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Lesson 4; Meditation and some basics

Recently while I was in the Q&A sessions run by the Online Mystical School, I was got a high percentage of questions regarding meditation. I answered some of the questions then, and many more I put off till later. A couple concerns that were cropping up in the assignments I answered in the last lesson, so now it's time to discuss one more important aspect of magick, that of Meditation.

Meditation is like the ability to write neatly and legibly. While you may not like the exercises, drills and repetition while you are learning the skill, it is a skill that you will use for the rest of your life. So it is with meditation since it is one of the critical skills in magick.

This is why; how do you expect to truly still your mind and clear all extraneous thoughts from your head in order to focus on the spell at hand unless you know how to meditate? It's the same thing. Taking a deep breath and clearing the mind is the same process that is used in meditation, the only difference is that the magickian's mind is already disciplined to accept the meditation in a "quick and dirty" fashion like this.

This lesson is based on two lessons I gave to my OOBE class. Both of those lessons deal with Meditation and how it applies to OOBE, I feel all of you will quickly see how this same set of instructions is applicable to meditating for High Magick.

I'm going to warn you, there is a TON of information here. A lot of this will be on the exam, but I don't expect you to have this down perfectly by next week. Print this lesson, if you never print another word from me, and keep it around for reference. It's long, but you can take breaks when reading it. This will make up for my having only a few pages on something else at one time or another. ;-)

Basic Meditation

First and foremost, getting to the Astral Plane, or projecting, is a mental discipline. There are no shortcuts to the ability to force yourself out of your body (believe me, I've looked). These are some devices techniques and tips that will bring about the proper states of mind, or a trance state.

Sit and close your eyes, and think about nothing. Sounds easy? Well, it can be just as it can also be the hardest thing you have done.

Relaxation is the key to meditation, just as meditation is the key to Astrally Projecting. The more relaxed you are, the easier it will become to fall into the state where by you can leave your body and reach other planes. The key to all of this, unfortunately in some ways, is the mind.

The mind is like a spoiled child. It resents having to do something that it has not already learned. As such, it will resist when you try to force it to meditate. Your mind wants to do things the same old way it always did, so that when you actually start meditating on a regular basis, you may find a tendency to drift onto subjects that have nothing to do with the meditation. Based on the desired result of your meditation, this can be good or bad.

Let's talk about the structure of the mind for a bit, before we go any further. Freud postulated that the mind is composed of two parts, the Conscious, and the Subconscious; this is the same as the Ego and the Id. Eventually, others introduced the Superconscious and Superego. These three parts make up what we term our thought processes. The Superconscious/Superego is the moralizing, logical part of us all, the thinker, the reasoner, and so much more. The Subconscious is the storehouse and also the random thought processes, the artist, the base animalistic side of our nature, the one who remembers everything we do and say as well as being the sex drive, emotions and the urge to reproduce. In between these levels is the Conscious mind. This is the part of you that thinks thoughts, accesses memories and makes up your personality and all the things you think of as going on in the front of your brain. Please keep these sections clear in your mind. The Superconscious and Conscious mind define your Will for Magick, and the Subconscious actually controls the energy and the effect. In order to affect a change in the world you first have to convince your subconscious to accept the change.

It is my personally held belief that once the Superconscious shuts off in sleep the Conscious mind disappears. The Conscious is the border area, the overlap between the Super and Subconscious that allows us to think and behave as we do when we are awake. When the body lies down to sleep, the Superconscious and Conscious shut down, like a computer, thus allowing the Subconscious to run free. Note that this is only my belief, not one held by the psychological community at large, and I came to this conclusion through conversations with various people's Superconscious during hypnotic sessions.

When you practice and unfocused meditation, you are doing basically the same thing, shutting down the logical, reasoning part of yourself, and allowing the undisciplined animalistic part of yourself to run free without fetters. As a result, your mind will wander into little side-paths of thinking and dreaming, songs will start up for no reason, you will find yourself thinking of things that you haven't thought of in weeks or months, or old memories will surface. This is because the subconscious does not like changing the already established patterns of behavior. However, just like a child, once the discipline and rules become consistent, the subconscious usually settles down and follows the rules you just gave it. This is where you start deciding on how you want to meditate. Much of this is discussed later, but for now, if you want to do stream of consciousness meditations, this is when you would decide that. Please note that as you continually apply the rules you have decided on, they will become easier to impose on your mind. For the first month, however, all kinds of things will distract you and try to prevent you from meditating. Ignoring that itch that the Subconscious has dredged up to distract you can be HARD....

This will take time and constant effort. That is why it is so important to consistently practice meditation and to do it about the same time everyday. But, once the mind is bowed under the "yoke" of learning a new way of functioning it will stop throwing up distractions to what you are trying to accomplish. Instead, usually it will start throwing up solutions helpful memories and thoughts. The Subconscious is a very intuitive entity. Because it is "wordless", it will portray the information to be conveyed in symbolic pictures. It can use that for you during meditation. Still, you have to meditate on an ongoing basis at about the same time everyday, with the same environmental conditions.

There are other ways of achieving this state, but by far, the easiest is by use of meditation. However, it is germane to the issue to discuss the other means by which this state of awareness/not-awareness can be reached.

