Pause, Play: a Higher Consciousness Handbook

The Higher Consciousness Handbook is a book of practical psychology for the awakened and the awakening individual.

Intended for the advanced explorer of consciousness, this book can be a source of inspiration and experimentation for anybody looking to free their mind and play with their sense of reality.

The Higher Consciousness Handbook seeks to answer a basic question of consciousness change. How can we live our daily lives in a higher of state consciousness? In other words, how can we interact with our world knowing that we are one?

Learn how by trying more than fifty techniques, including mindfulness, magick, sigils, synchronicities, dreaming, breathing, sex, and more.

Copyright © 2011, by Klaas Pieter van der Tempel

Pause, PlayA Higher Consciousness HandbookPause, Play

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Pause, Play

A Higher Consciousness Handbook

Klaas Pieter van der Tempel

2011 Clayber Printing Under no circumstances should this text be read near a source of light.

Contact the author at [email protected] design and illustrations by Witte van der Tempel

To the squirrels and the trees in which they dance.


Contents

i. Foreword 5

ii.Why the Handbook? 7

Three parts 8

PART I - A Day with Higher Consciousness 10

PART II - Pause, Play: Mindfulness and Magick 22

The Pause: Mindfulness 25

The Play: Magick 27

Conscious + Unconscious 29

PART III - The Techniques 33

How to read the techniques 34

Disclaimer 35

Techniques A-Z 36

Summary: What’s in Your Hands? 137

Index 139


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i. Foreword

Wake up.

Remember what you really are,

step out of the comfort of your mind and recognize yourself

out here:

Out here is you.

Those of us who have experienced what is by now a bit of a New Age cli-

ché – that we are all one consciousness – and who have come back again

with that overwhelming insight, may have gone on to experience the same

frustration that I have. I mean the frustration of coming down from our

euphoria and eventually forgetting it. We forget what we are; we forget that

we are one with the moment and with everything we see, hear, smell, feel,

taste, think, do, and dream. And, as a result, all the powers that go with our

higher state of consciousness are lost.

This coming and going raises an important question. Why can’t we be

‘enlightened’ all, or most of the time?

Part of me accepts it as inevitable; that at this stage in our evolution, we

can only handle being in tune with our power and responsibility some of the

time. That we’re part-time enlightened.

Butanothersideofmeisnotsoeasilysatisfied.It’sthepartofmethathas

never been able to put aside the revelation that waking up was; the part of


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me that revels in feeling, and living our simultaneous identity as creation

andcreator.Aslittlemindandbigmind,mereegoandunifiedAll.

This second part of me is what has written this book. The Handbook is

the result of my own research, experiments, and developments in the realm

of consciousness change. In it, I have built up and borrowed a range of dif-

ferent perspectives and techniques. Techniques that help us to focus on our

consciousness of being, choosing, and creating the world with our minds.

It takes discipline and dedication to talk the talk and walk the walk. I hope

that this Handbook will provide you with enough useful tricks to empower

your own discipline, and to engage higher states of consciousness in your

daily life.

Godspeed,

Klaas Pieter van der Tempel

2011


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ii. Why the Handbook?

This book is a guide, a practical handbook for use in our daily lives. From

mindfulnesstomagick,itlistsoverfiftywaysoftranscendingthemind–or

the ego – and opening up to a higher state of consciousness.

Higher consciousness is any state of being in which reality becomes alive,

sacred, playful, and magical. It’s a dimension of being where life is a game -

a waking dream - and anything is possible.

In higher states, which take us out of our ordinary state of mind, we are

suddenly extremely present. Our interaction with the world around us is

taken to a whole new level, a level that is overwhelming and inconceivable

to a mind that hasn’t been introduced to it yet. We become conscious of a

so-called mystical truth: namely, we see that the world around us is us. The

challenge, for most of us who have seen it, is to experience this on a daily

basis.

This is the core message of higher consciousness, and it is the core of this

handbook. Interact with the world knowing that you are it, and that you are

your own creator. You are your own creator.1

Higher consciousness is more than a belief system. It is a level of experi-

ence. Once we are at this higher level, we can take our inner world - our

[1] Which “you” are we talking about? The awakened one, awake to his or her union with reality.


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mind, feelings, beliefs, and our experience of life and reality - into our own

hands.2

The more our minds become our own, the more honest and creative our

perception of reality becomes. Instead of getting in our own way and being

self-destructive, we can speed up the steps of our development and become

the artists of our own minds. To this end, the purpose of this book is

to learn how to use higher states of consciousness – an increased

awareness of the so-called spiritual dimension of reality – as a means

to an end. Higher consciousness is a starting point for thinking for our-

selves, knowing ourselves, and transforming ourselves. It is a place of heal-

ing and connection. It is where we can evolve ourselves and rediscover the

true meaning of our existence. Using it allows us any and every day to ask

and answer the questions that give meaning and direction to our lives: Who

am I? What is the purpose of my life? Why am I doing this? Does this make

me happy? What am I learning from this? And what reality am I creating for

myself and for the people around me right now?

Three parts Therearethreepartstothisbook,whatIcallthefictionalpart,thenerdy

part,andthefunpart.Itmaybegoodtoreadthemfromstarttofinish,but

ontheotherhand,youmayfindsomeofitoldnews,uninteresting,oroverly

[2] This is not to say that ‘higher’ consciousness is necessarily ‘better’ consciousness. Yes, it creates more freedom, but this freedom may feel like a burden for those lacking the right tools to deal with it. Hence the Handbook.


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complicated. If this is the case you can easily skip around the text without

any problems.

Part one – A Day with Higher Consciousness – is a description of a typical

daywithhigherconsciousness.It’safictionalizedexampleofhowthediffer-

ent methods of consciousness change can be used in your daily life.

Second is the philosophical bit. It describes the two basic elements of liv-

ing with higher consciousness; Mindfulness and Magick. A framework is

presented within which the higher consciousness techniques can be under-

stood, a framework which I like to think of as “pause” and “play.”

Third and last is the practical part. It’s the biggest part, because it has all

the tricks and experiments, mantras, tantras and prayers so that you can

start your day the holy way.

Part I

A Day with Higher Consciousness


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The following is a fictionalized account of what a typical day in a mind

seeking higher consciousness might look like. It includes some of the tech-

niques described later in the book to show how they might be used.

When Bob wakes up in the morning, he’s fading in and out of a sleeping

statewherehisbedroommixeswiththerealmofhisdreams.Inthisfirst

stage of daily consciousness, he makes a quick note to himself that he is

waking up. “I am waking up, and now I am awake to the fact that I exist

again.” By waking up consciously, Bob is aware of the fact that he has be-

come conscious.

Sound weird? If we simply take it for granted that we wake up every day to

thesameworldthatwewereinyesterday,weeasilyforgetthesignificance

that each day has. We forget that we have put ourselves here, for whatever

purpose, and that we have a new day to live out.

So now Bob is aware of being awake, and he has a sense of purpose.

Soonenough,thedailychoresandresponsibilitiesstarttofloodhismind.

He’s interacting with his wife, Eve, being social, being human. They kiss, she

goes to work. Bob eats breakfast, usually without recognizing the breakfast

forwhatitis,becauseinthemorninghe’srunningonemptyandhefindsit

hard to be ‘on.’

Oncehe’sfinishedhisbreakfastandgottendressed,Bobsplasheshisface

with cold water and wakes up again. He takes a good look in the mirror. He

doesn’t just look at himself, he looks at his self; he’s looking deep into his

own eyes, communicating to himself that he is here. He smiles, albeit with

a trickster’s slanted smile. Go get ‘em tiger!


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Outside Bob gauges the weather. Is it too hot, too cold? He nonchalantly

reminds himself that nothing is real, and that this includes the sensation of

temperature. Cold is an illusion; he is the entire universe, how could he let

something like the weather overcome his comfort level? So if it’s too cold,

Bob labels the cold as an illusion and he walks around tall and upright in-

stead of huddling and slouching over and letting the cold get to him.

He starts walking. Not just automatically, but actively; he feels the tread

of his shoe on the sidewalk, and notes the rhythm and the pace. Is he in a

hurry? Then he’ll slow himself down. He comes to a natural walk, where his

legs are in perfect balance and can now move in perfect harmony without

his direction. It’s a walking meditation.

Now Bob can start to imagine the way he will get to the tram or train sta-

tion and make a smooth connection to where he’s going. He imagines he will

be right on time, that the train is there for him and it’s helping him on his

daily adventure.

Butfirstheneedstogetthere.Bobdropstheimaginingandvisualizingfor

a bit, and as he’s walking along, he notices that he’s looking at other people,

and that they are looking at him. Or not. And as he’s looking and being

looked at, he notices he’s thinking about these people: he makes judgments

about their appearance, their social standing and ethnicity, their vibes.

Mostofitisnegative;there’sjustmoretosayabouttheirdeficienciesthan

their virtues. Bob notices this focus on the negative, and decides to turn it

around. He makes a note to himself that these people he is looking at are

mirrors of himself in his dream world; projections of who he is or might be,


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all equal, and all equally him. He doesn’t hate on himself for being judgmen-

tal, but he decides to shift his gaze towards noticing the beauty in others. He

doesn’t like being stuck in a mind that wallows in negativity, so he makes

an effort to smile at them, acknowledging the gods that they are. He doesn’t

know if they can see it; but he knows that a part of them can, even if they

don’t know it consciously.

Now Bob is at work, or in his room, and he’s been sitting still for some

time staring at his computer screen. Like the stillness of his body, the air

itself has become stale, and he decides to do some breathwork. He inhales

deeply, then exhales all the way. Any thoughts or vicious circles of thought-

feeling that were in his mind are propelled outwards with the emptying of

his lungs. He holds the lungs still for a moment as they are totally empty,

andthinks;nowI’memptyagain.Relaxed,andreadytobefilledupwith

something new. Then he inhales deeply, exhales quickly, inhales deeply, and

exhales quickly and repeats a few times until his head begins to feel a bit

high.Hecoolshimselfintoanewflowbybreathingdeeplybutwithouttoo

muchforce,andeventuallymovesontootherthings.Movement,flow,and

energy have been restored to some degree.

