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 12 Jun 2004 @ 18:17, by ming. Systems Thinking
There are several kinds of magic. There's of course what a stage magician does to fool the audience into partially believing he's doing something impossible, and entertaining them in the process. Then there's the magic of wonderous moments, where the universe moves and reveals its mysteries in surprising and wonderful ways. Communing with nature, experiencing an artistic performance, or being part of a synchronistic event where things just come together in the exactly right, but completely unexpected way.
And then there's the deliberate practice of Magick, usually spelled with a 'k' at the end. It is something that is widely misunderstood, and very often shrouded in or lost in a lot of mysterious mumbo-jumbo symbolism that might or might not make sense to anybody. In the past that has been in part because masters of magick wanted to confuse and mislead the competition, or at least make sure that only the most dedicated and clever students would do the necessary work to figure out what it is. As its practice requires significant dedication and focused work. Many principles of the universe are involved, but mostly it adds up to something that is largely a discipline of the mind. One could say that it is:To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is from Aleister Crowley. He managed, more than just about anyone, to explain magick in clear language and reveal most of its secrets. Strangely, he also became a very misunderstood and hated man. Maybe not so strange - a lot of people felt threatened by what he had to teach and what he stood for, and he didn't hesitate in being as provocative as he could when he had a chance.
Many of the things to understand are in rather paradoxical forms. Thus the above aim goes hand in hand with the aim:To stop the mind altogether. Which is what meditation or yoga or many other practices are about. It is quite logical, really. Most people's minds are full of a lot of uncontrolled, undisciplined junk, running on automatic. To focus in any effective manner on anything, one needs to be able to stop the flurry of random data. The better, the more completely one can do that, the more well poised one is for subsequent acts of great clarity and focus.
One of Crowley's basic tenets, which, again, is largely misunderstood and misquoted is:Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will. Unscrupulous people usually quote just the first line, and misinterpret it to give a license to do whatever the hell one wants, no matter it does to anybody else. And, well, there are unfortunately too many people who live by such a principle. That's not what's meant here. The Will referred to is closer to what some people would call "Divine Will". But not in the fundamentalist understanding where, again, it is an excuse for doing things there is no excuse for. Rather, the most integruous and constructive thing is the thing to do. The most honest and authentic thing to do. The most loving. Not a human whim, but a connection with the universal mind. In a state of freedom. Hard to explain in words, as one has misunderstood it the moment one just takes the words literally. Anyway, here are some more excerpted basics on magick from Crowley, The Beast, 666 himself: Definition: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
Postulate: ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
Theorems:
Every intentional act is a Magical Act.
Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.
The first requisite for causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the condition.
The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces.
"Every man and every woman is a star." That is to say, every human being is intrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character and proper motion.
Every man and every woman has a course, depending partly on the self, and partly on the environment which is natural and necessary for each. Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly.
A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently.
A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.
Nature is a continuous phenomenon, though we do not know in all cases how things are connected.
Science enables us to take advantage of the continuity of Nature by the empirical application of certain principles whose interplay involves different orders of idea, connected with each other in a way beyond our present comprehension.
Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers. Even his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the past. and every step in his progress extends his empire. There is, therefore, no reason to assign theoretical limits§ to what he may be, or to what he may do.
Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him.
Man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted.
Now, that is pretty down-to-earth, really. To make anything happen that you'd like to happen, you need to get certain forces into motion. And if what you're trying to make happen isn't in harmony with who you are and where you are, or with the universe for that matter, it won't work very well.
If you want pure water to drink, you'll dig a well in a place where there is underground water; you'll prevent it from leaking away; and you'll arrange to take advantage of water's accordance with the laws of hydrostatics to fill it. That's an example of magick. Decide to do something, and do what's necessary to make it happen. You could also go buy a bottle of water in 7-11 if there's one close by. But you can't do that if there's no 7-11, just as you can't dig a well if there's no underground water. Duh. There's a right place and time for many things, and in other settings they might not be right. Magick is when you're able to be in tune with that rightness, so you can make the right thing happen with the right tools at the right time.
That doesn't have to have anything with voodoo to do. If mostly doesn't. If you want to bake a cake, you get the ingredients and put them together the right way. You don't just sit down and do affirmations and prayers about cakes. You don't try to bake it on the freeway either. You do it in a kitchen.