The first is probably the most expensive in terms of doing it properly. That is the use of equipment for sensory depravation. Most people remember the Sensory Deprivation tanks that were used in the 70's for experimentation in the human mind. These experiments showed that left to it's own devices; the human mind will invent things just to give itself input. However, not all equipment needs to be this elaborate. The same ends can be achieved with a pair of ear-plugs and a blindfold. The goal here is to cut off the distractions from the outside world, to remove the input of the senses, so that the mind turns inward. The only thing the tanks do that can't be done by other means is to cut off the sense of touch and smell. As a necessity, once the primary senses are frustrated, the remaining senses become heightened. Turn off sight, and the hearing becomes stronger. Turn off sound, and the sense of touch becomes that much more powerful... and so on. Your senses are still there, just denied input. SCUBA diving does something similar to the mind, and SCUBA diving in the pool with a blindfold on will do exactly the same thing as all the elaborate equipment. Buckland even recommends a primitive version of this in the Big Blue Book, with his "witches' cradles" and so on.

The next means of achieving this trance state is through dreams. Every night you go into a self-induced trance when you are falling asleep. This is a hypnotic state, and it is very easy to fall into, but it is also easy to fall out of into sleep. In my experience, this kind of AP is the most unreliable, although there are some spectacular results that can come from adepts who use this regularly. I will wait until another lesson to go into this in more detail.

There is Ecstatic Trance that can free your mind to roam the Astral Plane. An example that I can think of is the Whirling Dervishes of the Sufi Muslims. It was believed that their spinning allowed them to be receptive to God. In this state, the body does not matter. It was also used as a meditation for the Sultan who would watch the dance and open himself to the mind of God as well. Having seen some film of these dancers, and knowing that they go for upwards to 5 or 6 hours of spinning, I can only imagine that they are in a state of trance. But this is not the only kind of ecstatic trance that can be induced. The "frothing at the mouth" or speaking in tongues that happens in some primitive Christian groups is exactly the same kind of state. It is a trance that is self-induced by hysteria. So the devotional prayers in some churches, also called "storming heaven", are a form of this. As many people as possible pray for as long as possible for a specific goal, with the belief that they can positively coerce heaven into doing their will. Being "ridden by the Loa" in the Voodoo tradition is also a form of this trance state. They consciously enter a state of trance through dancing and expect spirits (or Loa) to use them as vehicles to communicate with others.

Another way to achieve the state of trance that allows AP is through mortification of the flesh. Ever wonder what the heck a scourge is used for in some traditions of Wicca? Here is the answer. According to the Alexandrian tradition, as related by Janet and Stewart Farrar in their book (and shown to us in the Online Alexandrian Book of Shadows under the topics of "To Gain the Sight" and "To Leave the Body"), the scourge is used to whip the person who wishes to have their mind opened and to see into the "realms beyond". However, this takes two people, one who needs to be experienced in doing this kind of work, and one to be the subject. It is not something for the inexperienced to do. Put it this way, I have been traveling out of my body for about 8 years now with confidence, and I have never tried this version. From what I have read, the theory is sound. This is the same thing that the Christian Monks did in the Middle Ages (and the Hispanic Penitentes still do). Druids also followed this path, using Sensory Depravation as well by having their adherents lay in a pitch-dark cell beneath the ground with a heavy stone on their belly.

Another method to the Trance State is to take drugs. Let me state now, that this is the absolute last option that anyone should take. I do not advocate this, nor do I approve. However, I do know of shamans who do use this method to great effect in the Andes Mountains of South America. I would point out that they do this with years of experience and training behind them. Basically the drug(s) used throw the conscious mind out of gear enough that receiving visions and leaving the body is natural. However, one cannot control any aspect of the trance at this point. By taking the drug to inhibit your thinking processes, you are necessarily also inhibiting the controls that you would have without the drugs. That is the whole point of taking the drug after all.

The last method of trance that I can think of is to be hypnotized. This is almost exactly like the Dream method, but instead of self-willing it, you are guided to this state by another. They can give you suggestions and visualizations to use to help you along, and in all cases you have to actively participate in the hypnosis. I will talk more about this later in this lesson.

All of the above methods of entering a trance state have been used in the past and continue to be used today. The desired effect is to enter a state in which God (or your deity of choice) can talk directly to you. From this state, it is an easy leapfrog to leaving your body.

I'm going to touch on a few basic techniques of meditation so that you can see that it is not the technique of meditation that is important to achieve this state.

The first technique, in my experience is the "Void state". This technique sounds simple, and is to a point, but it can be one of the hardest to maintain over time. You simply close your eyes, and think of nothing. Some people go rigid, or become flaccid, and others keep a state of tension in their bodies as though they were expecting something. Many close their eyes, some don't. The practice varies, but the technique is simple. Any thought, any sensation, any sensory input is disregarded or stopped. You don't think of anything, or feel anything, etc. If your mind starts supplying things, you cut that off and go back to being nothing. It is theorized that by doing this, you get closer to the Mind of God. By doing this enough, and by coming into contact with the Mind of God enough, that some of His wisdom will leak over to you, that the practitioner of this type of meditation will have an epiphany where they suddenly understand everything. It is exactly what Zen Buddhists do in their meditations in trying to reach Nirvana.

