Maybe It's A Curse?, Curse of the Mundanoeity Options

My life is...decidedly mundane. I have never seen anything magical, never felt any presence of any ghost, spirit or god, never found anything that couldn't be explained and understood. My delusions may be that there is magic, but no matter how I search, or how I look within myself, nothing emerges. I need to find magic in order to have hope again, but can't find it at all. Any spells, invocations, or summonings of will I try myself all seem to run up against a wall, and nothing ever happens. Any person I've met who claimed access to some form of magic turned out to be a charlatan, or a swindler.

This isn't some run-of-the-mill dry period. I've existed for nearly three decades without a single whisper of magic coming my way. It's not that I'm closed to it, or avoiding it. It's not that I just haven't been looking long enough. I know very well what magic is, so I can't be mistaking it for something else. So...maybe I'm cursed?

It would explain a lot if I was under some sort of curse. I sure can't live without magic, and there doesn't seem to be magic, and that contradiction... well maybe it's that I'm being blinded, or held off from it somehow? How would I tell if there was some influence preventing me from perceiving or running into magic?

I don't seem able to believe in anything, so maybe that has something to do with it?

Cool, I now know exactly where you are at as far as outlook on life in general…well not exactly but I know the general symptoms.

Everything I recommended I have done, what the bleep was a good movie to start the subject, when I saw it I was not so impressed by it then by the conversations I had because of it. However it did lead me down many roads of inquiry.

The point of everything I recommended is to get you out of your comfort zone. From your post it is clear that you have some true issues in that department. Personally I think the Landmark Forum would be the most interesting place for you to go.

What that experience was for me was a multitude of things. Mainly it is a challenge to your ego. They try to do it from every possible angle, some things fit for some people other things fit for other people. The only thing I can recommend to anyone that does it is to participate in it as much as possible…it is 3 days (might be two now) and you paid your money…take advantage of it.

In all honesty, I went into it because a friend told me to do it, and I said I would do it if after a year he felt the same way. He did so I took it (3 day version). I did what was asked of me, and in many ways it was the second most emotionally excruciating few days I had in my life up to that point. However it was a trip worth taking in every way. Hard to describe and or explain.

What I am reading in your e-mail is the perfectly normal and common experience (everyone does it) of living a protected life. You have constructed things in your life so that the amount of risk you take is minimal.

You like me would say “WTF” I have done this and this and this other thing………….
Making a list of hundreds of things that we consider “risky behavior” but it is all so ego driven we do not step out of our safe zone.

Ask my friends and they all know I will help them move, and I would help them move bodies. When there is something I promised to do, I will do it, even if it is a determent to me. For me that or life threatening or a challenge is not “risky behavior”. Also being the fool, idiot, or being wrong are not risky things for me…Not being loyal is an issue. Allowing myself to fail is an issue. Allowing myself to not know is an issue.

How does that manifest?
If I don’t know something that I feel I should, by the next week I would have learned a lot.

After landmark I allow myself to go on not knowing. Many hobbies I dropped once I figured them out, once I became really good at them, or was at a point where I was in the “top” level. Now I can enjoy things for the sake of enjoying them and not needing to know everything.

It may seem like a great trait to have, but it is obsession, now I control it much better and instead of it controlling me. It is a tool I have, and can usually turn on at will as opposed to “having to do it because I need to”.

I can also not take up a challenge, I am not speaking of silly challenges, but there where things I perceived as true challenges, now I can walk away from them. Many people learned how to push my buttons that way, that is now done.

The only silly thing about the forum for me was two things, I figured it out quickly, I got in the space they where trying to get everyone to quickly…because I had done an initiation before. But that is what it is at it’s essence.

There are a million and one things people can recommend for you. You have chosen on some level to filter yourself or shield yourself from certain perspectives. The only one who can open that up is you.

For arguments sake, if it is a curse…there is no curse other then ones that kill you outright that last a really long time, unless the cursed person makes the curse part of their life, on some level they need to choose that it is their world.

I can explain how this could be done, but it is pointless for this conversation. Ultimately you decided at some point to live the life you are living. The thoughts you have reinforce this.

In some traditions this is your “hell”.

No matter what anyone recommends, you will choose to remain there, until you choose not to.

The Classic Devil in any of the Waite/Smith decks, shows the lovers imprisoned by chains loosely tied around their necks. And in many decks it shows the devil as blind or with poor eye sight. This is to signify that it is an illusionary prison, as real as anything can be…until it no longer is.

If you looking for books…it is something you need to take on. Not just read and discard. I would recommend the following.

Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Both very Zen, both very simple reads, with simple exercises…note I say simple not easy. Some things are a dated in the books, but it is easy to adjust the exercises to current living…cell phones, computers, and such.