If your calling is to be a carpenter, it might not work to try to be rock star. But if you really got a rock star in you, that's probably what you should do, even if everybody thinks you're a carpenter. And if you do it, you should really do it, not just half-heartedly.
Of course you'll notice that most people in the world are spending most of their time doing things that aren't really right for them, and which aren't working well, and they don't use the right tools. And it isn't what they really want.
So, obviously, there's a great need for ways to help people get clear on what they actually want and what is right for them, and able to stay on the same course for long enough to actually get there.
And there's a need for getting effective tools into people's hands and enabling them to use them. Nowadays, of course, information technology is part of the tools available. If you want to reach many people and make big things happen, you'd probably be shooting yourself in the foot if you don't use the Internet to the hilt.
Big things can be made to happen with small means, if it all gets lined up right, and the right tools are used, by the right people. That's magick. More >
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 12 Jun 2004 @ 00:00, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
That Peace
I could sit in a room quietly
Listening to the sighing of breezes passing by the window
Peace spilling over me like melted ice cream
Cool and soft and flowingly clinging to my skin More >
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 11 Jun 2004 @ 17:02, by scotty. Spirituality
Society trains us to avoid certain feelings.
Boys are taught that being a man means being tough (not wimpy), which translates as don't cry or show hurt.
Women are taught that showing anger means you're a bitch, so "be nice."
As a result, we feel fear or shame when feelings arise that we believe will be objectionable... a man feeling sensual for example !
We try to shape and mold an image that we hope will gain acceptance and love, rather than rejection or disdain
As we distance ourselves from our genuine feelings and wants, we betray what are actually the essential aspects of ourselves.
The result of all this is we become and remain more distant from others than ever before.
The refusal to show the tender and vulnerable parts of ourselves keeps us isolated, hidden, and alone.
By not embracing and exposing who we really are - our tenderness, our fears, our strengths, our limits - we end up becoming armored in our defenses.
We end up using anger to hide our fear and shame - or we withdraw into a world of silent judgments toward people, perhaps we even end up believing that we're superior.
Spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti made the profound observation that, "If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation."
Being ourselves really means being authentic. And authenticity demands that we connect with the ever-deeper layers of our felt-experience. The more we find the courage to become willing to uncover what's happening inthe depths of ourselves - the more we become less split inside.
We begin to heal the conflict between who we actually are and who we're trying to be.
As we let go of our self-image of who we think we should be, we discover -- finally -- the vibrant world of who we actually are.
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 11 Jun 2004 @ 00:46, by ashanti. Altered States
Note the image here is copyright to the artist Colin Atkins. (Click on the link to see more of his stunning art). Dreams and the Dreaming is a subject that seems to be emerging more and more frequently. Ming writes about it here. I was privileged to be inducted into the Aboriginal Dreamtime by a small community living out in the great red desert in Western Australia. Reality is much more fluid, flexible, and yes, you can fly. It is a place, more than anything. Magical, dream-fluid, it is very beautiful indeed. Some traditional Aborigines live in the Dreamtime both when they are asleep, and awake. Interestingly, this is very similar to the !Num state that the San (Bushmen) of the Kalahari reach. The San are Africa's First people, before the Africans arrived. The San and the Aborigines are amazingly similar in ability to physically survive in harsh desert conditions that would kill off softened modern humans in a few days. For them, dreaming is integrally related to survival - they need to access this state of being in order to survive.
Perhaps that is what is starting to happen in the world now. More people are remembering their dreams, noting that they often go to the same places, have lucid dreams, and more and more is being exposed, layer upon layer lifting out old evils that have always been, but remained hidden. The layers of illusion are shifting, and a return to a more fluid reality - not so rigid and solidified - seems to be on the cards. With this more fluid state, less can be hidden - and that is perhaps why the denser, more rigid forces attempt to try and exterminate the Dreaming. But the Dreaming can never be exterminated. It is a deeper level of Being that is eternal, and well beyond the reach of the dense. More >
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 10 Jun 2004 @ 21:09, by ida. Visual Arts, Graphics
More >
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 10 Jun 2004 @ 09:58, by scotty. Spirituality
It's occured to me that quite a lot of people see the spiritual path as a search for the light.
For me however I'm begining to really understand that 'spirituality' asks us to bring light and darkness
together in wholeness.