Later, as he’s talking to some colleagues or strangers in the hallway, the

conversation is going in a rather mundane direction. It’s small talk. Nobody

is really connecting, and they’re not really talking about anything. Bob is

getting distracted until he notices a drawing he made on the palm of his

hand with a pen the night before. It’s a sigil, a magical emblem, and seeing


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it reminds him of the intent he put into it. When he drew the symbol, he

drew it with the intention that it would wake him up whenever he looked at

it; and since it looks kind of like a goofy rabbit, it reminds him to be a goofy

god and play around with his fellow humans. Have fun! Laugh it up with

your fellow gods! So he acts the fool, says something unexpected, and gets

people to step outside of their robotic shells for a bit.

One of Bob’s friends pulls him aside and tells him how he is doing. He asks

Bob if he should seriously go ahead with this ballsy project he’s preparing.

He has no idea what’s going to happen, he says. To take him out of his mind

and his worries, Bob resolves to ground him in reality. That means he’s

going to make him connect to this moment, connect his feet to the world,

to time, to the future, to the unknown; so that he remembers that even the

unknown is an aspect of himself, and that if he should have faith in any-

thing he should have faith in himself. Trust the process of nature, Bob tells

him, and that it will take you where you are going. Just have fun playing the

game you’re in. And if you take a risk and then can’t get out of a tricky place,

at least try to enjoy the ride. Remember that a part of yourself put you there

somehow, and that outside of time, you’ve seen it all before. It may sound

vague, but having the omniscience of the universe and the power over life

and death in your hands can be very reassuring.

Eventually the conversation ends and Bob is back at his computer. There’s

a word that somebody used that struck a note in his mind, so he decides to

lookitupinadictionarytofinditsetymologicalbackground.Thewordis


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‘insight.’ What does it mean, and what did it mean originally? He associates

insight with an ‘a-ha moment’. But the word itself is hinting at something

more deeply personal; namely, ‘in-sight’. Literally, the sight into yourself.

Are we all doing this whenever we get an intuition, Bob wonders? Does

the unconscious pop in while we’re not paying attention, dropping off little

goodies that we then take for granted?

At lunchtime Bob realizes that he and his coworkers have all prepared the

same sandwich today – ham and cheese. It’s a funky coincidence and they

have their laughs. But he realizes that it is actually ‘not’ a coincidence at all;

it’s a synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence. There’s probably no hidden

message in the fact that they all have ham and cheese (other than that they

were tuning in to some similar cosmic drive while making their sandwich-

es). But the real message of the synchronicity is not hidden; the real mes-

sage is Hey! This is a synchronicity! Your unconscious mind is calling out to

you through objective material reality! Wake the hell up! And so Bob wakes

up again, and realizes where he is and what they and their sandwiches all

are.

Right after lunch Bob goes to the bathroom down the hallway. It’s empty,

but he’s full; he has a majorly full bladder. So as he whips it out over the

urinal, the tension in his body spills out. His vision blurs in a moment of ec-

stasy, and he takes advantage of the moment to make his vision become psy-

chedelic. In other words, he uses the blur to go beyond what he can normally

see, and lets the borders and dimensions of reality slip away. By alternating

focus and unfocus and maintaining the blur, he can see inside as outside,


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and he’s no longer just pissing into the bowl. Reality has evaporated. He’s

a self-contained system that’s sharing tension and relief within itself, all

within the grandiose existence of consciousness. Yes, the toilet itself is an

aspect of his consciousness.

Later in the afternoon Bob is in a boardroom meeting with several people,

including one who he knows to be consciously aware. He knows that if he

looks into her eyes, even for a split second, they can make that connection

and recognize that ‘we are them’ and ‘they are us’. They’ve done it before. It

will help them take the creative heft of the moment into their own hands,

so that they can add a divine dimension to the proceedings. The change

need not even be through the action of their own hands or words; they can

simplyinfluenceotherstoexperienceorcreatesomesortofinspirationor

synchronicity just by being there. They allow magic to happen by being open

to it together, and surprise surprise, interesting and inspired ideas start to

appear in the group.

InthetrainonthewayhomeBobisstuckinrush-hourtraffic.There’s

zombie-like commuters in suits all around him. Bob allows himself a mo-

ment of respite by closing his eyes; he steps outside of the spacetime mo-

ment and becomes aware that it’s a moment of eternity. These people zoning

out after a day’s work are a play-act of eternity, gods being men and women,

and he can choose to be an example to them so they might regain part of

their divinity. He can stand up tall. He can take the sullen look off his own


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face and smile at people. He can feel radiant. And he can project some of

that energy into others. Or he can call out to them in his own mind to wake

them up.

Bob hears some people talking. Their words are angry and offensive. He

listens to which words they are using, and which ones seem to cut the deep-

est. He makes a note of it, and hopes to remember the pain these words can

cause so that he won’t repeat them himself. Most people don’t notice how

powerful their words are, but Bob aims to be aware of what he is saying,

what he means, and how it affects his audience. Listening to how other

people do it is a great way to learn.

At his station, Bob steps out of the train. He grabs the doorway to steady

himself. As he steps out of the door, he makes a conscious move from one

reality to another. From inside the train, that can of sardines full of stress

and fatigue, to outside the train, where there is open space, sunshine, and

fresh air. Bob has made a transition so that he does not need to linger in the

energy of the train.

However, the transition only lasts so long. Soon he catches himself think-

ing, Man, that train ride sucks. He catches himself thinking this because he

notices something else: an automatic thought process that has been kicked

into gear. After thinking the negative thought, he automatically begins to

relativize it. The train ride sucks; and yet, Bob thinks to himself, that’s not

the only way of looking at it. He can also think of it as something amazing,

because here are these clearly dedicated gods putting themselves through


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this torture. That’s pretty crazy. So the train ride is also amazing and crazy.

What’s more, Bob can sit in the train without being disturbed by the other

people’s energies. So why would he look down on them for making their own

choices?

Thenhemakesthefinalstatementofrelativity.Hethinkstohimself,Ev-

erything I say is true, false, and meaningless at the same time. I’m choosing

my own beliefs about my world right now, I’m creating the story that I’m ex-

periencing, and I’d just rather not get myself stuck in a mythology that says

“this sucks.” Bob’s recognized that yes, it sucks, but it doesn’t just suck. His

firstreaction,heknows,isn’talwaystheendofthestory.Therearealways

more ways to look at it.

So there. He’s changed his mind, reprogrammed a thought by relativizing

it. And he’s done this so often, studied so much about relative and plural

forms of logic in philosophy and science, that it comes naturally to him now.

He has a natural thought-checker, so that his mind is still somewhat in his

own hands, even if he’s not fully ‘awake’.

Bob is riding his bike home from the station at night, and it’s cold and

raining.However,thevalveonhistireisopenanditgoesflatafterbiking

just ten meters. So he decides to walk along a bit and think about what to do.

Along the way he inspects other bikes that are parked on the sidewalk to see

if anyone has left a pump on their bike by accident. “By accident,” he thinks,

“because nobody is stupid enough to leave their pump outside in this town.

Anything that isn’t tied down gets stolen.” Bob decides to walk to the next


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tramstop,parkhisbikethere,andtramithomeifhedoesn’tfindapump

along the way.

However, he keeps thinking and expecting the worst. “Nobody is stupid

enough to leave their pump outside.” Suddenly he becomes aware of the

negative expectations in his thoughts. He realizes they are helping to cre-

ate a sympathetic reality, where, sure enough, no pump materializes. So he

reverses his thoughts and thinks the opposite; “Somebody, or ‘the uncon-

scious’, has left a juicy pump out here for me tonight.” And then he empties

his mind of both negative projections and of positive expectations. The wish

has been expressed, no need to dwell on it.

Two seconds later, he has an encounter with a beautiful silver bike pump.

A minute after that, he is happily on his way biking home again.

Before going home Bob stops by the supermarket. Inside he’s overwhelmed

by the packaged foods. There’s just so much of it. It’s so neat and tidy; and

yet it looks so dead. There’s frozen stuff, fridges, cardboard and plastic ev-

erywhere. He starts up a mantra in his mind: This is all me, I am doing this.

This is all me, I am doing this. This is all me, and I am doing this. Gradually

the store becomes privy to his personal divine vision, and they are playing

the game of life again. It’s no longer a store full of dead things. It’s him, the

creator of illusion, calling out to play.

At home Bob cooks up a nice dinner for himself and his wife. As they’re

sittingdown, thedelicious foodfilling theirsenses, they takeamoment

to connect to what they’re doing. This food, these plants and animals, are


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aspectsoftheallthathavesacrificedthemselvesfortheirenjoyment.Itisa

privilege to eat this juicy pig, and so they say a prayer. They don’t say, Thank

you Jesus for this food. They say, Thank you pig, thank you potatoes, thank

you vegetables, thank you water. And they have instantaneous images in

their minds of the lives that each plant and animal has led before they ar-

rived at their mouths. And they feel gratitude, saying Thank you for joining

us in these bodies, and for giving us your health and your strength.

Dinner’s done. They’ve zoned out with some movie or TV series, and it’s

trash night so Bob goes outside with a fresh bag of garbage. It stinks, as al-

ways. He closes it up quickly to get out of the stink. But as he hits the street

with the bag, he sees dozens of other bags parked on the curb outside every

building. Everyone is dropping their garbage, knowing that it will disappear

in the morning so that they’ll never have to see it again. Into the garbage

bag, the black hole of consumer society, and it’s gone. Bob realizes this is

symbolic for throwing something of ourselves away, something we’d rather

not have to confront: our shadow side. It’s a ritual that lets us keep living the

dirty cluttered lives that we live. And yet it feels unholy to just throw it away

without a thought. Without recognizing what it is: a part of us. So he talks

to it, thanks it, and wishes it a future where it can be useful and admired

again. He loves his trash; he loves what he leaves behind, promising to pick

it up again in the future.

When it’s dark and they’re lying in bed, making small talk and sharing

tender moments and all that, Bob takes a moment to lie on his back. He has


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his eyes closed and focuses on the dark. It’s fully dark now; there’s no light,

and the darkness is ready to envelop them for the night. But he looks at the

darkness behind his eyes. He stares deeply into it, slightly up towards his

forehead. He’s literally opening his third eye, allowing mental images to

come forth from the dark spot between his eyes. It’s like a cosmic vortex

that you can stare into as if you’re trying to discern an image in a Magic

Eye book; as if you’re looking at something that has yet to appear, but you

already know that it’s there. And Bob speaks to what’s there. He says, Hello.