Lucid Dreams are another technique. This technique, when applied properly, will allow you to do two things at once... sleep and AP at the same time. There are a few catches though. First is REMEMBERING your dreams. The way to do this is to tell yourself to remember your dreams before going to sleep, and to keep a notepad and pencil by your bed when you do sleep so that you can write down what you remember upon awakening. This does work extremely well. I did this for about a year, and while I got no closer to AP, I did dream very vividly, and can still remember my dreams from that time. When you wake, IMMEDIATELY grab the pad and write everything you remember from your dream. No matter how disjointed, you will get something. Enough to jog your memory later in the day when you can sit down and write a five-chapter treatise on what you dreamed.

It is interesting that this is one of the techniques for meditation. I say this because you naturally AP every night. All those dreams you have vague memories of when you went somewhere and saw things and then fell so that you were startled awake, are true AP experiences. Most of us have memories like these (I know I do *S*) and forget them after a while. This is one of the reasons to have a dream diary.

Once you remember your dreams, the next step is to CONTROL those dreams. It is a matter of realizing you are dreaming, while you are dreaming, and changing it to what you want the dream to be. This is not as easy as it sounds. Many people wake up at firs when they realize they are dreaming, and many never realize it in the first place.

Once the control of dreams is accomplished, it is a very easy matter to decide to visit other places. Or times. Or people. It is possible to go anyplace that your imagination can take you, which is why this is an advanced skill and why you must be careful.

A factor that complicates things is that dreams are our subconscious mind's attempt to assimilate what has been happening our lives. It is a way to vent, and to remember what has been going on by associative symbol. It is also a way to work out problems. By dealing with them in a "safe" environment, we can confront problems that we may feel are insurmountable.

The third technique that I have used is The Lotus Position. This is what many people think of when we speak of mediation. It is sitting in a somewhat uncomfortable position, chanting, or doing other goofy things. You don't have to do any of that. The only reason that you sit in an uncomfortable position or concentrate on saying "Ohm...." over and over is to focus your mind. This kind of meditation is as easy as daydreaming. You could as easily focus on your big toe, a candle, a picture, etc.

Brainstorming, daydreams, "put it in the back of my mind" are all forms of this. You simply let your mind drift among many different paths. You do not try to force any one thought upon it, you simply go where association takes you. You may start with a problem, think about it, but you will find yourself, usually, miles from where you started.

An example; I work with computers IRL, which is my day-job, the one that I earn money from. If there is a problem with the software that I don't have a clue about, I will take a break, think about what the problem is, define it, and start on a trail of associations that will lead me to a working plan. Usually this turns out to be the right plan, but the way I got there might be through such stuff as MP3s, my cousin, his computer, the modem and cable modem on his computer, to "device driver problem or conflict" which will usually be right. But the problem I started with was "software locks computer". Channeled right, you can break "intuitive flashes" and "gut reactions" down into steps that you can follow in your mind to get to the same place. Those gut reactions are the previously described process speeded up so you are unable to consciously see the components.

Doing it this way can result in some interesting connections and associations coming to light. Why would thinking of Montana make you think of your mother's dog (as an example)? While the train of logic is a good one for you, and the associations are interesting, for someone else, they will seem the stupidest way of associating the particular piece of data.

One thing I did want to talk to you all about was "guided meditations". These are interesting as they are neither hypnosis nor a meditation, but have elements of both incorporated into them. I have an example audio file where I am reading a guided meditation, and you can listen to it here: http://davensjournal.com/FS.zip . It's a fairly large zip file (about 7.5 Megs) so it may take you a while to download it. Be patient. There are two files inside, both are the exactly the same. One is a wav file, the type that Windows uses to make all the sounds. Everyone should be able to listen to that. The other is the MP3 version. Feel free to use this if you wish to and to keep them. You can find the original text to this meditation at http://davensjournal.com/FaS.xhtml page.

Meditation in depth:

I have pontificated on the various ways of achieving a trance state, citing meditation as the easiest to maintain, and the safest. Now we are going to talk about different portions of meditation, examples of what happens, using hypnosis and guided meditations as aids to gaining and maintaining a trance state.

Let me define what a trance is first. Several different people have defined trance as a hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state. This can apply to any number of different conditions in the human body, like being under the influence of a drug or alcohol, daydreaming, or sleeping. For the purposes of this class, a trance is defined as the state between waking and sleeping, where the mind is somewhat awake with a heightened and focused ability to function, while the body is relaxed as though for sleeping.

Herein is the distinction: A trance state is a state in which there is a self-willed "release" from the reality you interact with every day. You don't see anymore, you don't hear anymore, you don't feel anymore, so forth and so on. Does this sound familiar? It should, you do this every night.

Yes, you go into a trance every time you go to sleep. You pass through the trance state into the unconscious state, but you come back up into the trance state often during sleep as well. It is described as being relaxed with the eyes closed. Medical researchers call this state of trance the "Alpha brainwave" state. It is the same state that is invoked in hypnosis and guided meditations. The awake state is the Beta brainwave state. Paradoxically, when we dream we reenter the Beta state.

Since this state is self willed, meaning that you put yourself into this state, how can it be a hypnotic state, which someone else puts you into? Good question. A "hypnotic" state is nothing more than a co-operative effort between the hypnotist and the subject. The hypnotist puts you into a relaxed state, usually through words and visualizations and allows for a high degree of suggestibility. This involves giving up some control to the person who is usually called the hypnotist, allowing them to lead you to this state, rather than going to this state for yourself. You can actively resist being led to this state since it is cooperative effort, and the myths of being forced into a hypnotic state and told to kill your mother are bunk.

