Sundry practical exercises

Rituals, spells, prayer, meditation and magical acts.
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Nebenkheperu
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Sundry practical exercises

Post by Nebenkheperu »

For no specific reason (other than perhaps Lovingness - and isn't that all the motivation one needs?), I thought that I would start this thread by listing some practical, mostly daily (as opposed to being part of some more limited/aspected curriculum) exercises for the general occultist. I think these will potentially benefit the beginner (and adept?) alike, but especially the newbie i.e. someone who has recently started a lifestyle of contemplation, meditation, philosophical pondering and the like, especially if this new way of living is in stark contrast to one's earlier occult practices and thinking. I'm pointing my finger at the Moon of the more traditional Western ritual magic forms here, such as GD/Thelema/wossname, in variance to the more Theosophical way of approaching existence/cosmology/cosmogony etc.

In any case, my intention here is to list some simple somatic i.e. physical practices to counter-balance the more purely spiritual/intellectual ones, lest the aspirant fall victim to the infamous "Space Cadet Syndrome" and thereby cause much harm to herself & to innocent bystanders - this danger looms probably especially large for the solitary truth-seeker; could be a sudden imbalance. Anyway, the motto here being: "remember thy body!".

These I have nicked from LHP (and other) esoteric literature, but IMO the practices themselves are system-neutral and not even violently removed from any importantly specific contexts.
To recap: in my personal estimation, I consider the following to be of likely benefit to everyone, regardless of "magical current", school of thought or whatever pigeonholes one chooses to employ. I could probably unfold the individual exercises further and provide their sources, should someone request it.

But enough caveats, here we go, starting with Gurdjieffian/Fourth Way methods:

-every time you eat, concentrate and retain your conscious attention in your hands - how they physically feel.
-each time you read a book or e.g. watch a worthwhile intelligent video documentary - concentrate your mind into the feelings of your face. That focusing shall aid your learning/understanding of the subject matter.
-every time you pass a doorway, for a second or two focus your attention on the sensation of how your entire body feels. This helps you remember that you have an actual body/are incarnated; a "reality check" if you will.

Now onto more LHP ones:
-'Behind The Eyes': when you want the "focus of your consciousness" to be in your physical body, feel how the 'default ME/kāma manas' in most human beings seems to be located a few centimetres behind your physical eyes. So, slightly inside your skull/brain. This is a good technique to use when you are experiencing bodily pleasure. You are observing your body/the world from a point of earthly sensation and enhancing the same whilst focusing 'behind your eyes'.
-'The Crown': Use this when you want to distance yourself from your bodily sensations. Focus your attention on the crown cakra/κύκλος/"kehrä"/Kether & to drive home the point of you being a spiritual entity encased/imprisoned(?) in biological matter. The logic behind this is: you cannot truly know what you are in the mundane sense...only what you are NOT. As in "the eye cannot see itself", "the tooth cannot bite itself"...so anything you can feel or comprehend IS NOT YOU. Have pain in e.g. your left leg? Then it is NOT YOU. Feel an urge to (ab)use alcohol or some drug? Then it is NOT YOU. Feel depressed, sad, anxious? Then it's NOT YOU.
Keeping the focus of your consciousness in this "crown chakra" area of 'observing existence' can free you of all these urges, lessen pain and more besides...and, to boot, feel the gift of "The Master" aka the Black Sun and by extension the Black Flame.

Then for more playful (yet also hopefully profound) techniques:
-'Walking The World': When you go out for a walk or just move around indoors, visualise/imagine this: you are the central pole of the whole world/cosmos. Everything quite literally revolves around you - because you yourself are immovable; primum immobile (bad Latin, I know). So for instance, when you go out and walk somewhere, it is NOT you who moves. It is the world that moves. The motion of your legs/feet rotate the whole planet around you and in relation to you. In this way you are the world-pillar, the Irminsul, the Sampo, the World-Tree of various mythologies, the Axis Mundi, the Absolute (in a sense) etc...I think that this is the ultimate "centering/earthing" exercise - at the very least it feels vastly amusing.
-'Scaring The Kid': For a minute or few, observe your face in a mirror in dimly-lit conditions. The toilet mirror or a handheld one function equally well here. This actually serves as a double exercise: for the first one to three minutes as a tratak meditation, where you position yourself in relation (in terms of distance) to your reflection in a fashion which allows you to look yourself in the eyes, or to the spot between your eyes. With an empty mind...just stare without blinking. Soon you shall experience all kinds of optical distortions, which can be quite entertaining in themselves, yet beside the point of this practice. The second & more important phase is to maintain eye contact with your reflection, and start growling like a bear, lion or another such beast. Let yourself go...make all kinds of animal noises. The idea is to "scare" away your mundane self, the "social parasite" or the lowermost kāma manasic aspects. It's also hard (at least for me) to do this without laughing. But if/when you manage to perform this training, much will be revealed to you.
And should someone in your vicinity ask "what are you doing there?", you could either answer with a white lie e.g. "I'm contacting my animal guide", or more honestly (since lying should always be a no-no!): "Frater Lievo told me to do this". There! Truthfulness is its own reward.