I am here, and you are here. Tell me, what is coming tomorrow? And then

he witnesses the images and transitions that come into his mind’s eye, fully

aware that they are streaming out of the unconscious. They do not nec-

essarily make sense. But he has made a direct connection to the uncon-

scious, which doesn’t speak in terms of sense. And Bob has connected to it

not through tarot cards or numerology or people or anything external, but

through this void in his own mind. It’s like talking to god itself, and god has

a lot to say. So Bob listens for a while, and sees what he can learn. Then he

talks back, and asks that tomorrow be a day of learning, interaction, en-

lightenment and play. He prays that it will be that way for all the world.

In this way, by practicing numerous tricks to alter his state of conscious-

ness, Bob has given his day purpose, lived with mindfulness and compas-

sion, and been responsible enough to make conscious changes to the direc-

tion of life itself. He’s made it flow and evolve in divinely creative ways,

and he’s had fun while doing it.

Part II

Mindfulness and Magick


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Everything begins with consciousness. Our thoughts, our feelings, our sens-

es, our intuitions, our experiences, our dreams; in short, our entire reality

is born out of consciousness. But where is our consciousness? What is it?

And are we getting it right?

Nobody really grows up with someone telling them how to operate their

consciousness. There’s no Operating Manual for our heads, no master who

teaches us how we can think, let alone how to meditate or be mindful.

Instead, we’re mostly taught what to think, and to never question these

thoughts again. If something crazy or weird comes up in our minds, we try

to pretend it didn’t happen. Or we are ashamed of it. Or we just get con-

fused, because we have no idea what is really going on inside of us. This

oftenleadstoalifetimeofconflictingthoughtsandemotions,guilt,judg-

ments, self-hatred, loneliness, and cynicism.

In truth, there are wild things going on inside our heads all of the time.

Inside all of us. There are hundreds of different voices, arguing, debating,

getting along, submitting, worrying, poking, admiring, and seducing us. On

the surface, all these voices add up to form what we call ‘me’, so that we can

express ourselves as individual human beings to the outside world.

But this ‘me’, or what we think of as our identity, which gives us our free

will, and which feels like the source of our consciousness, is a trick. It’s real

enough, but it’s not really you.

What we usually think of as ‘me’ is actually an automatic process. It’s like


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a rat in a laboratory. A conditioned mechanism that happens all by itself.

Each and every one of us is some kind of brain-body-mind “thing” which

marches around to the tune that was set up for us by our biological and cul-

tural backgrounds.3 We spend most of our lives wearing this body-mind

like a mask, rarely questioning what lies beneath it. It’s like we’re watching

the movie of our lives through our own eyes, without ever realizing that it’s

a movie.

Try watching your thoughts for a while. Sit comfortably, close your eyes,

andseewhat’sgoingoninside.Ifyoudo,you’llnoticeaconstantfloodof

random thoughts rushing through your mind. Our brain never shuts up.

It’s non-stop, literally; unless you’ve trained yourself (or rather, untrained

yourself) you cannot stop your thinking. Hello, machine!

This is what mystics of all times have called being ‘asleep.’ Yes, we exist.

Yes, we have a mind. But we aren’t very conscious of it (or at least, not as

conscious as we could be). Just like the heart, the liver, the endocrine system

and so on, the mind doesn’t need us, or our awareness of it, to operate. It can

lead us from birth to death without us ever wondering what it is. Without us

ever becoming aware of who and what we really are.

For those of us who are fascinated by the exploration of ourselves and the

deeper truth within, the time has come to turn off the autopilot; to lift the

veil, and face the full reality of our being. It’s time to take responsibility

[3] E.g., the language we speak, our belief systems, our imprints and traumas, our social conditioning, etc.


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forourownminds,andtofindoutwhatwecandowithmindfulnessand

magick.

The Pause: Mindfulness The secret is already out on mystical truth. There’s no use hiding it. The

big revelation, the ‘highest truth’, is that Real reality, the world you live in,

is you. It’s me. It’s us. As the Zen Buddhists say: ‘God, Nature, Man – no

difference.’

While it may feel as though we are all individual beings in separate bodies,

and that we have no idea what’s going on inside anybody else’s head, why we

are here, or where we are going, we can experience a deeper reality

where these boundaries dissolve. There is no inside or outside, no me

or you, no something or nothing. There is only awareness: the awareness

that it is all one. This is it, and it is us. Sound crazy? Sure enough. But what’s

really crazy is that it’s something we all experience when we transcend our

normal consciousness. Whether it is experienced spontaneously, such as by

getting hit by lightning, surviving a deadly disease or having a near death

experience, or whether it is induced through meditation, psychedelics, or

trance dancing, there are endless ways to come to this level of self-aware-

ness.Thetrickisinfindingwhichmethodworksforyou.

How? We can read books, and learn theories. We can go to shrinks, and

hear their analyses. Or we can look in the mirror, and see our physical

boundaries. But only a profound inner experience will reveal to us directly


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and honestly who we are. It is through experience, not through words, that

we become one with our truth.

The basic, most readily available technique to heighten your state of con-

sciousness is mindfulness. You can be mindful anywhere, anytime,

by taking a step back from your thoughts and just observing

yourself and your inner world. Mindfulness, in essence, means being

conscious of everything that goes on inside you. It’s like hitting the pause

button on your brain.

A more radical technique, which is perhaps the most powerful one of all, is

to ingest psychedelics. These unique plants, fungi, and chemical compounds

have been used by our ancestors all over the world as sacraments to open

the doors of perception. They are, in a sense, an explosion of mindfulness.

Whichever method we use, in experiencing higher consciousness, we

go from living in our heads4 to becoming aware that we are living in our

heads. This is probably why it’s called ‘higher’ consciousness. It is somehow

above, or outside of our normal consciousness, which is simply mind.

Of course, having the experience isn’t the same as doing something with

it. We could be a mystic for mysticism’s sake, and hang out alone tripping in

a cave our entire lives. To some people, the constant bliss and the ultimate

wisdom, health, radiance, and psychic powers that come with higher con-

sciousness make it good enough on its own. These people have found that

they can leave the world behind for a better place.

[4] E.g. our minds, egos, or illusions.


27

[5] Hence the -k at the end of the word, to differentiate it from regular stage magic.

But that’s not the point for most of us. We want to live our lives here, in

society, with the rest of humanity, and help to push and pull each other up

into the light. We want to come back from our ‘high,’ where we paused and

saw ourselves for who we are, and share it.

The Play: Magick Being in a higher state of consciousness allows us to do funny things with

our heads. We can be much more willful, imaginative, creative, and playful

than normal. We basically gain a measure of inner freedom. This change

brings us from reaching higher consciousness, or mindfulness, to using it,

with magick.

Magick, fundamentally, is an ancient approach to freethinking.5 It rests

on a core realization that can be encountered in a higher state of conscious-

ness; namely, the experience that reality itself is an illusion, a dream, a

game, and that whatever we believe about it is an illusion too. Again, higher

consciousness takes us from living in illusions to becoming aware that we

are living in illusions.

If you’ve made this transition in yourself, you probably know that it is

much more fun to choose your own illusions than to have them determined

for you. That’s what Bob, in Part I, was doing at almost every step of his

day. Instead of growing up to believe what we were taught to believe, like

a Hindu child of Hindu parents does, or a Republican child of Republican

parents,wefindoutwhichbeliefs(illusions)suitusbestforourselves.This


28

is not an easy task. We have to do what each great prophet, priest and phi-

losopher has had to do: to come up with our own story. And this is where

magick comes in handy, because it helps us to choose or even create our own

illusions: our own stories or belief systems.

Magick, like higher consciousness, is a step above belief systems. It is a

wayofcreatinganddestroyingourbeliefsasweseefit.Bychangingour

beliefs about reality, we change our experience of that reality. We are

willfully choosing our own illusions.

Why?

Simply put, if we don’t determine our own beliefs, our beliefs are being

determined for us. What reality do you prefer to live in? A depressing

drama, a cool adventure, or a playful comedy? At least some of the time,

why not decide for yourself?

We all do magick – we all change our beliefs from time to time. But for

it to be ‘true’ magick, it has to be done consciously. ‘True magick’ seems to

require a higher state of consciousness (or, at least, a previous experience of

it so that you know what you are capable of). If you’ve been in a higher state

of consciousness at any point in your life, you have a reference point for

knowing that all of reality itself is magic, and that anything is possible.

In a higher state of consciousness we can see what’s going on in our own

minds. The mindful magician stands over his own mind, like an engineer

standingoverhismachine,andfiguresouthowitworksandhowhecan

change or improve it.


29

One of the keys to doing magick is using words deliberately. Words are

magick, weavers of illusion, and they can make things seem as they are not.

Words create the illusion of truth. And truth is control. It’s like the

blinders on a horse, determining the limits of what we can see. If we uncon-

sciously believe some particular words to be truer than others, then those

words help control our sense of what is real. Words like “this is serious,”

“that’sillegal,”“thisisascientificfact,”“that’sasin,”“that’sjustthewayit

is,” or “I have to.”

If we believe in a truth, we literally put ourselves under a spell. We take the

words, wave a magic wand over them, and say ‘this is the truth’. And so it is.

However, if we really can determine our own truth, then we are free to de-

termine our own behavior. We can change our words to change our beliefs.

And if we can change our beliefs, we can change our perception of reality.

It’s basic mind control; deciding for ourselves which illusions we want to

live in. You choose how you play the game. This is magick.

Conscious + Unconscious Normally, we humans spend most of our time being at one particular level

of consciousness; namely, the mental. We spend so much time being in our

heads, in our thoughts, and being led by our thoughts, that we don’t notice

we’re being led. We’re on autopilot. And it’s an unconscious process that

happens so smoothly that we’re totally used to it.

This concept of the unconscious is key to understanding magick. Psycho-


30

logicallyspeaking,theunconsciouscanbedefinedaseverythingwe’renot

aware of. It includes our subconscious thoughts, our suppressed feelings,

bodily processes, hormones, our inner demons and assumptions, etc.

In magickal terms, however, the unconscious is far bigger than this. In

magick, our unconscious is everything we’re not aware of as being us. The

apple you’re eating, the paper you’re reading – the very book you hold in

yourhandsrighthereandnow–thepeskyflyinyourlivingroom,orthe

Earth you’re standing on; you normally don’t consciously experience any of

these as being part of you. That experience only seems to happen in higher

consciousness, when the conscious and unconscious have joined together.

