Magic Training in a Nutshell

Mediochre

Member
My training to develop magic is based on two core principles.

1: You are the sole authority of yourself

2: Reality is fluid and baseless, order is an illusion

This creates a fundamental contradiction. There is no reason for anything to be the way it is. However, there's also no reason for anything to change from the way it is. I.E inertia

So far in my training I've learned that mentality is the key to everything. Your perceptin of reality determines what you are willing to put effort towards and in what way. If you believe something is impossible or must be done a certain restrictive way, then that's how it is, because that's what you made it into.

Thus the goal is to understand the fluidity and irrationality of reality on a deep unconscious level to most efficiently interact with it. To never forget that there are no rules except that which you create. Thus logic is supplanted by desire, creating the first core principle above.

This also causes a contradiction, if all wills are infinitely powerful because of reality's fluidity, what happens if one directly opposes another? Best as I can tell there's two possibilities.

A: The equal and opposite infinite components cancel out, leaving a finite remainder that becomes reality for all involved.

B: Each person/thing shifts into its own unique timeline where they get their way. Thus stability is maintained by avoiding conflict.

Current reality as I experience it appears to operate solely on path A. Whatever has more power gets its way. It's also what known physics is based on. However there's no reason to believe Path B isn't also taken sometimes or simultaneously but I have no idea how I'd figure out when it happens.

It's also possible that Path B is always taken, with the difference being personal perceptions of reality making things appear more conflicted than they really are.

I believe perceptions of order in reality (The Laws of Physics) stems from the repeated loss of path A conflicts, creating the illusion of an immutable order that exists outside of you. Which lead to more losses, which reinforces the belief.

AKA Learned Helplessness.

Thus magic training is little more than being loyal to yourself while understanding reality. Or, Desire*Knowledge = Result

All my experimentation thus far has demonstrated for me, beyond any shadow of any reasonable doubt, that anything you can imagine is completely possible. It has also demonstrated that the only reason I am unable to perform such things right now right in font of me on demand are my own mental/emotional blocks. Which is also why I lack control, consistency and reliabiity in the few abilities I do posess. I admit that I'm getting pretty frustrated about it at this point. I'm in a limbo state where I can do everything I want to do but I also can't do it at all.

I've been working on fixing my mentality and removing the remaining fears that I have which has caused increasing friction and frustration with reality. It feels like a building pressure as my mind instinctually rejects what's going on in front of me and tries replacing it with something else to no avail. Which is a semi-irrational outcome, which deepens my understanding of how irrational reality is, which unlocks my mind a little more when I realize my own interference, which increases the pressure for change, which seems to be getting small, tangible results.

I figure at some point local reality will cave to this pressure and I'll start getting results on the level that I actually want. It certainly feels like that's what's starting to happen. The small results I'm getting seem to indicate tha as well. At which point I can do demonstration for others to help unlock their minds. Then I can maybe start training people depending where I'm at with my own skill.

I wrote all this down to help organize my thoughts on where I'm at and what I still need to work on. I don't know if it will help anyone but I hope it does. I don't know if any of this is 100% accurate.
 
My training to develop magic is based on two core principles.

1: You are the sole authority of yourself

2: Reality is fluid and baseless, order is an illusion

This creates a fundamental contradiction. There is no reason for anything to be the way it is. However, there's also no reason for anything to change from the way it is. I.E inertia

So far in my training I've learned that mentality is the key to everything. Your perceptin of reality determines what you are willing to put effort towards and in what way. If you believe something is impossible or must be done a certain restrictive way, then that's how it is, because that's what you made it into.

Thus the goal is to understand the fluidity and irrationality of reality on a deep unconscious level to most efficiently interact with it. To never forget that there are no rules except that which you create. Thus logic is supplanted by desire, creating the first core principle above.

This also causes a contradiction, if all wills are infinitely powerful because of reality's fluidity, what happens if one directly opposes another? Best as I can tell there's two possibilities.

A: The equal and opposite infinite components cancel out, leaving a finite remainder that becomes reality for all involved.

B: Each person/thing shifts into its own unique timeline where they get their way. Thus stability is maintained by avoiding conflict.

Current reality as I experience it appears to operate solely on path A. Whatever has more power gets its way. It's also what known physics is based on. However there's no reason to believe Path B isn't also taken sometimes or simultaneously but I have no idea how I'd figure out when it happens.