If you ever want to know what it is like to be hypnotized, go to sleep sometime and pay attention. Right in that time when you relax your body, and your mind starts drifting is a hypnotic state. Just be careful you don’t do what my wife did many years ago. In trying to pay attention to what happened as she fell asleep, she gave herself insomnia. She was paying too close attention. Why do the scientists call it "hypnotic" rather than something like "the pre-sleep state"? Who knows? I don't. It's one of those things that scientists do, naming the same object or state twenty different names. I guess it was to differentiate it from a self-willed sleep.

But you know what? Self-hypnosis tapes and guided meditations do the exact same thing to you. You may not realize it, and there are not usually any suggestions to quack like a duck, but it's the same process, the same feeling, and the same state. Because of that, hypnosis is a good tool for use in achieving a trance state and staying there for an extended period of time.

However, you may not have a hypnotist handy whenever you want to practice, and they cost a lot of money. So, what other alternatives to hypnosis do the Astral-Projector-on-a-budget have available?

Guided meditations: These are wonderful things, a whole sequence of sayings, affirmations, feel-good thoughts, and suggestions for yourself. They're supposed to be used in a group setting, there are no specific suggestions of "You must give me all your money and treat your mother Karen with respect and goodwill" (said sotto voce). Instead, the suggestions will be more along the lines of "you feel good about yourself, the world around you, and the people you meet." The suggestions will be general in nature, rather than specific.

What's the flaw in these types of tools? Well, you need to listen to them. Both hypnosis and guided meditations need to be listened to, while you cooperate with the person doing the speaking to achieve the trance state you wish to.

Obviously, this will not work too well for those who are hard of hearing, deaf, or speak another language. So, the best option is to construct your own "guided meditation" for use on yourself.

Doing it this way will be ultimately more powerful for you. The visualizations, the sights, the feelings, and the attitude of the whole meditation will be custom made for you, and you alone. For that reason, those who use meditations as a daily part of their lives tend to have about 3-10 different sets of meditations that they use over and over to allow them to achieve a trance state. This is important because without achieving this state and staying in it, conscious OOBE will not be possible.

Some general themes of the meditations used are listed here:

1. Suggestions to relax.
2. The feeling of a safe environment around you.
3. Lack of distractions from the world.
4. A sense of comfort and love.
5. Pictures and visualizations of a scene that is pleasant for you.
6. A descent of some kind.
7. Arrival at the desired destination.

Each of these parts comes into play, and can be useful in maintaining trance. For some meditations and some schools of thought, sounds can be important in maintaining this state as well as anything you come up with. One group who thinks that sound is important to the mind and memory is the Native Americans and the Whale totem. The Whale holds all the knowledge there is to know, and it accesses that knowledge through the songs it sings. (This is taken from the Native American Medicine Cards; I have no idea what NA spiritualism says in this in general.)

Given this set of generalities, let me share with you my personal meditation that I use. I will post it here http://davensjournal.com/TTDM.xhtml . Take a look at it and read it. Look for those 6 general aspects of all meditations in there. Then go back and look at the Flame and Shadow Guided Meditation at: http://davensjournal.com/FS.zip for the wav and http://davensjournal.com/FaS.xhtml for the text.

The best part of this is that once you know the general shape of what your meditation will be, you don't have to read it out loud. You can follow it all in your head to its conclusion, without ever having to disturb your meditation or the environment around you. No tape recorders, no .wav files, no anything except your own imagination and willpower.

Now, lets say that you get into the trance state and are completely relaxed. How do you maintain that state over time? There are a few things that will help you but ultimately it's your will that will decide whether or not you maintain that state.

Tool number one: Visualizations. Seeing pictures and environments in your head. Imagining a scene and make it real around you, from the sights, to the smells and the sounds. Feeling the heat from a lazy summer day, hearing the drone of bees and sensing the humidity in the air, just before the thunderstorm. Making that environment real around you in every way imaginable.

This takes some doing, and not everyone can achieve a complete mastery of visualization. I have not yet, although I have been practicing for multiple years on being able to achieve this, sometime soon, perhaps. I have gotten close, however, which is a tremendous step forward. And I have had this fantasy environment "snap" into focus around me at different times, showing me that I was now projecting out of my body.

These are some hints I can give you about this tool in attempting to maintain trance: Don't get to detail oriented. If you get caught up in making every snowflake different, and forget to include the cold, then something is wrong. Start from the general and work your way down to the specific when doing this. For example, make it day, make the sun shining, make the wind blow, make the wind cold, make the trees sigh around you, then make the snowflakes around you different. Going the opposite way, from the specific to the general only frustrates you and makes it seem as though it's too much bother.

Tool number two: Hypnagogic images. Watch that pretty light show there behind your eyelids. ;-) That is the hypnagogic images. It is theorized by some (most notably Dr. Donald DeGracia,), that this hypnagogic light show is a gateway to the Astral Plane. Watching the lights and looking at the patterns can open a window in you to other worlds. Dr. DeGarcia is a gentleman who taught a class in Astral Projection a long time ago. I reference heavily his work and in my class lessons on OBE and I put my commentaries in about his teachings. If you do a web search on his name and Astral Projection, I bet you will find his class.

Basically what he recommends is that you look at the lights. Those lights will form random patterns on your eyelids, as you watch them. Rather than visualizing something in your head, he believes that if you watch the patterns long enough, you will start seeing images form in those patterns and in the darkness behind your eyes.