The goal in magick, therefore, is to become conscious of the unconscious

– just like in a psychedelic or deeply meditative state – and then to use this

connection to change your perception of reality. Take, for example, some-

thing as simple as waiting in front of a red light and getting annoyed by it.

With practice, you can become mindful of your frustration. Then you can

moveontorecognizethatthelightisyou,andthatyouareit;firstyouwere

unconscious of this connection, but now you can move on from your nega-

tive state of mind and do something constructive. Imagine the light turning

greenjustforyou,perhapsbecauseitishappytobefinallyrecognizedfor

what it is.

The world is changed when we think. For better or worse, our thoughts

helpdefineoursenseofreality.Butifwecanwakeupfromourunconscious

thought processes, then we can start to project our conscious will into real-


31

ity instead.

Now, if we don’t like to send signals to our unconscious that work against

us, we need to become aware of them. We need to practice mindfulness, to

recognize when we are feeling afraid, guilty or ashamed, or being judgmen-

tal of ourselves or others. Here mindfulness and magick work hand

in hand. When you are mindful, you can transcend the automatic

patterns of your mind. And then you can do magick to create new

ones. This is a fundamental way of recreating a higher state of conscious-

ness.

We are talking here about consciously directed thought. It’s conscious

thought directed at the unconscious. We’ve made the link to our higher,

divine, and metaphysically mystical self, and are communicating with it.

If we put it all together we’ll see that all we ever do, essentially, is talk

to ourselves. Everything is self talking to and listening to self. Our words,

symbols, images, dreams, prayers and ideas, loaded with emotion, are a

feedback system between the conscious and the unconscious aspects of our-

selves. This connection is a constant dialog. It’s happening all the time. All

that subconscious chatter, the thought patterns and habits and beliefs and

judgments and likes and dislikes and self-loathing and shame and guilt and

synchronicities and love; it’s all part of the dialog that we’re holding with the

unconscious. And it’s helping to create the world we experience as real.

So, are you an island, and do you believe your thoughts and desires are

self-contained in your human brain? Or are you aware that your every


32

thought and feeling is interconnected to every last thing in the cosmos?

Consciousness, thoughts, creation: no difference.

To summarize this chapter, these are the two basic requirements for a

daily life with higher consciousness:

1. Mindfulness. We can practice mindfulness on a long term basis, and/or

compact it into one or more mystical (or psychedelic) experiences. Mindful-

ness is observing yourself. Be aware of what you are aware of. Be aware

of what you are thinking, what you are doing, and what you are feeling.

Remember and be aware of your connectedness with everything. This is

learning how to “pause” yourself.

2. Magick. Think, do, and feel, not just mindfully, but with conscious

intent. Don’t just let reality overcome you; be free to choose your level of

interaction and co-creation. This is learning how to “play” the reality of

your choice. From mindfulness to magick, from pause to play.

Part IIIThe Techniques


34

How to read the techniques Now we’ve covered the basics, all the necessary background for getting to

what it’s all about: the practical part of living a life with higher conscious-

ness.

Ideally, the blissful state of higher consciousness is a means, not an end.

We become ‘high’ so that we can play ball with the divine cosmos. This is a

game without winners or losers. Competition is only the surface of things.

The real challenge is to remember that we are playing, and to participate

withallourheartsandallourmindsinenjoyingwhatevergamewefind

ourselves playing together.

We know that play will sometimes end up in scrapes and bruises. Or that

we might get emotional, so that the game either becomes too serious or

stops altogether. Either way, chances are that the higher and connected

state will come to an end, and we are back in our minds, in our worries,

responsibilities, and struggles.

Obviously, we need something to get us out of our mind, so that we can

start to enjoy life and the direction it’s going in and even help direct it our-

selves. There are many basic techniques to try out, techniques that will

reconnect us to a higher state of awareness. These techniques allow us to

use our brain in different ways, either by increasing our awareness of our

mental habits or by restructuring the mind according to our will or desire.

In a sense, these techniques are all a form of neurological sabotage. They


35

all require a pause; a stop in what we are doing and what we are thinking.

A pause in time to exit the automatic ego and enter into that state of time-

lessness where ‘magic’ becomes real and reality becomes magical. For sim-

plicity’s sake, the techniques that induce the pause have the Pause symbol

beside them, whereas the play techniques are shown with the Play symbol.

Some techniques have both, and some have the Record symbol instead, in-

dicating that they are intended to be learned and integrated by the mind.

During my own learning process, I found that each technique I used for

waking myself up eventually wore itself out. I’m no spiritual junkie, and

I don’t have a guru complex that makes me chase after the latest greatest

teacher, but I have found that I need to constantly reinvent my approach.

Used tricks lose their meaning and their impact. Hence the long list of tech-

niqueswhichfillsuptherestofthishandbook,sothatyoucanexplorea

variety of methods over time.

Disclaimer1. These techniques are not for everybody. They are intended for advanced

explorers of consciousness. This book is presented to you on the assump-

tion that you, like the author, are familiar with (or perhaps seeking) an

experience of your greater identity – that you’ve had a so-called mystical

experience. Whatever the method, whatever time it takes you to get there

(to really get HERE), it is the experience of consciousness expansion that is

at the heart of this book’s value.


36

2. While many of the following techniques can be experimented with at

just about any moment in your life, it may not always be advisable to do so.

You cannot nor should you want to ‘transcend’ or ‘transform’ every single

negative experience you go through. Higher consciousness is not an excuse

to avoid pain or to stop being an asshole. Pain and suffering, as long as you

don’t get stuck in them, are powerful teachers. And there are no ups without

downs. Choose wisely, and try to maintain a healthy balance between being

a control freak who tries to be completely responsible for their own mind,

and just being: letting go of control, and accepting the experiences which

have come into your life.

3. Finally, you and I reserve the right to disagree with anything written

here. Nobody’s perfect :-)

Techniques A-Z The following is an alphabetical list of some of the different techniques

of consciousness change. Read them and try them out at whatever pace to

findoutwhichonesappealtoyou.Someareeasy,sometaketime.Iencour-

age you to investigate deeper into the ones that vibe with your way of doing

things. And most of all, I encourage you to try variations and combinations

and entirely new techniques for your own process of conscious evolution.

You’ll notice that the techniques which have the longest descriptions have

a short summary as well. They describe the what, why, and how of the tech-

nique in a quick and simple overview. But most techniques should speak for


37

themselves.

And now, without further ado: let the adventure begin! Huzzah!

Accept your dark side

Everyone has a dark side. While

a spiritual path may seem to take

you towards the good, the beauti-

ful, and the pure, and while you

may even have the desire and in-

tent to be as good, as conscious,

and as compassionate as you

can be, you still have a dark side.

Whether it’s in your mind, in your

dreams, in the outcomes of your actions, or in the things you should do

but don’t do, you can’t shake evil. It’s fundamental to what we all are. The

greater the light, the darker the shadow it casts.

It saves a lot of frustration when you accept this realization. You can stop

struggling to be perfect; you can stop struggling with yourself. The respon-

sibility of being pure all the time is too much to bear for any ego. Sometimes,

you have to let go of your striving for perfection, for being better, for being

in control, and accept that shit happens. Allow yourself to pout, to yell, to be

arrogant, to be callous, to think shameful thoughts. And @forgive yourself

for it. Otherwise you keep it all bottled up in your subconscious, until you

can’t hold it in anymore and it comes out and bites you or someone close to


38

you in the ass.

If you can accept your dark side, and allow it some space in your life, you

lighten the load that lies on your shoulders. Your transcendental self, your

whole self, is good, and it’s evil, and it’s neither. And so are you.

Act symbolically

Make your acts symbolic.

For example, make a conscious act out of taking

out the trash. Recognize the trash as a part of

yourself that you have discarded; that it’s a part

of your past. Pray to it that it will someday be-

come useful, perhaps as fuel, and not just be forgotten to poison the world

of the future. Thank it.

Sometimes it helps to create a symbolically ‘sacred’ space where you can

do your little consciousness change rituals. And, conversely, to have a place

where you don’t do anything spiritual at all – like in a gym, or during your

daily commute, or at the store. Somewhere where you can just zone out and

not try to be a higher anything.

Everything that happens in the world can be seen as a symbol of some-

thing else, with a deeper meaning that must be intuited or found through

reflectionandanalysis.Everything is symbolic, and you can deter-

mine for yourself what the symbols are and what they mean.

Symbolic of what? Of life, of love, of irony, of duality. The fact that a crow


39

just landed right next to you ‘is’ symbolically meaningful. The text on a

billboard – as soulsucking as the advertisement may be – can present your

consciousness with some sort of symbol. The brain works in such a way that

whenyougolookingformeaning,youwillinevitablyfindit.

You’ve heard the expression to ‘act like you know.’ This is a way to prevent

yourself from seeming like a dumb arse in an unfamiliar situation. I say:

know that you are acting. You yourself are a living symbol of yourself;

areflectionofsomethinggreater,deeper,andother.Lifeisastage,andyou

and everything you do can become an act, a symbolic, sacred act. This is

tuning in to the act of creating reality.

Believe

What: Choosing your own illusions.

Why: Because you are free, totally free, to believe whatever you want.

How: By dropping the need for knowing the absolute truth and experi-

menting with relative, useful, and/or desired truths instead. Alternate be-

tween belief and disbelief.

Belief is perhaps the most powerful tool at the

mind’s disposal. Amazing and terrible things

happen all the time because of our beliefs and

the choices they force us to make.

We are all programmed to believe certain

things. Or to accept certain assumptions. But in

higher states of consciousness, we suddenly remember that we are free to


40

believe anything we want.

As the ancient Assassin’s creed goes: “Nothing is true. Everything is per-

mitted.” You are permitted to choose your own beliefs. And you are even

permitted not to believe anything.

This means you can change your opinion about anything. The spiritually

inclined may call this enlightenment, or Zen. We could also call it neurologi-

cal mastery.

Your mind is yours to learn how to operate. When you can change your be-

liefs, you can change the way you perceive reality. And when you can change

the way you perceive reality, reality itself will change. This is what makes

belief the most powerful tool of @Magick.