It's also possible that Path B is always taken, with the difference being personal perceptions of reality making things appear more conflicted than they really are.

I believe perceptions of order in reality (The Laws of Physics) stems from the repeated loss of path A conflicts, creating the illusion of an immutable order that exists outside of you. Which lead to more losses, which reinforces the belief.

AKA Learned Helplessness.

Thus magic training is little more than being loyal to yourself while understanding reality. Or, Desire*Knowledge = Result

All my experimentation thus far has demonstrated for me, beyond any shadow of any reasonable doubt, that anything you can imagine is completely possible. It has also demonstrated that the only reason I am unable to perform such things right now right in font of me on demand are my own mental/emotional blocks. Which is also why I lack control, consistency and reliabiity in the few abilities I do posess. I admit that I'm getting pretty frustrated about it at this point. I'm in a limbo state where I can do everything I want to do but I also can't do it at all.

I've been working on fixing my mentality and removing the remaining fears that I have which has caused increasing friction and frustration with reality. It feels like a building pressure as my mind instinctually rejects what's going on in front of me and tries replacing it with something else to no avail. Which is a semi-irrational outcome, which deepens my understanding of how irrational reality is, which unlocks my mind a little more when I realize my own interference, which increases the pressure for change, which seems to be getting small, tangible results.

I figure at some point local reality will cave to this pressure and I'll start getting results on the level that I actually want. It certainly feels like that's what's starting to happen. The small results I'm getting seem to indicate tha as well. At which point I can do demonstration for others to help unlock their minds. Then I can maybe start training people depending where I'm at with my own skill.

I wrote all this down to help organize my thoughts on where I'm at and what I still need to work on. I don't know if it will help anyone but I hope it does. I don't know if any of this is 100% accurate.

I mostly agree, but would add the nuance that order is not an illusion, but rather that order "floats" on nothing/chaos/abyss. Therefore, literally anything is possible. But as soon as the nothing becomes something, then order has come out of chaos and it is real - not an illusion.

Also, the statement that you are the "sole" authority depends on how you define yourself - where you choose to draw the boundaries around your identity. You could be responsible for things of which you are unaware (like a poltergeist for example). Part of bringing things under your control involves playing with your identity as well as integrating all aspects of your conscious and subconscious self.
 
I mostly agree, but would add the nuance that order is not an illusion, but rather that order "floats" on nothing/chaos/abyss. Therefore, literally anything is possible. But as soon as the nothing becomes something, then order has come out of chaos and it is real - not an illusion.

I don't define that as order, that's just the result of a conflict. Order in this case is top down order, laws of physics type of stuff that you are beholden to.

Also, the statement that you are the "sole" authority depends on how you define yourself - where you choose to draw the boundaries around your identity. You could be responsible for things of which you are unaware (like a poltergeist for example). Part of bringing things under your control involves playing with your identity as well as integrating all aspects of your conscious and subconscious self.


Authority in this case refers to ideas like obligations. If you are the sole authority of yourself you can't be obligated to care about anything that you don't care about for any reason. Everything you do is therefore your choice and yours alone. There is no way to blame anything else for your actions or thoughts.

Things that happen becauise of your actions without your knowledge have nothing to do with it. But would fall under the understanding reality category as realizing that if you do A then B happens as well.
 
If you believe something is impossible or must be done a certain restrictive way, then that's how it is, because that's what you made it into.
Aren't there some distinctions to be made here?
Nature has its own rules, for how "fluid" it may be... it does its own things regardless of our beliefs.

All my experimentation thus far has demonstrated for me, beyond any shadow of any reasonable doubt, that anything you can imagine is completely possible.
As a kid I imagined that I could give birth to a baby. Alas I am a male so I can't, though I can contribute in other ways :)
But I doubt that this limitation is due to mental blockages... would you agree? If so, that's what I meant by distinctions a few lines above.

Cheers
 
I don't define that as order, that's just the result of a conflict. Order in this case is top down order, laws of physics type of stuff that you are beholden to.

Physical laws are persistent patterns. I think order is pattern and pattern is where subjectivity and objectivity meet because all boundaries are subjective that form the pattern overlay through which reality is determined.

Authority in this case refers to ideas like obligations. If you are the sole authority of yourself you can't be obligated to care about anything that you don't care about for any reason. Everything you do is therefore your choice and yours alone. There is no way to blame anything else for your actions or thoughts.

Agreed
 
Aren't there some distinctions to be made here?
Nature has its own rules, for how "fluid" it may be... it does its own things regardless of our beliefs.