I'm beging to understand better what it means to live in a wolrd of duality - I'm learning that the effort to focus all
my attention on the light is only increasing the power of the darkness in me.
It's becoming more obvious to me that I'd be better off not trying to deny or reject anything - but to embrace it all-
'cos this means I no longer have to choose one experience over another - nor do I have to choose between love OR hate - blame OR forgiveness - sadness OR joy - anger OR openheartedness.
I don't have to stay stuck in my little 'feeling boxes' - and this means that I can have access to the full range of human experiences that it's possible to have in this life !
I can let go of the past and stop being held back by it !
I can stop putting up walls of defence and simply be myself!
I can maybe even learn to love you, for simply being yourself !
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 10 Jun 2004 @ 09:01, by ming. Altered States
More people seem to be writing about dreams they've had recently. And I've noticed myself that I'm suddenly dreaming a lot again. Every morning when I wake up, I've just been in an intensive dream. If I lie down for a nap, I dream very quickly. The dreamworld is suddenly much closer. And I have signs again of the more lucid kind of dreaming. Like flying dreams. Over the years I've had many dreams where I can fly. And in that kind of dream it always works the same way. Not like superman, but more like my body is really light, and if I kind of jump a certain way, I can then glide along for quite some time, only hitting the ground rarely. And once I get into the hang of it, I can take off a bit further over the ground. Always having to watch out for wires and that kind of thing. It requies quite some concentration and there's a certain aprehension involved in it. It is more like being able to miss the ground by a tricky balancing act than it is any rocket-powered superhero thing. But very cool, nevertheless.
I used to work much more deliberately on dreaming. I was into astral projection, lucid dreaming, Monroe's out of body experiences, Castaneda, Seth on Personal Reality, and whatever else I could get hold of that helped me dream more consciously or travel more deliberately in alternative realities. And one can quickly take it further if one puts one's mind to it. The most simple thing to start with is to write down one's dreams immediately, so one can get used to remembering them and being conscious of them. One can very well wake up several times every night and do that.
Then there are tricks for becoming more lucid. Lucid dreaming is essentially when you wake up inside the dream, being aware that you're dreaming, without leaving the reality you're in, but able to navigate around in it and explore it. One approach is to remind oneself frequently to check whether one is dreaming, even while awake. Then one might also remember to do so while in a dream. And then there are tricks like Castaneda's approach of trying to find one's hands when inside the dream. Which isn't easy. But if you can consciously become aware of your hands, then you can probably go a step further and do something with them.
For several years I had a job that allowed me to sit down and meditate for a few minutes every hour. And when I came home from the job I took a nap every day. This allowed me to be much closer to the dreamworld in general. I started frequently dreaming while awake. I'd sit by the computer and the wall to my side would dissolve and turn into a corridor or something, which I could walk down and interesting things would happen.
Or I would start dreaming by deliberately visualizing some other place before falling asleep. Frequently it turns into a dream reality, and things would start happening by themselves. And I would thus both fall asleep and wake up dreaming.
I would find that in the more lucid types of dreams, there would be certain places I'd frequently come back to. Not always the same place, but I'd often be aware that the place where I was a couple of nights before is "right over there". And the reality was very consistent. There's this place which is quite a bit like the society in the movie Brazil. It is very overcrowded, and there's like wires and cables and pipes everywhere, and shoddy building codes. I had a house and an appartment there. I'd often be driving or walking around looking for a place to sleep, ironically. And even if I found my own house, there would often be somebody else sleeping in my bed already. Very hard to hold on to one's property there.
Oh, and the more astral projection types of dreams that I could pretty much step into at will, where there were a number of consistencies too. My favorite approach of getting around was this surfboard, which I could fly on, like the Silver Surfer. Very different flying than the previously mentioned jumping and not hitting the ground type. And there was this blue-skinned Egyptian goddess ladyfriend I had there, whom I'd run into in all sorts of places.
Robert Monroe's out-of-body techniques is another approach again. I went through his various hemi-sync tapes, which essentially does some synchronization thing with the brain, to make it easy to let the body fall asleep while one stays awake. That part worked ok, but I didn't have any great success in going interesting places that way. You first have to drag your energy body out of your physical body, which isn't that straightforward. I didn't manage much more than lifting an arm or a leg that way. When I did manage by other means to do out-of-body experiences, I'd tend to be bouncing around and hitting walls in the darkness, finding it very hard to navigate.