A state of belief is a state of being. If, for example, like a religious nut, you

believe that everyone with a different set of beliefs is wrong and in cahoots

withthedevil,thenyoumayfinditdifficulttolovethem.Inotherwords,

this state of belief makes it virtually impossible to be in a state of love. The

belief “I have the truth” means that you are closed not only to other people’s

truths, but to the people themselves.

On the other hand, you can also use your beliefs to put yourself in accor-

dance with the visions you had in higher consciousness. This way, you can

put yourself into a state of altered consciousness just by making yourself

believe something different. So choose your beliefs. Believe that you are

everything. Believe that everything is alive or sacred. Or that everything is

a gift. Or that you are in a dream. Or that everything happens for a reason.

Believe that the ‘higher’ you rewards conscious thought.


41

One good piece of advice is to never completely believe anything, especial-

ly yourself. As Terence McKenna wrote, “Live without closure” and “Over-

come certainty.” You don’t have to know or believe anything for certain. In

fact, it may even be impossible to know something for sure. Instead, learn

to think in probabilities. This doesn’t mean that you have to stop believing

things. It just means that you can maintain a healthy seed of doubt in your

mind. For example, even when expecting the sun to come up again every

morning, you might decide that the probability of it happening is 99.999%

instead of 100%. That little bit of doubt maintains your ability to think and

to question, and, therefore, it sustains your intelligence and your conscious-

ness instead of limiting them.

Reality is what you can get away with. Decide what is real to you, within

limits to be determined by experience.

For more on belief, see @Magick Will, @Have faith and @Metaprogramming.

Breathe

Breathingisthemostdirectcontroloftheflow

of consciousness. Our continued survival, by

linking the inside and outside world through our

lungs, is controlled by our breathing. So: con-

trol your breathing. In and Out. And while

breathing, think about this:

The universe is literally coming in and out through your lungs. When you

breathe in, the universe breathes out. A constant pulse of life, on/off, in-out,


42

oxygen for carbon dioxide. But when, I wonder, is an oxygen particle part of

the atmosphere, and when is it part of me? There is no difference. Realize

thatthereisnospecificpointwhenaparticleisinsideorout.Thereisno

insideoroutside,thereisonlytheawarenessoftheebbandflow.

Use this realization of oneness through breathing to become based in

awareness. Outside is me. Inside is me. I am it. As Richard Alpert says, be

here now.

Ourbrainsarealwaysprocessing,fillingthevoid.Turnoffthenoise,and

access your programming. Any way that we control our breathing will af-

fect our minds. Anything ‘abnormal’, like panting even though we haven’t

exercised, or doing yogic breathing, will alter our state of awareness and

help us to pause ourselves.

One easy trick is to simply empty your lungs all the way. First, inhale

deeply and strongly through your nose. Then push out all the air with your

diaphragm, and hold your lungs empty for a few seconds. This ‘ritual’ acts

as a release valve for getting out of whatever mental rut we are in at the

moment. When we breathe in to energize our thoughts, and then focus on

breathingitallout,ourmindisemptiedandcanberefilledwithcleareror

more conscious thoughts. When you empty your mind, just like emptying

your lungs, the universe’s mind will come in and inspire you.

For a more intense breathing technique, do some research on Stanislav

Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork or a similar shamanic breathwork method.


43

These are techniques which can get you almost as high as psychedelics, and

all it takes is some thumping beats on your stereo and a whole lot of oxygen.

One or two hours of lying on your back whilst matching a fast and heavy

beat with your breathing should do it. Focus on breathing in forcefully with

your diaphragm, as if you’re gulping air. Then let the exhalation happen by

itself. (This is basically the same as hyperventilating.) Eventually, all sorts

of energy will build up and discharge. And you will get in tune with your

body, your emotions, and your mind.

I once performed Holotropic Breathwork with a group of strangers, and

after about an hour a man across the room started to cry so passionately,

so deeply, and so openly, that it was one of the most beautiful things I have

ever heard. Who would have thought that breathing can be that great of a

release?

Complementarity

This technique, like @Relativism, @E-Prime, and @Expanding your logic,

concerns the fact that there are multiple stories to be told about our one

reality. Multiple stories for us to choose from based on our imagination,

ingenuity, instinct, intuition, reason, and desire.

There are a lot of different, even contradictory ways to describe the world.

And yet everything you could say about reality (or nature, or life, or your-

self, or anything else) is true, at the same time. In a TV show this is shown

narratively, for example, when multiple witnesses tell different accounts of

the same crime. They all saw what they saw. But now the cops have to add up


44

their stories to get closer to the whole truth of what happened. The multiple

accounts are all true at the same time, even though they are different. They

addtoeachother,evenwhentheyseemtoconflict.

Inphysics, this isknownascomplementarity.Back in thefirsthalfof

the 20th century, quantum physicist Niels Bohr determined that the best

way to resolve the issue of whether light travels as waves or as particles

(and, traditionally speaking, it had to be either one or the other) is to accept

that both interpretations are true at the same time. The wave and particle

perspectives,whichcanbothbeverifiedexperimentallydependingonthe

apparatus you use, are complementary truths. They add to each other, and

they add to our understanding of the phenomenon of light.

What does this mean for our state of consciousness? If you understand

complementarity, and are open to seeing that everything is true, you can

let go of your one-sided perception of reality (Life is good, life is bad, she is

boring,sheissmart).Lettinggois,paradoxically,thefirststepincontrol-

lingyourstateofmind.Onceyoudothis,youcanchoosefromaninfinite

amount of complementary perspectives on reality. We all see what we want

to see; but you can teach yourself to choose what you want to see.

Compose yourself

Composingyourselfhastodowithdefiningyour

own identity.

Direct your posture, your smile, your breathing,

your feelings. Walk like a king, smile at every one


45

like you can win over their hearts. The body is part of how we create reality.

Your stance can determine your state of being.

Defineyourselfandothersasgods.Wefocusontheminutenessofour

scale too much, trying to stay small in our overcrowded cities. Instead,

make yourself big. Put your foot down and speak up. If we hide ourselves

we’re not doing anybody a favor; in fact, it generally tells other people to be

invisible as well. On the other hand, if people see us, and see that we are in

good spirits, they will get to share that feeling.

Once we compose ourselves on the outside, having become mindful of our

posture, expression, breathing, etc, it’s much easier to step outside of our

thoughts and connect to those people who are around us on a ‘higher’ level.

It becomes much easier to play.

Often times we can be stressed, worried, or unsure about ourselves. In-

stead,beconfidentinanysituation:realize,“Ihavebeenherebefore.Icre-

ated all this.” This is one scene out of the whole play of eternity, and part

of us knows exactly what it leads to. By remembering this we can ease up

around other people. Let go. Open up.

Ifit’sdifficulttodoallthisinthemoment,getitdonebeforehandinstead.

Choosea@Mantraor@Metaprogramtodefineyourattitudefortheday.

Decide how you are going to experience things before experiencing them.

If you have a meeting with some important person, imagine the way you

will compose yourself around them. As if you’re doing a practice run where

shared consciousness is central to the interaction.


46

Youcanapplythissameapproachtoinfluencingotherpeople.Youcan

compose the tune for others to play. Compose and direct the interaction and

behaviorofpeoplearoundyou;allyouhavetodoislistenclosely,andfigure

out what kind of instrument they are, so to say, to get them to play the right

melody.

One way to clear your headspace and some of your emotional energy is to

go to an isolated area – like the beach, a forest, or a soundproof basement

– and let out a massive scream. Take a deep breath, let the sound well up

from your gut (not your throat), and as you rear your head back in a ROAR

let out the full potential of your vocal chords. Just let it rip, and see how that

feels.

This experience can unleash a whole lot of energy. On the one hand, it can

help you to feel ecstatic and powerful; and on the other hand, the discharge

of pent-up energy can help you compose yourself better when you return to

the public arena.

Experiencing higher consciousness can have a positive ‘side-effect’ on our

composure. Basically, we can make a change from paranoia to ‘pronoia’.

Paranoia is a negative form of self-awareness, whereas pronoia is positive.

Instead of fearing and doubting the intentions of the world around us, and

composing ourselves as insecure beings in a world we never created, we

connect to that part of ourselves that sees the joyful cooperation of the un-

conscious. This is pronoia; believing that the unconscious is ‘on our side’. @


47

Meditation and @Psychedelics can help bring about pronoia.

Finally, throughout all of this, remember to laugh about yourself. Smile!

You’re alive :)

Connect with nature

This technique consists of using

plants and animals in our envi-

ronment (home, outdoors, office,

etc) to reawaken our state of con-

sciousness. Talk to them, listen to

them, pay attention.

It’s really quite simple. All you

need to do is look at a plant, really

look at it, and realize within your mind that you’re looking at life. Holy shit,

it’s just over there, and it’s growing. And it’s me. We’re all related by way of

DNA, right? So: cousin tree. Brother donkey. Mother squirrel. Call me crazy,

but when I consciously connect to an animal or plant I can feel their pres-

encequiteclearly.Throughallthenoiseandtrafficofthestreets,through

thesterilityoftheoffice,theyarethere,alive,justpatientlybeingandgrow-

ing.

By the way, this also works with babies and with little children. They are

morein-tunereflectionsofyourselftohelpremindyouofwhatyouare:life

itself.

Another great boost to your awareness, especially if you live in the city,


48

can be had by going to a park or nature reserve on occasion. Try sitting

amongst the bushes like a little monkey and feel the timelessness, the

effortlessness, the directionlessness of the nature which sur-

rounds you. That same nature is within you.

A rather surprising technique to connect to the outer world is to simply

sayhellotoit.Onmywaytowork,Iwalkthroughastreetlinedwithflow-

ers, trees, park benches, and so on. By letting my vision wander over all the

different objects, and saying hello to each of them in my mind, I notice what

an overwhelming amount of individual things are out there. Each thing has

its own personality; and, without fail, each thing enjoys being seen and rec-

ognized. This exercise always makes me extremely conscious and present

in space and time.

Out in the ‘wilderness,’ your life is put back into perspective. For all your

hard work, struggles, and worries, there is still nothing much going on in

the grand scheme of things. Connect with nature, and it can give you a

healthy break from your head.

Consecrate

Consecration means making something sacred. Our most valuable posses-

sions, the people we care for, our bits and pieces; these are some of the things

we may have consecrated in our lives.