I have experienced this phenomenon myself, and can only say that what he describes in his class on CompuServe is accurate. I have not yet projected from that state of watching the hypnagogic images into a true projection episode, but with practice I hope to be able to do so.

The advantage to this kind of maintaining of trance is that you are passive. There is nothing that you have to do or think of in order to remain in this state. At most what you have to do is to keep reminding yourself why you are looking at this light show, and keep mentally jerking your mind back on track until it becomes automatic with no further thought required.

Tool three: The next means of maintaining trance is thinking about one thought to the exclusion of everything else. In this method of maintenance, you pick a thought or problem, and you think it through to its logical conclusion. You acknowledge that there are associations and sidetracks that you could take, but you set aside the digression for later in the meditation. This is how many who meditate and come back with answers to problems go about it.

For instance consider this problem: you want to find out why you feel restless in a relationship (this is only an example). You would start with the problem, define the problem by asking questions of you like "Why do I feel restless" and "who is causing the restlessness in me" and "am I the reason for the restless feeling or is it someone else?" From there, taking the answers to the preceding questions, you would narrow the problem down until it is as exact as possible for you to define.

Once the problem is defined and the questions asked, you would start thinking about different solutions to that problem. Let's say, for example, that in the above question, it was finally defined, as "I am restless in this relationship I am in now because of what I am perceiving as a threat from my significant other and I am embarrassed or uncomfortable or smothered by their 'clinging' to me." Once you have reached this level of exactness, you can start finding solutions to this problem by thinking about "if-then" scenarios.

Now, this is not to say that every meditation needs to be this introspective, but it will help if you know yourself as well as you can before you start projecting out of your body. There will come a time when your fears, hopes, hates, and all the sludge you pile up in your life will personify on the Astral Plane and challenge you; get past it or stay in your body. This concept is called the Guardian at the Gate. And you MUST defeat it in order to continue to progress.

Okay, having said all of that, let's talk a little about "conscious meditation" or being able to meditate while physically active.

"You can't do that," you say? You can't meditate while doing something with your body because you have to be physically relaxed in order to ignore the body? Yes, that is true, but I beg to differ in some of the substance of this statement. You CAN meditate while doing something physical, but it takes some doing.

For example, have you ever been walking outside and let your thoughts drift? Suddenly, you are where you wanted to go with no memory of having crossed the intervening space? That's an example of conscious meditation. Martial Artists are a group that uses this technique. My wife insists it is an aspect of being able to tesser (term coined by Madeleine L’Engle in the Wrinkle in Time series) or to fold time and space so that you can step from one place to another without crossing the intervening distance.

Martial Artists have a series of prearranged movements that they do called "katas". A kata sequence of movements will have stances, punches, kicks, blocks, and strikes with other body parts, movements from point A to point B, motions and many other elements to them. The movements are combined in different degrees of difficulty and pattern to teach the body the pattern of what to do without conscious thought. It is part of the practice that each and every one of the Martial Artists go through to train the body and discipline it. Some of the most well known katas are the motions and "dance" people who practice Tai Chi do. It is slow and graceful and beautiful. But there is a bigger purpose to these movements than you suspect.

I'll give you the simplest example that I know of, from my own days of taking Martial Arts.

I'll have to explain some of the terms since the movements and the strikes and blocks are in Japanese and will mean nothing to you unless you know what stance they are talking about.

* Look West. Step out to West into zenkutsu-dachi (this is a stance. Basically, the stance position is weight forward on the left leg bent at the knee, with the right leg extended behind you. The feet are shoulder width as seen from head on, and about twice shoulder width front to back. Most of your weight is distributed as 60% front leg, 40% rear leg. Feet are at a 45% angle to your hips and your back and spine are straight) and execute a left hand gedan ude-uke. (Here's a block. It's called a "Down block" since you are blocking downward. Ultimately your closed fist winds up over your knee, separated by about 2 inches. It blocks low kicks and sweeps them to the outside. Either hand can execute it.) KIAI (this is a yell.)

* Right foot steps forward into zenkutsu-dachi (see above) and execute a right hand chudan zuki. (Reverse punch. Punching hand slams into the solar plexus and the opposite hand counterbalances the power by pulling back to the hip.)

* Look East (over right shoulder). Right foot steps clockwise 180 degrees (end facing East) into zenkutsu-dachi (see above) and execute a right hand gedan ude-uke. (See above again)

There is more to this. The point of my showing you this is to let you know just how complex this process can be. Bear with me a few moments longer. I'm trying to make a point.

If you wish to see more of the above example, I got it from http://www.ryu.com/ryu-cgi-bin/search_item/:CD_kata?Taikyoku_1_Shudokan

Once these movements are mastered, then the student practices constantly (over a period of months) until they can start seeing the opponent they are supposedly fighting against. At this point they are not thinking about the individual movements any longer, but thinking instead about how they are supposed to be doing the kata. From this, and with a lot more practice, they don't even have to have their mind on the kata anymore, just on whatever problem they are thinking about.

Let me elaborate on the stages that are occurring here for a moment: In the beginning, not only is the student learning the above movements, but they are also concentrating on technique, proper stances, balance, memorizing the movements of their body, correct punches, correct blocks, correct transitions from one stance to another, and many more things, like hearing the teacher.