Big Mind is not a movie, it is a procedure/seminar. It is a 3 hour exercise of perspective. If you learn to control your thoughts, you control your experience, you control the events in your reality…that is not big mind…all big mind is, is a series of different perspectives that you go through.

If you watch and follow along without analyzing it to death, you will get something out of it.

Finally, I come to the biggie. It is all about your inner dialog. I have a post where I mention this. In some detail.
http://www.sacred-magick.org/index.php?sho...410&#entry34410

But I think with you it is the big issue and would really examine it. Therapy would truly be my recommendation, but I have avoided it for financial reasons and I am not in a dire financial situation as you are at the moment.

I will admit that at this point, I can enter almost any emotional state, at will. It is not anything of major intensity. If emotions had knobs like volume rated 1 to 10, I can get to 4 in any emotion in about 30 seconds usually in less then 2. Going to confusion, angst, terror, sadness or any of the emotions I don’t like are work for me and take the 30 seconds. But I can go to happiness, joy, rage, anger, compassion….very fast.
This took a lot of practice.

I credit the Landmark Forum with a breakthrough there…I was doing it, but I had feelings that I was faking it until a month or so after I did the forum. I felt like a method actor through life when I did it. The internalization that our emotions are reactions to our world, changed that for me. It also allowed me to sleep much better. I was a classic insomniac, I still prefer to be up at night and sleep during the day, but I can pretty much control my sleeping much better now.

Back to your inner dialog. Do you think that your inner dialog it you thinking? If so how is it when you are in an emergency situation or doing something you can do by muscle memory that your inner dialog is not part of the equation, and usually either not aware or many seconds behind?

Ok, now that we have objectified it, start paying attention to it, and start playing with it. The big powerful thing in “What the bleep” is the identification of the “witness”, getting there is the only point of that movie and I don’t care what half truths they told getting there.

Now, what is it about your inner dialog that makes you not want to step out of your box. What is it that makes you so emotional at a job, that you can’t keep it? Or what makes you be late?

We have all worked with morons, and morons in places of power…a job is just about paying bills, it is not your life. I don’t know any of the details, and I honestly don’t care to know. But I can tell you that I was fired for the first time in my life, from a job I had for four years and truly hated. I loved the Job, I loved doing my job, I hated that I had to fight to do the right thing every time. What I failed to do was figure out, my job was not my life, I could do what was asked of me and move on…most everyone else does, but it is not in my nature to do so. I was wrong, it is totally in my nature to do the best I can with what I am given and asked to do.

There was no reason why I should not have left there by the second year when I was sure things would not change. I am much happier now, even if I don’t make quite as much money, I also do not work nearly as much.

The Nike slogan of “Just do it” is very to the point of the matter. There is no reason to get emotionally involved in our job. We should enjoy it, and enjoying it is truly just a state of mind. If a place is truly screwed up, make a complaint, and leave. If legal action is necessary, do it, but one should never want to work for idiots or crooks.

You do not see magick, because you choose not to see it.

There are times when I truly marvel at the rain. I know very well how it works. But at those moments (not every time it rains, but usually at least the first good rain of the season) if you said it was not Magickal, I would smile and truly pitty your vision of the world. There are other times where if someone said it was magickal I would laugh and think they live in a wonderful little fairly land.

It was not until recently that I truly discovered what that choice is, how profound it is. Often our self imposed prison is sooo real, it is impossible to get out of.

However the choice is ultimately yours. I avoided going to gyms for hatha yoga, I had a great teacher and to this day love to be in her presence. Every time I listened to people doing yoga at a gym it seemed more like an aerobics routine then a yoga session.

But because of geographic issues, I no longer can be with my teacher. So the day before yesterday I went and did yoga at the Gym. First time in a year that I did yoga with other people. Everything was wrong, the mat I took was too rolled up, and the volume of the PA was annoying. The names the instructor had for everything was different, the warm up was screwy, my left wrist was in pain and giving out by the 30 minute point...The relaxation at the end was all messed up, and the teacher was distracting to me.
I ended up having a great session, I am still sore from it, but it was great in that it took me out of my comfort zone, and I enjoyed it. I got home, went right into my meditation practice, and am still feeling the “high” from it tonight.

My recommendation is if you need to get all the data you need to, find every reason not to do something, and then do it anyway. But allow the experience of it to stand on its own.

People can describe thousands of reasons to not fall in love with another human being. Hell, they can even describe that it is nothing more then chemicals and electrical reactions in the brain for the propagation of the species, and the rearing of our young. However if you experience it, you can’t help but be happy about it…until you loose it and decide to dwell in the loss instead of the greatness of the experience.