If we do this consciously, we can imbue an object with a particular

meaning. For example, if you have a tattoo, or a ring, or a piercing, it can

become a physical reminder of waking up. We can ‘consecrate’ it by giving


49

it a special meaning. I tried this with a ring once, which I turned into an

‘on’-button for a while. Something to trigger a different state of conscious-

ness. Of course the ring itself didn’t have any powers. It only had what I gave

it. But by remembering the association I had given it every time I saw it or

touched it, and touched it purposefully, it helped remind me to wake up.

So, just associate something with a higher or magickal state of conscious-

ness. When you remember to touch it, you are touching it to turn on.

More generally speaking, you can consecrate life itself, and treat every

single observation and experience as sacred. Address things as ‘Thou’, and

think of them as gods to remember that ‘I am you and you are me.’

Con-Uncon

What: Understanding the relationship between yourself and the unconscious

Why: To connect to ‘outer’ reality with your mind

How: Connect your conscious and unconscious identity with imagination

and will

IhavecommittedtheheresyofredefiningthepsychologistCarlJung’s

useful concept of the unconscious mind (or ‘collective unconscious’). I have

changed it to suit my style of mythical thinking, mystical connecting, and

magickal willing. I call it the con-uncon connection.

To Jung, roughly speaking, consciousness has three levels: there is the

conscious mind, or ego; the unconscious mind, or personal unconscious;

and the collective unconscious. If they were to have relative sizes, the ego


50

would be tiny, the personal unconscious would be huge, and the collective

unconsciouswouldbemegahuge.Infinitronhuge.Inotherwords,whenwe

perceive as we normally do, with our egos, then we are aware of very little

of what makes us us.

The unconscious, on the other hand, is the totality of “everything you are

not aware of in yourself.” This ranges from instincts and emotions to the

origin of thoughts and the source of reality itself.

Now,asI’vesaid,I’vefoundthatIhadtoredefinethis.BecauseIbelieve

that for this understanding of the self to have a full impact, it should not

read “The unconscious is everything you are unconscious of in yourself,” but

that it should read “The unconscious is everything that you are not aware

of as being you.” This way, for example, if you were to be fully focused on

cutting your toenails, the unconscious would consist of the entire universe

other than your toenails and your toenail cutter. And, at the same time, that

little bit which you are conscious of – in this case, your toenails – is by sim-

ple mathematical calculation the unconscious of the rest of the universe.

I realized this one day while being my goofy self in a forest. I was walking

along a path with my future wife, Eva, and could hear wild pigs roaming

around everywhere. We even saw fresh tracks and pig shit; but we couldn’t

see the pigs themselves. So I picked up a stick which, to my mind, looked

vaguely like a pig’s head. And then I started tapping it in the air in a three

tap motion, rhythmically chanting “weh, weh, weh,” each time. I was trying

to call out to the piglets by speaking their language, and by speaking to their

unconscious mind; in other words, I was willing them to reveal themselves


51

to us. I wanted to see a wild pig.

BAM!Nopigletsemerged,butthenewdefinitionoftheunconsciousdid.

If, as Jung says, the unconscious has a huge effect on my conscious reality,

then I in turn, as a part of the universe’s unconscious, have some manner

of impact on its sense of reality. You can literally work your way into the

mind of a piglet, a rock, a future event, a lottery computer, etc. By imagining

yourself to be the unconscious mind of something else’s conscious mind, or

realizing that you are it already, you can use your will to affect its behavior.

LikethetrafficlightexampleIgaveearlier;ifit’sonredtoooften,youcan

try becoming its unconscious and decide for it how it will interact with you.

This is a matter of becoming aware of the connection between conscious

and unconscious, and reversing the roles so that you can be an agent in cre-

ating the reality that sustains you.

Cosmic Schmuck

I’d like to popularize a technique devised by

Robert Anton Wilson. It’s extremely simple, but

crucial towards learning to ease up on your ego

and to stop taking yourself too seriously.

The Cosmic Schmuck principle goes as follows. Have you asked your-

self lately whether you’ve been acting like a cosmic schmuck? Like

a complete idiot?

If you haven’t, then the Cosmic Schmuck principle says that there’s a good

chance that you have been acting like a cosmic schmuck. You’ve been taking


52

yourself too seriously.

Ask yourself the question regularly, and you will condition yourself not to

take yourself too seriously. Be aware of being a total schmuck and you won’t

take things too personally either. Ease up on your ego addiction, and try

laughing at yourself instead.

Dream

You may have heard of the Chinese philoso-

pherwhodreamedthathewasabutterfly.When

Chuang Tzu woke up from his dream, he was so

moved by the realness of the experience that he

wonderedifhewasnowabutterflydreaminghewasaman,orwhetherhe

wasindeedamanwhohaddreamedofbeingabutterfly.

We ourselves may have had similar experiences where the difference

between the dream world and the ‘real’ world was hard to pinpoint. We

may even have experienced that this world is just as much a dream as the

one we visit in our sleep. Engaging the boundary between reality

and dream can be extremely useful for getting into an awakened

state; a state where reality itself becomes a ‘lucid dream’ where anything is

possible.

Lucid dreaming is where we actually wake up and realize that we are

dreaming while still inside our dreams. All of a sudden, we gain the free-

dom of doing whatever we want wherever we want, as if we were the god of


53

ourownuniverse.Itcanbequiteoverwhelminglyfun,asyoucanfly,walk

through walls, and so on. But it can be useful as well. Tibetan monks, for

example, meditate while lucid dreaming in order to reach even higher states

of truth. Nuts!

One of the simplest exercises to induce lucid dreaming is to walk around

as we normally do in our waking life. Every time we step through a doorway,

we touch it, and ask ourselves – is this real, or am I dreaming?

The more we do this, the more we build up a reality-check that makes us

question our current reality. By touching doorways and asking the question,

we are questioning the realness of reality. While awake, it should help us

to wake up from our mind, which takes reality for granted. While sleeping,

however, every time we dream of walking through a doorway, we have built

up a habit of automatically touching the door and asking the question: Am

I dreaming? The answer, Yes!, comes as a shock. And then, of course, the

lucid dream begins.

In other words, through this exercise we’re not only more likely to wake

up to the fact that we’re dreaming while we’re dreaming, but we’re also more

likely to wake up to the fact that we’re dreaming while we are awake. Just

close your eyes, and say to yourself, “My dream seems to be real. And my

reality seems to be a dream.”

Everybody dreams. And when we have truly memorable dreams - the ones

that make such a big impression that we want to know, ‘What did it mean?’

- remember that every dream has at least one fundamental message. And

that message is Wake up!


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E-Prime it

This technique is a handy, if challenging way

of getting nit-picky about our language. The

aim is to make our language more accurate and

honest.

When speaking, thinking, or writing, we tend

to use language in a slightly dishonest way. Without even realizing it, for

example, we use the verb “to be,” or “is,” to say things which aren’t entirely

true. To a linguist, saying something as innocent as “I am happy” isn’t prop-

erly true. It implies that you are always and entirely happy, whereas you are

perhaps only partly happy and it may only be true in the moment.

E-Prime, an update to modern English devised by David Bourland, Jr.

back in the 1960s, involves reducing the use of the word “is” in our lan-

guage. For example, instead of saying “God is real,” or “God is not real,” we

reformulate our thoughts by saying “God seems real to me,” or “I believe

that God is not real.” This way, we recognize that our statements are rela-

tive, and not absolute truths (see @Relativize it).

By removing ‘is’, language becomes more accurate and honest,

andonlyalittlebitlessefficient.What’smore,usingE-Primepreventsdis-

cussions from getting boldly aggressive or violent. It becomes much easier

to agree to disagree. And, of course, we become freer in our own minds to

change what we believe ‘is’ real (see @Believe).

Dorecognizethatit‘is’extremelydifficulttouseE-Primeallthetime,

especially in our speech. I recommend learning it between the ages of 1 and


55

12. If you do manage to pick it up in your thinking, speaking, and writing,

try to limit your use of the word “is” to situations where you really want

something to ‘be’ what you are saying it ‘is’. ‘Is’ is perhaps the most magickal

word in all of human language. The more you restrict your use of ‘is’, the

more powerful it will become when you do use it (see @Magick will).

Embrace insanity (Enjoy it)

What: Accepting reality and even enjoying its insanities.

Why: Because “shit happens,” but it doesn’t necessarily have to bring you down.

How: By dropping the need to control everything, and sitting back and

enjoying the ride. Like a madman.

Have you ever unwittingly sat next to the cra-

zy guy in the bus or tram, only to hear him or

her suddenly start to laugh about nothing? They

laughed insanely and uninhibitedly, while every-

one else stayed awkwardly silent. And did you

sit there sheepishly, wondering what they were

laughing about? And oh my god, might they be laughing about me?

Crazy people, so-called, teach an interesting lesson; that you can allow

yourself to enjoy anything. This is a neurological freedom which we all

have. It is a choice available to our minds – to enjoy something even when

our programming says ‘this is not fun,’ ‘this is hard work,’ ‘I’m angry as hell,’

or anything else along negative lines. You can be or act as crazy as you want.


56

For crazy people it may not be much of a choice anymore. But they have

experienced a breakdown of the mental rules which say, “I have to be angry

right now,” or “I should feel ashamed, or guilty,” etc, and they have lost their

inhibitions. They can laugh at anything for no reason.

For us, who still have most of our wits, it is a conscious choice. And it is

ahedonistic,self-absorbed,powerfulchoicetoenjoyanything.It’sflirting

withmadness.Whywouldyouenjoyhavingyourlegbroken?Orbeingfired?

Orfindingahairinyoursoup?Well,youcanchooseto.Maybeyoudecide

you like to enjoy things more than you like to hate them. Or maybe you just

like experimenting with consciousness, within limits, to see what your mind

iscapableof.Beabletoputyourrationalmindaside,andyoumightfind

that craziness isn’t so crazy after all.

Again, that crazy guy on the bus. Put yourself in his shoes. You’ve lost

all sense of how things are “supposed to be.” And, instead, you realize that

everything in this world is hilarious; ridiculous; insanely funny even. That’s

the whole technique, really. Allow yourself to enjoy anything by opening up

to what may seem like insanity, or at best a lack of sanity. Embrace non-

sanity. Cultivate enjoyment. Allow ecstasy. Enjoy being alive, and accept

everything as beautiful.