So, while they do these katas, they seem jerky, unsure, sporadic, and sometimes they have to do the same movements over and over again. From there, as they learn the kata, they can free up sections of their mind to deal with other things, like the visualizations. Because all their concentration was taken up with just LEARNING the kata, now they free portions of their mind to worry about their imaginary opponent, and perfecting their movements and their strikes and blocks.

Seeing how this relates yet? As the body and mind learns something repetitive, the mind is freed to start focusing on other things.

After they move through this transition point, to a point where the kata is so firmly locked into their muscles and their brain stem that they don't have to think about the kata at all anymore, they can meditate while doing the movements. And some of the results from meditations like this can be spectacular.

This holds true for any repetitive action that your body has learned to a point where it is reflexive in nature, from running to breathing. After a while of doing an action over and over again, the body knows what is supposed to happen now, and the mind can wander into other areas of thought and consciousness. I know someone who meditates to dishwashing like this. The movements and actions are no longer the focus of what she is doing, but the rhythm is what is important.

A mild example of this can be seen in highway hypnosis. Your body knows how to drive a car and it shuts the mind down so that it can drive. The driver becomes less and less alert and "spaces out" for a while, while the body drives on autopilot.

Knowing that this kind of action is possible now, you should be better able to understand how much practice they have when Native Americans go on a Vision Quest out into the hinterlands and the Native peoples of Australia (g'day) go into the Dreamtime. The dances and the movements are learned by rote, like multiplications tables, and the motion is translated into a meditation.

Please understand, I don't advise this for everyone. It is a hard place to get to and you HAVE to practice the movements to whatever you use as your device for this kind of meditation constantly. I am only informing you that it is possible to do this kind of meditation. I have never had the experience of OOBE while doing any of these exercises, but knowing the state of mind that is invoked during some of them, I can see it happening.

On a side note and of relevance to the High Magick Class, this is the same thing that happens during ritual, especially repetitive rote ritual. Doing the same movements, saying the same things, smelling the same incense, and so on can throw the mind out of gear enough to be a meditation all on it's own. Some things, like the long rituals of the Key of Solomon, can throw your mind into a meditation due entirely to the chants. I state above the one should not meditate like this to achieve OOBE, and that's true. However, it is perfectly acceptable to meditate like this in a Magickal ritual. That's one of the purposes of the ritual after all.

That's it on the lessons on meditation from the OOBE class. The other part I have is a document on shielding and warding, which in this case relates to some concerns that have been expressed to me in various mediums.

Shielding and warding places are some of the most common spells you will wind up casting as time goes on. You may only cast that "Fortune" spell once in a while, you will probably only do the healings when someone is hurt, but every time you go into a magickal ritual, you will cast some variant of a shield or ward.

Shields and Wards

One of the first things that you need to accept and act accordingly when dealing with these protections is that they are real. If you assume that they are simply a projection of your imagination, you may as well stop now. No matter the tradition you are trained in, ALL of them have some variant of protection as part of its structure. Some examples of this are:

Wiccans "Casting a Circle" Christians "Dedication and Sanctification" Native ceremonies of blessing and consecration of the Drum Circle Prayers for protection

There are more, but I think you have the idea. Most of these seem to be definable as prayers; very few traditions and religions go so far as to make this a magickal rite in and of itself.

However, when dealing with the Astral World, one must assume that because you are able to interact with that world, that there are things that need to be protected against. Some of them are nuisances, some are curious, and some are truly dangerous. Also you must keep in mind that just as you can protect an area for yourself, so can others. Thus, if you encounter a wall on the Astral Plane that you cannot get past, leave it alone. Let me say that again, if you encounter a wall on the Astral Plane that you cannot get past, leave it alone.

Regardless of the type of protection that is needed, there are a few steps that are similar.

First is the preparation; getting yourself into a meditative or ecstatic mindset in which your consciousness is altered enough to allow you to see on the Astral Plane without leaving your body.

Second is the visualization of what you want to do.

Third is usually the actual construction of the protections (generally with the medium of a god-like being helping or doing it themselves).

Finally, there is the assumption that the protections are working and forgetting about them.

The preparation phase is probably the easiest to actually do, since it's the same state that you go into each night before you fall into true sleep. It's a self-hypnotic state in which you can see into the Astral Plane, see the things that you wish to protect against, sense them or what have you. It's a lowering of the mental barriers the most of us have in place on a day to day basis that allow us to function in only THIS plane. Once they are lowered and you are calm and centered, step two can be started.

This is where you decide just what you need. Do you shield yourself or Ward the House you are in? A shield is mobile and will travel with you, and consequently is easier to construct, but a Ward will protect anyone in the home with you. However, to counteract that advantage, anyone on the inside of the wards will be able to invite other beings across. There are a few ways around this. You can make sure no one ever comes in your house, but that is not very practical. I will discuss another way in a while.

Understand, a Shield or Ward acts exactly like a force field on the Astral Plane. It will repel and prevent things on the Astral Plane from crossing its boundaries so long as it is in existence. In addition, anything that exists on the Astral plane inside those protections will be unable to cross those protections to get out, so it could be effective in trapping a spirit that you wish to be contained.

Generally, the mental visualization that many use is a sphere or egg of light, surrounding and encasing whatever it is they want to protect. That sphere is sometimes shrunk down to the surface of whatever is being protected, but not always. In this case, your aura is almost exactly like a shield, the only difference being that the aura itself is completely unconscious protection, and a shield is under conscious control.