But the above are my own recommendations for (mostly) daily practices; I would fain hear your own...to the benefit of everyone ogling this forum.
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Smaragd
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Re: Sundry practical exercises

Post by Smaragd »

Lievo wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:55 pm -each time you read a book or e.g. watch a worthwhile intelligent video documentary - concentrate your mind into the feelings of your face. That focusing shall aid your learning/understanding of the subject matter.
This sounds particularly interesting to me who has trouble reading alot of information at one sitting. I wonder if it could ease the mind to digest the information faster.


I have one helpful practice which I have come up with. It is for a quite specific problem so I hesitate to share it, but if it could help others with similar temperaments I think it is worth sharing. Rosary of Azazel could be seen as one possible preliminary practice for it as well as daily use of Prayer of Azazel. One should not deliberately seek a physical sensation in Anahata, but once it comes to you by itself, for example, through the invocation of Azazel, and/or through the beads of the rosary, you know how to reach it.

Now, the temperamental problem which this practice is aimed for is neurotic problem solving continuing even when solving the problem is not allowed to actualize for reasons you are individually not able to change. Such neuroticism can burn the nerves in a violent way and lead to harmful outcomes.

Focus on the perspective of the other party which prevents the problem solving and merge it with the physical activation of the anahata. This must not be taken as energetical onanism, but as a tool by which you understand deeply the (human) condition which prevents the other party to go in to the problem solving with which your own energy reserves are brimming with. Empathetic understanding should then actualize in your mind, and the reached buddhi should calm your physical nerves to find another time to solve the torturing puzzle.

I am not sure if this kind of physical connection through the heart center should be only used as an emergency option, and aim to strive for understanding with less physical methods in other cases. For example, in the Book of Paths (a English translation of which have been rumoured to circle in lodge Salome) there are the practices of Master's Providence and Sacrifice to the Central Fire (my own hasty translations) coming really close to this practice, and both of them have their expressed problems when used in improper settings. When it is too early to temporarily give up the charge you carry with your being? At which point such practices promote less understanding and more ignorant "love" of life without difficult questions? When does such pracices build more discretion between rhythms of your own and the others, between patience and forward-going Martian posture etc.? Such questions are crucial to be literally answered in order to avoid the forementioned onanism of the etheric centers in the body.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Nebenkheperu
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Re: Sundry practical exercises

Post by Nebenkheperu »

Quite so. I will add another technique of a much more banal character, yet hopefully somewhat effective:

-ECI (Erotic Crystallisation Inertia): this is originally(?) Anton LaVey's idea, although probably not, since he was such a compulsive liar. But nonetheless this concept has been verified by clinical psychology studies in the past 20 years or so. Studies conducted in Europe for the most part, in nursing homes as well as in controlled (double-blind) tests, I gather. Proved to be useful in e.g. treating Alzheimer patients and the senile.
The idea in a nutshell is this: a human individual, when subjected to the music or other pop culture of his/her "sexual awakening" years, will benefit both physically and psychically from the same in his/her later years also. So, health boosts.

To put this very clearly in the format of instructions:
1) Make a playlist of the music you listened to between ages 13-25; on Spotify or suchlike.
2) Play it as background music during your daily chores, every day. The aim is a subconscious effect.
3) Rinse and repeat, especially if you experience benefits thereof. DO IT.
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Polyhymnia
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Re: Sundry practical exercises

Post by Polyhymnia »

Uh, this thread is awesome.