Being able to play with madness approaches what in Plato’s time was

known as ‘divine madness.’ It’s a higher insanity; a conscious insanity; an

inspired insanity. You can be in a state of consciousness where all of reality

and all that is happening and happening to you is essentially the same. It’s

a game, it’s an experience, and it’s a joyful ride made for you to enjoy.


57

See it as a challenge; to enjoy something you would normally react to with

sharp criticism. Unanesthetized open-heart surgery is probably not a good

place to start. Instead, take a small thing that is bothering you right now,

and laugh at it. Maybe even laugh insanely right in its face, if it’s relatively

safe to do so.

Where do you draw the line with true madness? I’m reminded of an inter-

view I saw long ago, where a criminal psychologist gave advice to women for

iftheyshouldfindthemselvesbeingraped.“Liebackandenjoytheride,”he

said. What a horrible thing to say to a rape victim, “enjoy the ride.” But what

a mindfuck too. If you could do that, would you be crazy?

When I last sat next to the crazy guy on the tram, I awoke thanks to him.

He laughed, and I (assumed I) knew exactly what he was laughing about. He

was laughing about us. Me. You. Everything.

Etymology

We all know that language changes over time. Words, meanings, pronun-

ciations, grammar, they can change from moment to moment. “Jesus!”, for

example, before being an exclamation of shock or surprise, used to be the

name of the Son of God. And before that, it was the name of a normal man.

And before that it was probably a word with a certain etymology, or original

meaning. In this case, the original meaning of “Jesus” is Lord is Salvation.

Who knew?

How many of us can say we have actively examined language and our own

use of it? How well do we know our own minds if we don’t know what our

words are?


58

Look up the meanings of words that you’ve never looked up be-

fore. We take so many things for granted, letting our minds follow their

usual patterns. And words are a big part of that.

Just think: how many of the words we use did we ourselves come up with

in this lifetime? Why does this word sound like this? Why does that word

mean that? What does her name mean? How does using this word affect our

consciousness and our mood (See @Mindfulness of linguistics)? If we check

thewordorigin,oretymologyofawordorname,wemayfindinteresting

revelationsaboutthemeaningwecreatenow.Wemayfindthatitconnects

to things we never knew about, which allows the minds of the past to shed

some light on the minds of today.

For example: theword ‘self-reflection.’Wemay say that self-reflection

is subjecting yourself to critical analysis. But it also refers to something

deeper. Without even having to check a dictionary, we can see the poetry in

thesewords.Self-reflectionreferstoseeingyourselfreflected.Sowhenwe

self-reflect,wearetakingabetterlookatourSelf.Wequiteliterallyputup

a mirror to our own minds, which reveals our current self. Just by looking

closely at the word, we have brought its meaning closer to ourselves.

Expand your identity

Many spiritual and psychological traditions talk

about transcending or destroying our egos. Of

destroying our sense of self, so that we can tran-

scend it and become the holy union of oneness or

something along those lines. What I’m saying here


59

is different. What I’m saying is expand your Self, by being aware that every-

thing is self. A being in higher consciousness is not an ego-less, all-perfect

being who does only good and loves everything unconditionally. This is a

NewAgedogma;it’safinedogma,butitisjustanotherillusiontofillyour

head with.

Start from your regular you, and work outwards, inwards, deeper, higher,

lower, bigger, smaller. Expand your self by expanding your identity. Out

here isyou.Iamyou,andanythingyousee inmereflectssomepartof

who you are. Connect to the Earth, to the cosmos, to eternity, an unopened

book, a plant, a sound in the distance. These are all aspects or layers of your

identity.

Everything is self. You’ll remember from Part II that magick concerns the

willed change in our identity (who we believe we are). Whether that iden-

tity, or self, be our ego, our daily environment, the entire undifferentiated

cosmos, or a future we desire, in higher consciousness we are choosing this

identity real-time.

Ultimately, be able to see your self as everything and everything

as your self at any moment. And remember, this is not the ego self we’re

talking about, but the transcendental self. You are ‘only’ a part of the greater

picture.

Once we remember this greater aspect of who we are, we can move on to

the next step: play. It’s a divine play with the cosmos.

Here is one very basic way to expand our identity and communicate with

our higher selves: become him or her (or it). Worship, command, coax, re-


60

quest, seduce, trade, pray, or just take a moment of spacetime and say: I

am that. And ‘that’ can be anything. For example, it could be something we

wish to understand, like an emotion we might feel towards something but

we don’t want to feel. By becoming the emotion, by identifying as it, we can

change it from the inside (see @Sublimate). Once we relate, we can create.

We can begin by inducing this identity chemically. Psychedelics, incense,

breathing, yoga, marijuana, they can all help us to relate to reality in a sa-

cred, spiritual, or magickal way. Once we have seen that this relationship is

possible, we can do it simply by believing it. No more dependence on drugs

to do it: just make yourself believe it, because you have been there before

and you know that it is so (see @Believe).

Expand your logic

This trick is a combination of philosophy, lin-

guistics, and modern science, and it seems to apply

mainly to men. It comes down to the following.

When we think, we classify. We put objects, peo-

ple, and interactions into categories. These categories are based on a sys-

tem of logic. Usually, our logic collapses things into two categories; that is,

things are either one thing or another. Good or bad, fun or boring, safe or

dangerous, sad or hilarious, true or false, etc. While this works pretty well

most of the time, it is in fact a very limiting set of categories which doesn’t

alwaysreflecttherealitywelivein.

In philosophy, there are many different forms of logic. The common sense


61

logic of true-or-false is only one of these. There is, for example, a form of

logic in Mahayana Buddhism which is much, much more complicated. If you

took the statement “Spirituality is a load of crap,” for example, you could

use this logic to say that this statement is true in some sense, false in some

sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and

meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true,

false and meaningless in some sense. Yup. So is spirituality a load of crap or

not? Yes, no, and maybe.

Inmodernscience,specificallysincequantumphysics, therehasbeen

a shift in logic which is similar to this. Some things in physics cannot be

proven to be either one thing or another, either because we don’t have the

technology yet, or because it’s just impossible to test it. To modern science,

if it’s impossible to prove – such as whether God is real or not – then it’s

“meaningless” to speak about it. If it’s still open to discussion, it falls into

the category of “indeterminate.” Unknown. Or, in the words of Robert Anton

Wilson, before the coin you’ve tossed into the air lands on either heads or

tails,it’sflyinginamaybe state. So we have more than two categories again;

true, false, indeterminate (or maybe), and meaningless.

Using an expanded set of logic like Mahayana Buddhist logic,

quantum logic, or Maybe logic expands your mind. It expands the

wayyoucanthinkabouteverything,andhelpsreflectahigherstateofcon-

sciousness in your basic behavior. If you can place your beliefs, feelings, and

judgments into more than one or two categories, you have more than just


62

one or two ways to interact with them. In other words, there is more room

for conscious, creative thought.

Next time you catch yourself thinking, for example, “My girlfriend is so

irrational,”or“Myboyfriendissoinsensitive,”tryfittingitintoallthedif-

ferent logical categories. Is the statement true, false, meaningless, or a com-

bination of these, or all of these at the same time? And is it worth taking

seriously anyway? You decide.

Expand your mythology

What: Impose your own plot on reality.

Why: Because otherwise your story is being

told for you, by society, culture, and biology.

How: Keep an open mind and try out different

(mythological) points of view.

We live by the mythologies, or stories, that our environment has given to

us. Our culture, our religion, our history, our heroes, our world-view, our

social norms, these are all mythological narratives in which we play our

particular roles. Many myths are useful; they help us to survive, they help

us make sense of things, they give purpose to life, and they help us to relate

toothers.Butalotofourmythologiesarelimited,inefficient,andharmful.

In fact, some of them are just crap. Especially when they are destructive and

prevent us from exploring other ways of living.

When we believe ourselves to be really smart, for example (a type of nar-


63

cissistic personal mythology), and can think very rationally and logically,

we’re more likely to dismiss other people’s stories as bullshit. When we hear

something that seems irrational, unprovable, or illogical, we don’t give it

much of a chance. But not everything can be understood rationally or sci-

entifically.Therearenon-rationalmythsthatarejustasimportanttocon-

sider, and here rationality can get in our way. We need to be able to expand

beyond rationality.

To raise our intelligence and compassion, we need more stories: we need

to be able to try out and create new and different truths and beliefs, even if

it’s just to be practical about the current reality we’re in. Try them out, try

them on for size, and see what they do for you. Learn new myths and meta-

phors and philosophies from all over the world and from all across history.

Attheveryleast,theycanhelpyoutoreflectonyourownmythology.

A state of belief is a state of being (see @Believe). This means that your

beliefshelptodefineyouractions.Themorebeliefsormythologieswecan

handle at the same time, the more states of being we can experience. It

makesourmindsmoreflexibleandadventurous, so thatwecan realize

when our mythologies are coming up short and try something new. So ex-

pand your mythology. Learn to think in more ways than one, so that

you can be in more ways than one. Impose your own plot on real-

ity.

One of the main mythological elements that people miss in their daily

lives, for example, is the magical element: the spiritual, the sacred, and the

mysterious. If we expand our world-view with a mythology that makes life


64

spiritual, magical, or holy, our lives can become a constant initiation into

these realms. We start to live a true mythological life, a hero’s journey of

cosmic and evolutionary importance.

If we think of our normal experiences as spiritual, our lives will become

a mythical story. If we think of our normal experiences as magical, we will

make our lives an active adventure. If we think of our normal experiences

as holy, we make every act of living sacred. If we think of our normal day as

mystical, we can be in the here and now - without desires or expectations,

just accepting the world as it is, enjoying it, and fully loving it.

Try reading up on different philosophies, different psychologies, myths

and religions. Study some anthropology to see how tribal people live. Watch

movies and documentaries. Read books. Observe others and the way they

deal with truth and reality. If we can get a general sense of each different

world-view, we have a greater set of tools to work with in the creation of our

own world-view. We can choose to be in a drama, a comedy, a game, a Zen-

like nothingness, and so on. We can choose our own mythology. Impose

your own plot on reality.

We’re all in a story that we are writing together. What would you do if you

were a character in a novel who found out she was in a story? Go nuts? Ac-

cept it happily and play your part? Mess around with the story? Or would

you try to become your own author?