As a kid I imagined that I could give birth to a baby. Alas I am a male so I can't, though I can contribute in other ways :)
But I doubt that this limitation is due to mental blockages... would you agree? If so, that's what I meant by distinctions a few lines above.

Cheers

Well maybe not - if you read Dean Radin's book about extreme Yogics, a lot of physical laws seem to get well broken! There is also Michael Grosso's book on St. Joseph of Copertino.

Even the humblest example of PK, is conceptually in the same category.

Also, if for example Stapp's mechanism for the link between consciousness and the brain is right, it would be possible to break a lot of 'laws' if that mechanism can be directed more generally.

I don't think we don't know where the limits are to any of this stuff!

However, this should not be taken as an argument that this really does happen.

David
 
If the consistency of underlying patterns is dependent on a pool of observers agreeing over basic points, I can see them being biased and manipulated. Not sure that we would want that on a larger scale, though.
 
Well maybe not - if you read Dean Radin's book about extreme Yogics, a lot of physical laws seem to get well broken! There is also Michael Grosso's book on St. Joseph of Copertino.

Even the humblest example of PK, is conceptually in the same category.

Also, if for example Stapp's mechanism for the link between consciousness and the brain is right, it would be possible to break a lot of 'laws' if that mechanism can be directed more generally.

I don't think we don't know where the limits are to any of this stuff!

However, this should not be taken as an argument that this really does happen.

David

Agreed. As much as materialist dig in and insist there is an indisputable set order to the universe, the fact remains many of their colleagues are discovering otherwise. Quantum theory, in particular quantum entanglement and illumination demonstrate a fluidity that we never anticipated.

Our understanding of the universe is constantly evolving. It's not a matter of this is the way it is. Rather, it's a matter of our current understanding in this moment is…
 
Aren't there some distinctions to be made here?
Nature has its own rules, for how "fluid" it may be... it does its own things regardless of our beliefs.

As a kid I imagined that I could give birth to a baby. Alas I am a male so I can't, though I can contribute in other ways :)
But I doubt that this limitation is due to mental blockages... would you agree? If so, that's what I meant by distinctions a few lines above.

Cheers

But what holds these particular rules in place? That's the interesting question to me, why these laws seemingly don't change save for the odd occurrences of paranormal events.
 
But what holds these particular rules in place? That's the interesting question to me, why these laws seemingly don't change save for the odd occurrences of paranormal events.
What does it I don't know, I just don't see any connection between nature's laws and human beliefs.
(well, besides maybe cheap new age "philosophy")

If you're alluding to some kind of "fundamental consciousness" I follow you, and it might be the answer. At least it's less preposterous than most of the other options we've come up with :D Still, that doesn't grant any merit to the so called "law of attraction" idea, regardless what Greg Braden says :D

Cheers
 
What does it I don't know, I just don't see any connection between nature's laws and human beliefs.
(well, besides maybe cheap new age "philosophy")

If you're alluding to some kind of "fundamental consciousness" I follow you, and it might be the answer. At least it's less preposterous than most of the other options we've come up with :D Still, that doesn't grant any merit to the so called "law of attraction" idea, regardless what Greg Braden says :D

Cheers

Heh! :)

Thought actually I was thinking more of two possibilities which aren't mutually exclusive :

1. That there is a Prime Mover who keeps the regularities of the world going by influencing the final causes of all things' interaction. This usual regularity can be interrupted for the sake of "miracles".

2. That the regularity of laws is based on a consensus of all minds, or at the least the interaction/consensus of a few Minds.
 
Well maybe not - if you read Dean Radin's book about extreme Yogics, a lot of physical laws seem to get well broken! There is also Michael Grosso's book on St. Joseph of Copertino.

Even the humblest example of PK, is conceptually in the same category.

Also, if for example Stapp's mechanism for the link between consciousness and the brain is right, it would be possible to break a lot of 'laws' if that mechanism can be directed more generally.
Well, I don't disagree but the examples you have mentioned don't seem to have much to do with belief.
Did the meditators in Radin's interferometer experiment have to change their beliefs about photons to cause an effect? Nope

Yogis... I don't think their spiritual practices revolve around changing their beliefs on physics so that they can levitate, or am I wrong?