A shield or ward can also protect from things like magick and psychic abilities as well. If, for example, you are one of those who feel other people's emotions all the time (also referred to as an Empath), a shield can keep those emotions out of your perception and allow you to regain a good deal of mental stability.

Many meditations, self-hypnotic tapes and guided meditations take you through this step without you being aware of it. If you have ever listened to any of these, do you remember the part where the person speaking was talking about how your body was relaxed and the light was all around you? That is the set of suggestions that enable you to construct a simple shield around yourself. It usually doesn't last beyond the end of that session, but it still protects you to an extent while you are in this trance.

Now, having determined the type of protection you need, how do you go about creating it?

Most shields and Wards are created entirely with the visualization of the mind. Normally, the caster creates the structure of the protection in his/her imagination, feeding energy into it from him/herself, then releasing it to settle around whatever is to be protected. It can be as simple as feeling as though you are wrapping yourself into a thicker and thicker blanket, to standing under a waterfall, to building a brick wall around you, to seeing a crystalline faceted geodesic sphere around your house. It all depends on what you want it to look like and your skill in visualizing it.

Normally many people have a good idea what they want to keep out with this kind of ritual, be it intangibles such as thought and emotion, to magickal energies that could be directed at them, to astral beings that are not specifically invited into the wards, to everything. You need to keep this in mind as you construct these wards and shields.

I'll share with you MY shielding/warding spell and tell you about my permanent wards on my house, just to give you an idea. However, this is not all-inclusive and there will be links to other articles dealing with this same subject at the end of this essay.

Daven's Wards and Shields

I have two different kinds of shields, really. I have the wards on my home, which I take a part of when I leave, and the shields that I put up in case I need to do something psychic away from home. I'll tell you about the second kind first.

When I start (we will assume this is a magickal rite, or a spell that I'm casting), the first thing I do is define the area I wish to protect. If it is only myself, as opposed to a Circle in which I invoke the Gods and so on, then all I do is simply see a ball of light deep inside my chest, inside my heart. I see that ball as being perfectly solid, bright and full of energy. I grow that ball larger and larger, until it is solid and filling my chest area. Now, this does take energy. I then tell that ball of light that it will be come a shield around me to keep out ________________. Because I'm the one creating this, I make sure that the energy understands me and that I have convinced it that it will become a shield. Then I continue to expand that ball, while a hollow place in the center of that ball forms. As the sphere continues to expand, the walls get thinner and everything that is negative in myself driven out in front of those expanding walls of light.

Eventually, I finish expanding it around me. Now I'm in the center of that sphere of light, with it surrounding me and taking it's energy directly from me and my life force. Usually at this point, I shrink the sphere down so that it is right next to my skin, once again surrounding me and continuing to glow brightly. I dim the intensity of the glow down so that it is not so bright, and thin the walls of that shield until I can sense the things I need to outside of the shield.

That's it. End of the fireworks.

The process is similar for a Ward, and my first ones were exactly the same, save that I kept expanding the shield until it surrounded my house, then shrunk it down to the walls of the house I was in, and then I hooked the electrical power in the walls into the shields so that the ward would be powered by the electricity itself, rather than from me. With this process, you can also make your doorways "clean room suits". Imagine that as a person enters, the ward bends around them stretching over them like a glove so that they are inside the room but not the wards. It is analogous to the suits attached to long plastic umbilicals used for very dangerous germs and viruses.

Here are links to some other wards and shields I know of:

http://davensjournal.com/TTRoW.xhtml
Ward and Guards
Questions and answers about shielding
Protecting Yourself
A Simple Warding
Two Protective Rituals
http://pagan-home.com/bos/shield.htm
http://www.tryskelion.com/banishing.htm
http://www.tryskelion.com/cast_circle.htm
http://www.tryskelion.com/mirror_shield.htm
http://www.tryskelion.com/protcone.htm
http://www.tryskelion.com/spell18.htm

just to name a few. ;-)

Most often, wards and shields are nothing more than creative visualization. There are certainly times that someone takes the process to an extreme and makes a whole rite out of it.

Please note a few things:

1. These do not necessarily get rid of something that is already there, it will only protect from new outside influences
2. This does not sanctify an area, that is a whole 'nother rite.
3. People inside the wards (as opposed to the shields) will be able to invite other beings inside, without your consent, unless you take steps to make sure that you are the only one with the authority to invite them in (adding a structure to the ward).
4. These need power continuously. Most commonly a shield is directly linked into the spine and powered from your energies. A ward is usually powered by an outside source, such as the elements or electricity.
5. As the creator of them, YOU will know if someone breaches them without consent, but you will have to figure out what that "feels" like.

And finally, a caution, once cast, you can get rid of the wards or shields by simply believing them not there. So, if you have the occasion to remember your shield or ward, know that they are still there; still protecting you, or you will have to go through the entire process again.

I'm adding the text of an email I sent a while back to a mother who was being haunted by an astral entity, and had written me for help. She consequently wrote back and told me that it worked perfectly and she had no further problems.

Greetings!

Well, this is an interesting problem you have. I can only offer some suggestions, not a solution.

First off, you must understand that a shield like what you tried to erect around your house only keeps out new influences, it does not prevent those that are already there from continuing to occur.