Your life experience is determined by you. There is nothing in your past that determines how you will be tomorrow. You can become a saint, a mass murderer, a sadist, an athlete. You may never become an astronaut or Olympic gymnast, or anything that requires the judgment of others to determine. But the plethora of choices are still limitless. Many of the choices require big steps, having the model life does not happen in a day.

But the key to everything is knowing your self. The first step in that is learning how to manage your inner dialog. It is not about control, the more you try to control it the worse off you will be, but it is usually the first step in learning how to manage it.

It will never go away, it will pop up at the most inappropriate times. Having a really funny and crude thought at a memorial service of a close friend is my personal favorite. I could not explain to the people sitting next to me (his family members) that when the minister was explaining about god taking the young and him being in a better place. I imagined him having sex with some porn star while watching a musical on a big screen TV and smoking a joint with a big smile on his face. It was a great thought, but most people would not enjoy my humor at the moment.

Now, all of that does not mean that you can’t trick it, but that always take a bit of effort. It also does not mean you should ever think it is a bad thing, no it is a great thing, we are never truly alone. But that inner dialog is not us, we should objectify it and not ever think it is us. It is no more us then our body is us. If you think our body is us…stop and think about it for a while.

Can you loose a leg? Are you still you?

Go through every body part, and really think about it’s function and then figure out if it is you or not. The brain is the tricky one. You need to break it up into small parts, one by one, you are still you without them. So then you are left with there is either nothing in this physical realm that is me, or it is the collection of my experiences.

Well start going through your experiences, the biggies that you think defined you. Figure out how they defined you. What changed after that point.

The reality is, nothing except the dialog you had with yourself. Nobody loves me, I am not worthy, I need to be smarter, I need to be faster, I need to be funny…I need to be cynical so nothing can get to me.

So we come back to the inner dialog. But if I can notice or witness the inner dialog…then it is an object and not me.

So what are you?

I am going to try and attach a text that might be enlightening in the opposite direction. Use the edit, replace command from the menu to change all the John with your name. in Word and notepad it is edit>replace in the menu, and select replace all.

This has gotten way too long and I can truly go on forever and not really move this conversation further without your input.

The point of everything I recommended is to get you out of your comfort zone.

Well I won't fall for scams like L$ndm$rk Forum, but you're otherwise totally right. I'm really struggling now to get free of this place, but until that happens I'm stuck in the comfort zone. :/

What I am reading in your e-mail is the perfectly normal and common experience (everyone does it) of living a protected life. You have constructed things in your life so that the amount of risk you take is minimal.

Close, but not quite. Most of my life has not been constructed by me. So it's not that I simply decide not to move away, but that my fault is in not being able to get out of the house before 3pm, but there is also the bus fare I can't afford, the poor routes and scheduling. There is the dearth of decent employment since the few people who actually can afford to hire are rotten multinational fascists. There is the insistence of these stupid cats to sit on me and discourage movement. There is the rotten treatment I got by our benevolent educational institution. All the people I've approached and beseeched, only to find out they don't have a clue and I'm wasting my time. Having a exciting life seems like a matter of being part of some special club, far as I can see, and I'm not invited. So forgive me if I choose harsh words in critique of your opinion that I have some obsession with avoiding a sensible amount of risk, and I'm somehow incapable of doing a cost/benifit analysis. Heck I take more risks than most people I encounter.

For arguments sake, if it is a curse…there is no curse other then ones that kill you outright that last a really long time, unless the cursed person makes the curse part of their life, on some level they need to choose that it is their world.

There is a difference, my friend, between choice and perception. You should say that someone "sees that it is their world" instead of "chooses that it is their world." Blaming the cursed for being cursed is easy to do, but you're better off admitting that they have a problem, that all is not well in the world, and that way you don't have to make up some rationalization about why they're cursed. Don't blame someone for losing hope; instead find a way to give them hope, or do nothing at all.

The Classic Devil in any of the Waite/Smith decks, shows the lovers imprisoned by chains loosely tied around their necks. And in many decks it shows the devil as blind or with poor eye sight. This is to signify that it is an illusionary prison, as real as anything can be…until it no longer is.

I consider that to be a very crafty lie myself. For too long people have imagined that they can escape any prison, that they can reach any dream that they have, if only they work hard and earnestly enough. It's equivocation, a false prophecy that has no certainty: most of the time hard work is more trouble than it's worth. There are a few people with a lot of money right now because they milked other people pretending that they would have a chance, but leaving them frustrated and confused in the end. The propaganda is that the chains are loose, but once someone tries to take them off suddenly you see them tighten terribly.

