How To Use Magick With A Straight Face 2 Power
Power is, among other things, the innate ability to bring whatever you truly desire into your life. When you "make" others manifest them for you, you create blocks in your own mind. These blocks say "I cannot do this myself," which obstructs your Power. This is "giving away your Power."
When you "take your Power," you accept responsibility for your life. This is not guilt or martyrdom, it is honestly assessing your life and recognizing your successes and failures. Give yourself credit for even the smallest success and recognize that you can overcome every obstacle. Then you allow your Power to express itself. What you need comes to you; projects work for you.
We often think of many obstacles as insurmountable. For instance, many believe the lottery to be their only desperate hope of escaping poverty. Such people give away their Power. And why shouldn't they? Everything they've experienced tells them this. Our whole society is rooted in the mechanistic paradigm (all causes and effects have a physical link), which precludes a belief in Power. How is one to know that this concept works? How can this be real when it is so different from what we are used to?
Our society has a concept of "Reality" as an objective existence of which we are all a part. When two people have different ideas of the nature of some detail, then at least one is Wrong. We all have a fear of being Wrong. When we are Wrong we miss out on things and people don't like us as much. Therefore we desperately strive to be Right. It turns out that Right is what ever those around you happen to feel that it should be. It's as if they all took a vote when you were out of the room. But "Right" changes all the time: from preservatives are harmless, to preservatives cause cancer; from Stalin is a great leader, to Stalin was a monster; from Ptolemy explains the forces of the universe perfectly, to Newton explains the forces of the universe perfectly, to Einstein explains the forces of the universe perfectly. The philosophy of science this calls this evolving better (or at least different) explanations. Yet, while these ideas hold sway, people call them "Reality."
Just how reliable is Reality? We all live our lives using our individual concepts of Reality to get along. We update them as we see fit. But few will fundamentally change their concepts. We are sure that, although we may not have the details, we certainly have a feel for the basics. Anyone who disagrees with the mechanistic paradigm, for instance, must be missing at least a few marbles. Such a person is irrational in a universe that we know to be rational.
But is the universe truly rational? Science has pursued the mechanistic paradigm down to the smallest scale, particle physics; here it fails to explain the universe. The building blocks of Reality do not behave rationally. If you drive a car from one side of a mountain to the other and you have a choice of two tunnels, you will drive through one of them. If a single electron has a choice of two holes in a plate to pass through, it will go through both. You can plot the speed and position of your car to the limit of the accuracy of your instruments, but you will never be able to do both to that electron.
When you observe this mythical car, it is a solid object. If it were not, it would not be a car. If you drove it around, then tested to see if the car were not solid and discovered that it wasn't, what would you think? Around the turn of the century, scientists figured out that light acts like a wave when you test for a wave, and like a particle when you test for a particle. In the regular world it must be one *or* the other. The two are as mutually exclusive as a non-solid car that you can none the less drive. Mysteriously, light was behaving like both. Eventually, scientists concluded that light doesn't work like the universe we are used to. The act of observing light defines its character.
This is called wave-particle duality. Later in the century, scientists found that atomic particles, the building blocks of all matter, behave this way, too.
Now imagine that you can find no evidence that this car crosses the space between where you see it and where you saw it last. Suppose the car isn't actually "there" when you're not looking-- the act of looking brings it into "existence." What would you think if noticed that your expectations seem to have an effect on where it turns out to be? This is awfully strange, but it is the kind of universe that particle physicists find. "Looking at" a subatomic particle "brings it into existence." Also, scientists are finding that whatever kind of particle they expect to find in an experiment, tends to be there. This is starting to look less like brilliant theory and more like an effect of the observers. They are no longer separate from their experiments. It turns out that the universe doesn't actually work the way we've always assumed it does.
This is the nature of matter on the smallest scale, and it doesn't make sense in every day life. This does not mean that we should abandon our present ideas of how to live. Keep what works ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it"). Particle physics won't affect how you drive through tunnels, for instance. But, if you accept physics, the epitome of the mechanistic paradigm, this means that our mechanistic ideas of how the universe works are fundamentally incomplete. In other words, the mechanistic paradigm is not the whole story.
Big deal. What does this mean in a practical sense? The world seems to work just the same as it did when the mechanistic paradigm was unchallenged. But what if our preconceptions dictate what we are aware of? It is a common trick to set up a group of people for startling event and see how many will overlook a strange inconsistency. In one instance, a teacher took a student off into an adjoining room on a pretext. There was the sound of an argument and a crash and the student ran out through the room.
One of the other students suspected a set up and she was the only one who noticed that the teacher's accomplice was carrying a bone. A much more dramatic example is the story of Magellan's ships. When the explorer landed on a particular island, the natives, who had never seen europeans before, recognized them as funny looking men in funny looking little boats. But Magellan soon found that the natives were unaware of the large ships that carried them there, though they were impossible to overlook. The natives had seen men and small boats before, but they had never seen a large ship. Such a thing was outside of their experience and therefore outside of their comprehension. Their eyes must have seen the ships, but their brains did not. he natives gathered to try to see them, staring intently at where they supposed to be anchored. Soon the local shaman could discern the barest outline which he described to the others. Eventually they could all perceive ships.
Who can say what we make ourselves unaware of? It is only after we've expanded our perception that we learn how limited it was before. But we can't go around indiscriminately "expanding our consciousness." What we choose to believe is based on our desires. If you are happy with what you believe, the is no reason to change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Change is challenging and even if you succeed, it may well be unpleasant. But if you feel unable to overcome obstacles in your life (and you *really* want to), then you have nothing to loose. Magick will only expand possibilities. If it's all a crock, you've lost nothing. If it's true, you can do anything you're willing to work for. It is a draw-win situation. The only way you can lose is to make your choice out of fear. Don't let the opinions of others influence what you choose to believe. Don't give away your Power. Everyone else is in the same situation you are, so when it comes to your own life, there is no greater authority than yourself. If you're interested in magick, try it and see for yourself if it works for you.
Recommended reading (pdf e-books):
Aleister Crowley - Book Of The Heart Girt With The Serpent PoemAleister Crowley - Magick In Theory And Practice
Aleister Crowley - Book 4 Part Iii Magick In Theory And Practice
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