Anyway, I do happen to believe that the worlds we can visit in dreaming is much more than just some recooked memories from one's day, or some random chemistry in the brain. I've seen too much to believe that kind of stuff. Although, sure, normal unconscious dreams have something to do with that. But the more interesting kinds of dreaming is something quite different. Something real.
I usually have found that my waking time is of higher quality when I spend more time dreaming. Solutions tend to appear by themselves, and inspiration is always close. Sometimes the full text of something I need to write appears fully formed.
So, I'm trying to form the intention here to dream more consciously again. I think we need to access more dimensions to solve our problems in the world. The reason we get stuck in things is usually that we think too one- or two-dimensionally about it. More fluidity and wholistic awareness is needed. And imagination and the ability to jump between diverse worlds and world views. Live, complex experience. More >
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 9 Jun 2004 @ 17:46, by letecia. Communities
Saturday, June 19th 7:00PM (doors open at 6:30, lock at 7PM)
In the Dianic tradition, on Summer Solstice we celebrate Goddess as Mother/Maker and the diverse ways we create in our lives. Through movement, trance and ritual enactment, we will work the power of fire in its many aspects and applications: Fire as the power of the will, fire as a healing power. Because of the possible intensity during this ritual, younger children's participation will be limited to daughters 11 and older.
Place: Topanga Canyon (Indoors) Donation Requested: $13.00-$9.00 (sliding scale) No woman is turned away for lack of funds. *All proceeds help fund COA's community rituals and special events.
WHAT TO BRING: *A red or orange jar candle (all candles must be in a holder) *Healthy vegetarian food and/or drink to share (absolutely no alcohol please) *Plate, cup, utensils for the feast (In honor of our Earth Mother COA will not provide paper goods) *Wear comfortable festive clothing and supportive shoes (the floor at the community house is terrible for bare feet) Optional: Decorations for our communal altar, donations for BRIGID'S WELL RSVP: (323) 650-1605 ext. 3# by Thursday, June 17th, 2004. Please leave a message including your name, phone number and the number of women you plan to bring. Let us know if you or your guests are newcomers, and if you or your guests will be bringing girls under 17. Womyn born womyn only. Please do not call COA the weekend of the ritual, as we are extremely busy preparing and will not be able to process your call.
FOR NEWCOMERS: Newcomers are warmly welcomed! We want your experience to be optimal so we have created these guidelines in your interest. Women new to Goddess spirituality must be advised that the ritual is a participatory religious service and is not structured to be an introduction to the Goddess of to Feminist Witchcraft. The following books are suggested reading before attending a public ritual: The Spiral Dance by Starhawk , The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries by Z Budapest , Ariandne's Thread by Shekhinah Mountainwater, 'Invocation to Free Women' (audiocassette) by Ruth Barrett and Felicity Flowers. These are available at the COA Store or your local book store. If you are planning on bringing newcomers to the ritual, please be responsible to them and COA by preparing your guests in advance. Give your guests a general idea of what to expect so that they can participate in benefit of themselves and all women present.
RITUAL LOCATION: The Topanga Community House,Please RSVP before Thursday to COA, 323/650-1605 extension 3. Leave a message including your name, telephone number, and how many women you plan to bring. This is a participatory ritual is for serious seekers only. Once the circle is cast we cannot admit latecomers, so please arrive on time, Doors open at 6:30pm and will be locked at 7 pm. Carpool if possible.
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 9 Jun 2004 @ 17:38, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
Venus, Lady
Venus, lady of enchanting guile
Travel o’er the stars awhile
Dance in my heart whilst I sleep
Bring me back to slumbers deep
Take my soul to mysteries womb
Raise my lives from forgotten tomb
Let us stroll ‘long woodland trail
Part the mists and lift the veil
Reveal my truth for all to see
To rest my heart, set it free
© June 9, 2004 Marissa A Spencer More >
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 9 Jun 2004 @ 13:23, by quinty. Politics
Is there any truth in this? What this author says doesn't seem inconceivable to me. Now this is not intended to be a jab at the president, George Bush. Nor do I gloat in putting this article up. It is because this man is so powerful that if he hiccups tectonic plates shake. That his state of mind is too important to the world for us to merely pity him if the pressure, which he himself created, is causing him to crack up. If what this author says is true then this is serious stuff.
From Capitol Hill Blue More >
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