Then again, some people like to wallow in their own misery and would indeed be held by loose chains. Heck some people even think that's kinky. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Now, what is it about your inner dialog that makes you not want to step out of your box. What is it that makes you so emotional at a job, that you can’t keep it? Or what makes you be late?

There's no one single thing wrong with me. What is it that makes you always get to your job on time without error? How other people do that I have no idea. Even if I wasn't depressed, it's just baffling to try and imagine keeping track of time that exactly. I don't usually get emotional at work either, but do suffer some emotional fallout afterwards. Even if I was calm, collected and confident in job interviews (actually I kind of am), the employer cares about what you can do for them, not about whether you're happy or sad.

But I can tell you that I was fired for the first time in my life, from a job I had for four years and truly hated. I loved the Job, I loved doing my job, I hated that I had to fight to do the right thing every time. What I failed to do was figure out, my job was not my life, I could do what was asked of me and move on…most everyone else does, but it is not in my nature to do so. I was wrong, it is totally in my nature to do the best I can with what I am given and asked to do.

We are very different people, you have to realize. I have never had a job for more than 3 months. I don't have a career, no specialty, no track record. I didn't throw myself into the workplace environment, make a buttload of cash, and then decide that it was too stressful and live out the rest of my life easily. I'm at that stage where I don't have the cash in the first place, so living life easily is something that other people won't let me do since as they put it, I can't afford it.

The Nike slogan of “Just do it” is very to the point of the matter.

Oh good Gods. Could you just... not use that slogan? Please? I mean, not to be offensive or anything, but when someone says, "I can't do it," that generally means that they tried to do it, and it didn't work. They "just did it" and something went wrong. So basically any time you use that slogan you're telling them to repeat what they did last time, which failed, and you're offering no useful advice. Since you treat it as if it were useful advice, it actually becomes harmful because if they don't follow your advice you hold them in contempt, but if they do follow your advice they will fail, causing you to hold them in contempt.

I will grant one thing: if someone is afraid and nervous about continuing, then they can close their eyes and rush into the fray, and overcome their fear through action. That is the only time you can say "just do it". If someone's struggling, failing and depressed, "just do it" should not be said at all. It's a way of overcoming fear, not overcoming frustration and melancholy.

There are times when I truly marvel at the rain. I know very well how it works. But at those moments (not every time it rains, but usually at least the first good rain of the season) if you said it was not Magickal, I would smile and truly pitty your vision of the world.

You know, it doesn't rain here either? ;_;

You can pity my vision of the world all you want, but it doesn't make my vision any less correct. What you need to do is change my vision, introduce contradiction into my paradigm. What I'm saying is, I know the way I see the world is a sucky way to live, but if you've got a better idea then show me the money.

People can describe thousands of reasons to not fall in love with another human being.

Uh... if pop songs are any indication, it's exactly the opposite of what you said. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

You may never become ...but the plethora of choices are still limitless.

Heh, contradict yourself much? What you mean to say is our choices are limited, but there are still many choices we can make that will change our lives in dramatic ways. Unfortunately none of the choices I've found lead in the direction I need to go, but I agree given our harsh limitations there is still a lot that can be done. Whether doing it is worth a hill of beans is another matter.

Go through every body part, and really think about it’s function and then figure out if it is you or not. The brain is the tricky one. You need to break it up into small parts, one by one, you are still you without them.

I've seen someone fall victim to a brain stroke before. Heck in my vain attempts to cure my mental malady, I've run into people who have some terrible head trauma. I think Alzheimer's is the worst of all of it, you can literally see someone crumble away piece by piece. And they know it too, until the very advanced stages of the disease... Alzheimer's is what finally convinced me that there's no way for us to have any kind of immortal soul. It all dies in the end, without some kind of magic to turn the tide.

Well start going through your experiences, the biggies that you think defined you. Figure out how they defined you. What changed after that point.

Eh, actually I guess sitting in a waiting room with someone in the throes of Alzheimer's for a few hours wasn't exactly a biggie. What kind of experiences do you think I've had? My life hasn't been one with much at all ado in it, but maybe I'll come up with something later.

I need to be cynical so nothing can get to me.

Hey if I was scared something was going to get to me, I'd be over there on the right hand worshipping a pretend God. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_popeanim.gif) What you see here is the raw and unfiltered, so if you think it's some kind of defense against the likes of you, don't worry I don't feel like I'm in threat.

So what are you?

I'm a synx! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tickedoff.gif)

This has gotten way too long and I can truly go on forever and not really move this conversation further without your input.

Yeah, you wrote a really awesome post. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I wanted to take some time to respond to it. I'll try reading the attachment later when I'm not quite so inwardly knotted.