Think of this like you would a building. The Shield or Ward is like the physical walls of this building, and locking the doors will keep out others, but not prevent everything from being stolen by those who are already inside.

You are going to have to cleanse your house. By that I mean you will need to vacuum the entire house, bottom to top, dust and clean everything in your house, including anyone who is living inside. If it helps, use an herbal bath designed for cleansing like you will find in some books or on the Internet under "aromatherapy".

Next, you will have to bless your house. First, raise a "temporary" shield around the house. Think of a force field like from Star Trek completely enclosing your house, even through the ground. Next you will use that smudge you had to drive out the things in the house. "See" them, in your mind, being driven out of your house by the smoke of the smudge and through the force field you put up. Go through every part of the house with this smudge, fanning the smoke into the corners and against the walls as well. Start from the center of the room and work your way outward.

Once that is done, turn the shield you have around your house into a permanent barrier. Simply "see" it shrinking down to the walls and roof and foundation of the house and settling there. See the electrical system feeding the energy to the shield to keep it erect and present. That's all you need to do.

This should keep out everything that you do not specifically invite into your home. Your Angels, Guardians, Guides, Teachers, what-have-you will not cross this barrier unless you tell them it's okay for them to be present. Everything else it will keep out.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, ends the parts pulled from other lessons. I may reference things from here, so I hope you all understand this material. If not, there will be Q&A sessions where you can ask me to clarify it.

There is one other aspect to this that you must know about. That is "Grounding and Centering".

This pair of skills is critical to your success in meditation and in casting any spells. Centering brings your whole being into harmony with what you want to do, and gets it all focused on the job at hand, while grounding gives one a "shunt" if you will to be able to drain off excess energy or channel overloads in the case of a surge.

The means of doing this is pretty simple. To Center:

First, clear your mind of all thoughts, other than the work you are about to do. Don't worry about anything.

Spend a few moments feeling your energy inside you. Gather that energy into one place, generally just behind your navel, in the place that the Japanese call the "hara" or the center of your being. Let that energy flow to that place and pool there. The more energy you have flowing there, the more you will have to draw upon when you begin your spell. This is your internal metaphysical energy battery. It's exactly the same as your external battery, but this is always with you and is recharged by food and life. This is what you draw upon when you are in the Circle and casting a spell to help out person X.

Once you have collected as much energy as possible in the hara, feel a tendril of your life force leaving your body through your root charka, usually seen as either at the base of the spine or just between your legs. Feel that tendril or conduit going down into the ground as deep as you want to go or as deeply as it wants to go. At some point while sending out this tendril of energy, it will stop flowing out of you and you should feel it resting on something solid. At this point, I usually see the end of that energy forming itself into a ship's anchor and biting into the ground at that point, staying stable an positioned there where only I can release it. My wife sees it as the tap and feeder roots of a tree.

Congratulations, you have just grounded and centered. Centering is gathering that energy together for use, and grounding is sending that tendril out to hold you anchored to here/now. That ground also gives you a shunt to dump energy into the Earth that could overwhelm you, or a conduit to draw energy from should you need it. Some people have spoken of having all the energy they just centered in their hara dump suddenly into the ground. If this happens to you, don't worry, this is normal and it's the Earth's way of making sure you stay balanced. If you wait for a while, that energy will come back, but the "flavor" of that energy will be different.

What is happening is the Earth felt that energy and realized that there was something wrong with it, that it was contaminating you for some reason. It pulled that energy out of you to cleanse it, but to do so correctly, it must give you back the same amount of energy it took, so it is giving you Earth Energy to replace your own store of energy. This is normal do don't panic if it happens.

Others have also told me about them "grounding" to something other than the Earth. I know of one person who grounds into a tree, and a few who can ground into the Air. In other words, the Ground is not necessarily the Earth. It's like the ground wire in an electrical circuit; it's what completes a connection and allows the energy to flow. So don't worry if suddenly you find yourself grounding into a lake rather than into the Earth.

Okay, that's enough for now. This is a whole lot to absorb in one lesson, so I'll see what I can do to make the assignment simpler.

Assignment:

Continue drawing energy from the Wind, but add the Earth now. Same procedure and technique, and I describe another way of doing this in the section on grounding. Once again, write your impressions into your journals.

Practice gathering your energy into your hara, in the same way that I described in the final section of this lesson. Gather it there and go on to whatever else you have to do in that meditation session. When you come back for the next meditation, make note how long it takes to gather that energy again. Eventually what should happen is that it takes only a few seconds to gather your energy together and be ready. Most of the energy should start naturally pooling there.

Continue to charge your jewelry battery, but also start pulling from it somewhat. I want you to become proficient in pulling and sending this energy from one place to another. Those of you who have a lot of practice with this, I want you to pull and send energy to and from something that is distant from your physical location. If your battery is a stone, take it to work one day and leave it there. During your next meditation, I want you to draw/put energy to/from that battery, even though it is not with you. Just another step.

Don't worry; everyone will eventually be doing this.

Concentrate on doing this for now, I won't make you study anything further. Focus on practice and writing down what you see/feel and experience while doing these exercises.

Your assignment to turn in is four entries, verbatim, from your journal that you feel are representative of a typical session of meditation or significant in some way to what you are doing. The time period I want to see is this past month.

If these are embarrassing or highly personal, contact me at daven@davensjournal.com and we can see what other arrangements we can make.

Go, have fun, sin no more and take care of yourself.

Daven

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