Thanks for so many practical suggestions! I am particularly interested to try out the practices that involve the physical senses. I have nerve damage and brain lesions that make the physical sensations in my body disjointed. I'll start with the ECI and get back to you with the results.
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
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Smaragd
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Re: Sundry practical exercises

Post by Smaragd »

I've had trouble falling asleep since I was a child, mostly because of not knowing how to calm the over active mind. It is my hypothesis that this is also the same reason why the usual meditation methods, especially pranayama, doesn't work well for me. They are way too luke warm methods to calm the beast of my mind, and if one would tell me to have patience and keep at it until it works, it would mean quite violent use of will power. Now, I happened on a US army method for falling asleep in stressfull environments, which answers the question of how to get rest in a physical battlefield where your life might depend on getting some sleep despite the surrounding death and danger. Such techniques tend to sound too promising, but for about a month now I have fallen asleep exceptionally well which has also affected my whole way of sleeping. This means that my sleeping pattern doesn't seem to be so heavily leaning towards the last hours, as if stressing for the alarm clock to go off (a shock my younger self had really hard time to deal with) and trying to sleep over it. Now my sleep seems more balanced throughout the night, but this is ofcourse only my subjective reading of my awake time feelings and relationship to sleep.

The technique:
When breathing out, count numbers* from 1 to a number you manage to get.
Some people count to 4, 8 or doesn't even get to 2.⸸ Repeat this during every exhale until you find it is morning and you don't remember when you fell asleep.

My commentary on it:
* Counting sheep is completely different. Visualizing the sheep can activate the mind of some individuals in a way that anchors the conscious mind to a focal point keeping the mind awake and focused, where as the whole idea of sleeping could be seen as detaching from such a focal point and spreading on to the circumference of the Mother's womb and the dream images swimming there.
⸸ I've personally found that the rhythm of counting is important. I barely get from 1 to 2, because the lulling slowness is kind of a self-hypnosis which I take is the way this works. My count on 2 comes at the very end of exhaling. For this to work one might have to be somewhat at ease with their neurotic focus, meaning they can let the breathing happen at its own pace even when observing it with counting. In other words there might have to be a kind of focal separation between the breathing and the focus of the rhythm, meaning your breath blurs in to the background and you focus on the lulling rhythm of your counting.¶ In such separation (learning to be at ease with the natural rhythm of your breath) I personally find the lulling starts to take effect.

Do you think (self-)hypnosis, if this can be counted as such, is something an occultist should avoid, or is falling asleep always a form of self-hypnosis, luring the observer to the world of the unconscious?

An interesting notion in this regard is that I've observed my dreams might have been altered by the technique. There is somewhat less dry every-day imagery as if the conscious ego has a bit looser grip on the astral, while the phantasms of the unconscious have gained more area to operate on. I believe such a thing can be both negative and positive depending on the individuals balance between the two. For me it has been enjoyable, although I must keep myself on check during day time in order to not let this newfound love for the unconscious to lure me to blindness and ignorance towards the possible negative effects of my deeds.

¶ It might not be helpful to attach any unnecessary imagery to this, but it is esoterically and symbolically interesting to think of your breathing as someone who is lowering you down to a deep well, the rhythm is the rope connecting you to the one who lowers you, but as you get deeper you start to loose the sight of the person lowering you. Rhythm can be also seen an element of the feminine and the unconscious where you are heading towards when falling asleep.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Polyhymnia
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Re: Sundry practical exercises

Post by Polyhymnia »

I'm going to try this. I hope it will prove useful during stressful exam and essay times when I can't even escape stress in my dreams. I typically don't ever give myself enough time to prioritize that liminal space between consciousness and unconsciousness, which is where it seems that type of deliberate self-hypnosis you speak of would occur. I think making an effort within those moments is a very magical act, fitting for an occultist. I am usually so busy trying to fit so much in my day that sleep is simply a bridge to another productive day -- which, in my opinion, is antithetical to the wholeness one strives for when piecing together the mundane with the sacred.

I wanted to update my attempt at ECI. I tried it for a week before I couldn't continue. For the first few days, it was really interesting trying to just keep it in the background as environmental noise. I went by age, so I started the first day with music from when I was 12, the second day - 13, the third -14, and so on and so forth. I tried to include not only music I actively listened to, but music that would have been heard in stores, on the radio, at my friends' houses, etc. Interestingly, I found a bunch of negative emotions awaiting me. Embarrassment, shame. It seems the years of my sexual awakening came with alot of angst, naturally, but the angst drowned out any positives. An interesting effect was I ended up craving and seeking out the music from my childhood instead, old hymns and classical pieces. I am going to give it another go after my brain has exhausted the need for childhood comforts.
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
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