S, John of Cupertino was having his mystical visions / ecstasies since his childhood... how is that connected to what I was replying to?
Mediochre said:
If you believe something is impossible or must be done a certain restrictive way, then that's how it is, because that's what you made it into.
It goes without saying: infants have very unrestricted beliefs about the world around them, yet they don't walk through walls, levitate or see in the dark :D

Also I need to mention this: most of the impressive psychic I have met or spoken with were extremely skeptical of their own faculties when they started manifesting. If anything their beliefs should have shut down all of their abilities.

I don't think we don't know where the limits are to any of this stuff!
Indeed, so why granting them omnipotence?
Maybe testing PK in the lab is far from the best setup, but at least it helps recognize genuine phenomena from something else. If lab tests have anthing to say is that the size of these phenomena are far from almighty.

However, this should not be taken as an argument that this really does happen.
Couldn't agree more :)

Cheers
 
Yogis... I don't think their spiritual practices revolve around changing their beliefs on physics so that they can levitate, or am I wrong?
Well the first thing is that they seem to break the laws of physics. If you see someone levitate high into the air, or if you manage to do it yourself, you sure don't believe in the laws of physics in the same way as you did before. Spiritual practices seem to focus on consciousness above all else, and doesn't that effectively downplay the role of the whole material realm.
1. That there is a Prime Mover who keeps the regularities of the world going by influencing the final causes of all things' interaction. This usual regularity can be interrupted for the sake of "miracles".

2. That the regularity of laws is based on a consensus of all minds, or at the least the interaction/consensus of a few Minds.
Well option 2 means that if people stop believing in physics, it might literally stop being true.

Now one magician's lack of belief in physics can't do much to alter the consensus, but we don't really know how that consensus is 'calculated' - perhaps the average is taken over a small region. I think there are perhaps hints that something like that might be true. All sorts of drugs (I'm not talking about antibiotics) - such as antidepressants - seem to lose effectiveness over time. There might be prosaic reasons for that - but there is always an 'explaining away' possible explanation to everything we discuss.

I also wonder about those Roman generals that would plan their campaigns around the entrails of animals! Those were hard-as-nails generals - were they really fooled so easily, or did things follow different rules back then?

I am partly playing devil's advocate, but having seen so many phenomena 'explained away' as just something or other, I am a bit wary about dismissing ideas such as this outright.

David
 
S, John of Cupertino was having his mystical visions / ecstasies since his childhood... how is that connected to what I was replying to?
Well those visions almost certainly implied a loss of belief in the primacy of the physical world. Suppose you lived in flatland but you had some slight extension into a third dimension that you normally did not notice. Then you have a vision of 3D reality, so you start to realise that if you flatten your tiny extension into the third dimension, you can burrow under (a meaningless concept in flatland) someone or something else and push them up( another meaningless concept in flatland) and cause them to disappear!

David
 
Heh! :)

Thought actually I was thinking more of two possibilities which aren't mutually exclusive :

1. That there is a Prime Mover who keeps the regularities of the world going by influencing the final causes of all things' interaction. This usual regularity can be interrupted for the sake of "miracles".

2. That the regularity of laws is based on a consensus of all minds, or at the least the interaction/consensus of a few Minds.
I see what you mean.
Personally I wouldn't bet that miracles "interrupt" the regularities of nature. It's more likely that it appears so to us because we're oh so limited in what we know :)

Stuff like this :

even today this defies our day to day experience and it looks like a miracle. It certainly breaks the law of physics of the 19th century, but not those of the 20th... so I guess you see where I am going with this. :D

Cheers
 
Well the first thing is that they seem to break the laws of physics. If you see someone levitate high into the air, or if you manage to do it yourself, you sure don't believe in the laws of physics in the same way as you did before. Spiritual practices seem to focus on consciousness above all else, and doesn't that effectively downplay the role of the whole material realm.
I don't think there's any law to be broken. It's just our ignorance of how nature really works. :D

Ice is a miracle for those who live in places with hot temperatures, but that doesn't mean ice is outside nature's abilities.

What I am trying to say is that it seems like an artificial dichotmoy.
We draw a totally arbitrary line between what nature is supposed to do or not do and then create this sort of dualism which is also found often in skeptic's argument (PSI is impossible because it "contradicts" the laws of nature, ouch!)

