine.
This time while running the errand you will walk and move extra slowly. The pace should be excruciatingly slow. Be present with every step as if each footfall upon the earth were a kiss upon your true love's face. Move gently and deliberately and keep your attention on your every motion. Be relaxed and present as if you are enjoying every moment of the task to the point of eroticism and are in no hurry for it to end. Feel everything as if it were an electrifying first brush against a mysterious new love interest. The air you breath, the sun or lack of it on your skin, the teller, clerk, or post master, everything you encounter is an encounter with your beloved.
When the task is complete, resume life as usual. Don't try to keep it up.
after the decided upon task is complete, drop the experiment and move on with your day.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Gravity and Entropy

We (our apparent selves) are defined by our blocks. We are our blocks.
Blocking the radiation is natural. Almost all of the human culture is a flinching from these uncomfortable, painful radiation.
Entropy is the natural order. Undertaking the work of actively allowing these radiations to flow through us is contrary to the ordinary reflexive motion we are locked into. Birth itself is a result of an attempt to turn our backs on the radiations.

The entire course of biological life is a one way trip on the decay express with no stops on our way to electric death. In some circles we have observed this phenomena in one of its gradations and call it gravity.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Gravity

We may ascend to high states and stay for a while, but one thing is guaranteed; what goes up must come down.

Every trip to heaven comes with a return flight to hell.

Being present is easy when we are in a pleasant, less encumbered state. When we find ourselves as tense human beings it’s not so easy, but ever more important.

In the Magickal work eluded to in this text it is necessary to travel from state to state, high and low.

Imagine a building. On the bottom floor is the smallest. As you travel upward there is more and more room, you can relax, all of you fits, everything makes sense, everything is obviously connected. When you visit the bottom floor there’s less space, you’re cramped and irritable, and it’s hard to remember anything .

Friday, September 22, 2006

Creation and Death

In an infinite sea of possibility there is no absolute.

Death is lost.

Death is one and the same with birth in such an expanse.

Within the eternal refracting, reflecting, bouncing play of light, nothing is or isn't.

Everything contains its opposite.

Mountains and valleys, the sacred and the profane,all mingle in serpent soup.

Creation is separation.

Separation is Death.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Shapeshifting

Find a place where you can really relax.

Take a moment to breath the tension out of your body. Listen to the sounds around you, feel the space that you are occupying.

Begin to move in any way that you feel like moving. Don’t think about it. There are no correct or incorrect motions, there are no inappropriate or ugly movements. Let your body take over.

These movements are like snow flakes. They are unique and dissolve in the moment. What feels right in one moment is not going to fit the same way in the next.

Through these movements you are in an active relationship with a unique space/time coordinate. You can only connect to this living sea of energy by being present with your body.

Travelers of all time and space will come to recognize the importance of shape shifting.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Change of Presence

We are on our way to capture the Dragon, and we are told:

"The main reserve of the Dragon's strength is in his right leg."

What shall we do?

Shall we then attack the Dragon from all directions, but avoid coming close to the right leg?

Or shall we concentrate ALL OUR EFFORTS in securing the right leg.

If we trap the Dragon in a net but the right leg is left unsecured, the strength will be transferred and the Dragon will find a way to escape.

But if the right leg is secure, there will be no transference and the Dragon will be helpless.

The transference is known as the "Change of Presence".

When looking to capture the Dragon, disengage your attention from its outer manifestations and look for the source of strength.

If the source is not apparent, place your attention on one of the manifestations and follow the track of energy to the secret source.

Only attack when you have found the source and have a way of securing it.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Energy and Habit

With a heightened energy level, highs are higher and lows are lower.

Wherever we place our attention the energy will flow.
It can be easy to be carried away by moods, by thoughts that thrive within particular moods. A sad thought that would have been easily overcome under normal circumstances will become overwhelmingly tragic. An impulse that would have been just a passing desire may become an obsessive need.

Acquiring an ability to notice where we are placing our attention before we are swept away by our own nightmares fueled by our own surplus of energy is essential.

Seeing our thoughts and feelings as being only subjectively real and fleeting is useful, but it is more that "seeing" that will help us to move through our troubled inner landscapes unscathed.

It is habit that can carry us through, a practiced use of attention. If we are not actively using our attention, the energy will travel in the usual directions, into our habitual states. It is important to develop desirable, useful habits.

If we achieve a higher energetic state (through "spiritual" exercises, through artistic creation, through psychedelics, etc.) but don't develop new subtle habits, we are surely headed on a straight road to disaster. The first symptom (and only the first!) will be the loss of the higher energy state. The rest will fall like dominoes.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Path

Choosing a path does not mean selecting a direction.

In this world we mistakenly relate "spiritual paths" to the paths we are familiar with:

the roads, the highways, a way to get you somewhere fast.

A journey where you start from a place where you are and you arrive at a destination.

This is a misunderstanding.

A spiritual path is more like a garden path. It’s not designed to get you anywhere, it’s designed to give you work.

You will spend more time tending the path than walking it.
There is no end to the tending.

If you don’t work it will be overcome by weeds and there will be no path.

So a real path gets you nowhere.

It only gives you something real to do.