I also wonder about those Roman generals that would plan their campaigns around the entrails of animals! Those were hard-as-nails generals - were they really fooled so easily, or did things follow different rules back then?
I think there's a simpler explanation. Roman generals might have been hard-as-nails, no doubt, but they were men of their time as well. No one escapes the culture in which he's embedded in. Especially when you've got such a heavy responsibilty you won't certainly leave any stones unturned. At worst, it won't help, but at best it will give you an advantage over your enemy, which is what every commander wants.

Historically augurs in ancient Rome where among the most powerful figures in the Republic. No single war decision was taken without consulting them. As Titus Livius reports:
"Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the auspices, that everything in war and in peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the auspices?"
(source)

And hey, maybe they were also good at it? :D
 
Holy crap, I didn't expect the flood of replies. I'll have to explain the whole fluidity of reality thing in more detail later today though. What I can tell you for now is that your beliefs aren't altering reality merely because you have them nor do these effects break any fundamental laws of physics to the best of my knowledge although it can certainly look that way when you don't know what's going on. It's a lot more about thinking like a hacker, getting the same results a different way. Which requires you to understand that it's all irrational and based on nothing.

Anyways more on all that later.
 
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Sorry, I had acupncture the other day and it really kicked the crap out of me. I've been trying to take advantage of all the stuff it unlocked though so I don't really have time for forum stuff.

Anyways, no, chnging you beliefs does not, on it's own, change anything in teh physical world. However it is the thing that spurs the actions that do. So, fuctionally, yes, changing your beliefs does change your reality. This is the basis of Cognitive Behavoural Therapty after all.

Most importantly for magic this controls your energy. I don't really know why but energy flows with your thoughts. it appears that though t induce pressure differences which energy then rushes to fill. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on my theories as to what energy (chi, chakra, etc) is but I will say that it is obviously, blatantly physical.

Reality may be based on absolutely nothing and be totally irrational as a result. But if you want something specific to specifically happen specifically in one specific part of one of these stable, emergent pockets of patterns that we call a universe or physics it's probably best to at least format what you're doing for it for maximum efficiency. Which means as long as your output is something that physics understands, nothing else matters. Nature doesn't care how you do it, just that you do it. I've been working on some math to explain the bottom up nature of causality that I call the Comparative Stress Model of Existence which is another thread I'll have to post later if I miraculously ever have the time. More and more I'm noticing the CSM might just be the math of something akin to panpsychism or similar but who knows.

::EDIT::/
Never mind, it's far, far more similar to what Tim Freke in interview 355 is suggesting.
/::EDIT::

For example, I developed poltergeisting from experiments I ran in late 2010 to early 2011. I took the new age idea of the physical plane being "denser" than the astral plane and decided to test it. Theoretically I figured that, if that were true, then I should be able to compress the energy of my spirit body during astral projection which would theoretically make it more similar to the physical world and cause it to phase into it. Turned out this worked, and the skill of poltergeisting was born. Furthermore I learned that condensing energy gives it inertia. So, when I want to move something aroundf at a distance as a poltegeist what I do is condense a ball of energy around whatever I want to move, or a part of it if its a large object, and then move the ball. The inertia of the ball means it resists change, which makes it drag the object along with it when it moves, and voila, telekinesis was born. Condense enough energy and you can even grab liquids.


Mathematically I think it works something like this

A><B><C><A

>< = "Is inversely related to"

which means that simultaneously A moves up, B moves down, C moves up and... A... moves down...

But wait, 'A' can't move down AND up at the same time? No it can't,which means that 'A', 'B' and 'C' remain eternally locked, unable to change unless acted upon by an outside force, the definition of inertia.



But wait, there's more, the ball of energy only stays stable so long as I continue feeding it some small amount of power to keep it's circulation going. So it just poofs as soon as I stop. Which means that if I want it to continue existing after I've walked away from it, I need to give it an alternative power source. One imperfect way I've learned to do that is spinning it to create a vortex with a high and low pressure area. The low pressure area draws in energy to the vortex which helps keep it going a little longer, and the high pressure area bleeds off excess energy so the vortex never gets "full" and then poofs from the resulting sudden destabilization, or stabilization depending how you look at it.

This also happens to mean this vortex has a distinctive input, maelstrom, and output component. Guess what you can do with that if you're clever? Automated programmable interactions... or Runes, which is easier to say. More on that some other time.

The thing that makes all magic possible is the fact that energy can condense and gain inertia. All magic is little more than a combination of condensing energy and then transforming it somehow. whether that's moving it, swirling it, convertnig it, doesn't matter. It's all the same. Hopefully this ramble helped clear up at least some questions.
 
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