65

Eye contact

The eyes are – cliché but true – the windows to

the soul. How we use them can affect the quality

of our own consciousness.

Making eye contact with someone who is mys-

tically aware can be very invigorating. We are

suddenlyallthere,fullyfocused,fullyconnected.It’slikestaringintoafire,

exceptthefireisoursharedconsciousnessofbeingconscious.Weacknowl-

edge to each other that we are gods, awake and alive. There are people out

there who, just by looking into their eyes, can put you into an altered state

of consciousness.

Doing it with those who are not as awake takes a little more effort. The

eyes, as has been said, are the windows to the soul, and like any window

theyallowlighttoseepthrough.Sowecanuseoureyestoprojectthefirein

our own minds. We can make other people trip. Look deeply into their eyes

and project awareness into them.

By projecting onto the mirror of someone else’s eyes, we proj-

ect into ourselves and wake ourselves up as well. How they respond

is now related to our own state of heightened consciousness.

Whatever you’re looking at, a person or a thing, open your eyes and go in

with your mind. Realize that “I am what I am looking at.” Look, connect,

create. (Once you relate, you can create). If you’re looking at a table, for


66

instance, think: “I am looking at this table, I am connecting to it as we are

one, and now I am creating it by being aware of it.” You can make this easier

by imagining the presence of an eye on any object, and engaging with it.

Project it where you want it to be, and look into it to connect.

Seeing is being. As Robert Anton Wilson says, “All I know is what I tune

in.” Is the moon there when no-one is looking? Who cares?

Forgive

Thinking, most of the time, means judging (or

labeling).Athoughtisoftensomekindofreflec-

tion, analysis, feedback, weighing of options, or

criticism of the world out there (or in here) and

what we might say or feel about it. In conversa-

tion too, you may notice that we humans do a lot of judging and complain-

ing. It’s like we play a social game where complaining together helps us

bond.

The point is, we spend a lot of our time judging. “This is good, this is bad,

he is dumb, she is pretty, they shouldn’t have done that.” It’s a non-stop

classifying of everything we perceive, and most of what we classify is nega-

tive. This behavior seems to be built into our cultural programming, if not

the genetic as well. This is not to say that judgment is bad, or against the

nature of higher consciousness. It’s in our nature to judge. The problem (if

anything) is getting stuck in judgment, and not being able to let go.

There may be a good reason to judge some aspect of ourselves or others if


67

we truly disapprove of it. But judging is (usually) not higher consciousness.

It is mostly unconscious prejudice, and the irony of it is that when you

judge anything you are always judging your Self.

Youwillfindthishandbookgenerallyaddressesthisproblemthrough@

mindfulness, which is an Eastern concept. But there is also a Western, or

more properly Judeo-Christian concept that deals with judgment; namely,

forgiveness.

How do we forgive?

For starters, you can try and change your reaction by changing your per-

spective. In higher consciousness, part of the paradox of the human condi-

tion – where there is no joy without suffering, no knowledge without igno-

rance, etc – is resolved by realizing and accepting that everything is the

way it is meant to be.Evenlogicallyspeaking,itisdifficulttoimagine

that anything in the world could be against the desire or design of ‘the cre-

ator’. All the negativity you perceive out there may be against the desire of

your individual ego, or even of many individual egos, but it wouldn’t have

been created at all unless some*thing* wanted it to exist. Does that sound

logical?

This means that, instead of having to be mindful of every judgment we

make, we can accept the world the way it is (including our judgmental be-

havior). Or, we can forgive (perceived) transgressions against us because

we know that they are part of the way the world is meant to be. It’s all part

of the process. You forgive them as though they were yourself, because this


68

is who you are.

As the Irish poet Scotus Eriugena wrote, “Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt”.

All that is, is light. I too try to see all things as equal, as they are all equally

light and equally me. What do I gain by being angry at myself? Or being

mean, excessively critical, or unforgiving?

When you are unable to forgive, you are stuck in prejudice, and stuck in

your mind. The negative thoughts and emotions, the demons, won’t go away,

but will keep on bothering you. In other words, you perpetuate the suffering

in yourself by not letting go. And so you end up hurting yourself.

Why not teach yourself to see every negative experience in a positive way

(see @Relativize it)? If not, it may stay negative forever.

Howisthisdifferentfrommindfulness?Mindfulness,firstandforemost,

is about detachment, about distance. But forgiveness is about direct contact.

It can be an emotionally and spiritually powerful experience to forgive. You

may not always be able to forgive (in which case mindfulness is a great al-

ternative),butwhenyoudo,youregowillbenefitfromittoo.Thereishardly

a greater challenge than to forgive, and overcoming challenges is a favorite

game for any ego. Everybody’s happy, and you can move on.

Have faith

Faith, trust, belief; this is the bottom line when we look out upon our

world, because we never know exactly where it’s going. The future, even


69

thenextfiveseconds,isuncertain.Ifyoufindyourselffearingwhatmight

happen, or what could go wrong in your life, tap

into your faith instead. Having faith means

being trustful, trusting that the uncon-

scious us is creating the world for the

conscious us and vice versa. Have no fear.

We are doing it all to ourselves. In other words,

have faith in yourself always. You are it.

Destiny is free will, and we must have faith that we are free to make it all

happen as it is meant to be. (Can you spot the paradox?)

In the sense of our personal world-view, whether it be Christian, pagan,

or otherwise, faith is the key to how we relate to the will of nature (or God,

the universe, etc.). We have no idea why shit happens, we don’t understand

much of anything, but it can be very comforting to have faith (to believe)

that everything happens for a reason. That there is method in the madness,

an intelligence behind the chaos (see @Magick will and @Believe).

As Mark Twain wrote, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” And

that ain’t necessarily a bad thing.

Have fun

Feelings are caused (partly) by chemicals in

the brain. Listening to or playing music, sex,

drugs, exercise, words, thoughts, and so on can

all affect your chemical balance. So pull faces.

Laugh. Make up songs. Fart. Dance. Juggle. Tell

jokes. Stimulate your brain with fun.


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Hypnotize yourself

Hypnotize yourself by looping any word or

combination of words, like happiness, or I am

happy, or love, in your mind. Do it while look-

ing deeply into your own eyes in the mirror. Re-

member: What I say three times or more is true.

(See @Mantras for more).

Know thyself

It was written over the door of an

ancient Greek temple for those vis-

iting the oracle at Delphi: Gnothi

Se Auton. Know Thyself. Be aware

of thyself. Be conscious of be-

ing alive: of being life. By prac-

ticing being conscious of who you

are (which may or may not be fully possible), you are more likely to really be

who you are.

There is an alternative translation of the ancient Greek inscription. It

reads it not as “know thyself,” but as “recognize thyself.” In this version,

the challenge is the same as the core of this handbook: to recognize that the

world around you is you.


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Listen

Close your eyes and focus on your sense

of hearing. Focus on the sounds. Choose one

sound, or choose to take it all in. Realize that

you hadn’t heard it so clearly before, but that

it was there all along anyway. Realize that the

sounds are not out there anymore, but that they are now in your head. And

not only in your head, but in your mind – in your mind. Your entire experi-

ence of reality is inside you. What seemed to be the outside world is now

inside.

But reality has no side. There are no limits in the mind. Realize the disso-

lution of the boundary between outer sounds and inner hearing, and recon-

nect to higher awareness. Out there – out here – is you.

Love it

We all need the beauty of love. Sure, we can

harden our hearts, and shit all over other peo-

ple’s lives and feelings, but in the end, we all

need love. I offer no proof for this; it’s one of the

few assumptions that I’m willing to make. With-

out love we are nothing.

Love is central to higher consciousness. Love is the cracking of the code,

the key to every lock. It opens all doors, makes life bearable, beautiful, and


72

even worth it.

Ofcourse,thereisnolovewithoutthecounterpartoffear.Infact,thefirst

experience of higher consciousness often comes about after you have con-

fronted your deepest fears. In such an initiation, you open up to being able

to feel love towards your own fear, and realize that loving it - and everything

else about yourself - is the only way to transform or ‘control’ every little fear

we carry with us every day. Otherwise, the fear controls us. Face your fear,

and you will learn to love it.

The message, in other words, is to love as much as you can. It will set

you free.

However, most of us don’t even love ourselves. It’s very hard to love others

when you despise yourself. In answer to this, spiritual movements like the

New Age, bigwig religions and so on are by and large ways of teaching love

for ourselves and for our world (which is us) in spite of knowing that it is full

of negativity (see @Accept your dark side).

Look up the Devil card in the Tarot. That’s an ugly sonuvabitch. But in

your spiritual and psychological development, you have to get past the ugli-

ness and face up to what this card represents: the Devil inside. Or, in Jun-

gian terms, you have to integrate your shadow side. Basically, you gotta love

him too.

However, because of the Devil’s appearance and our automatic reactions

totheugliness,wecan’tsimplyaccepthim.Ourfearisreflectedinthebasic

attitude of Christianity and other monotheistic religions, as well as Bud-


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dhism and modern science. To many Christians, for example, there is only

roomtofighttheDevil.Thereisnoroomtoacceptorforgive,letaloneto

love the Devil (inside or outside). It’s us against them, black against white.

This dualism tends to trap people in a state of wallowing; wallowing in the

feeling that the material world and our human lives are ugly, inferior, sinful,

painful, and short. “Can’t wait to die and go to heaven,” they think. “Or at

least some place that ain’t here.”

Think like this, and you are living in a Wasteland of your own creation.

The challenge is to see something deeper in the world that is here. Namely,

that the Devil – who symbolically represents the material world, matter,

pleasure, pain, lust, desire, and “stuff” – is us. We are it and everything we

despise about it too. So try and love it. Seek a mystical experience (see @

Psychedelics) to confront your fears and embrace them. Love yourself,

and love life, or else death rules.

Here’s an exercise in love. Every day you receive all sorts of signs, syn-

chronicitiesanddreams.Randomeyecontact,atrafficsituation,aflyin

your soup. It could mean anything. Challenge yourself to decide for a day

that they all mean the same thing. Decide that they all mean that you are

loved; that the unconscious, the mysterious magician hiding behind reality,

is telling you it loves you.

Wake up, and know that you are loved.


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Magic eye for the third eye

What: Transforming pain in your body.

Why: Because we can change any sensation in our minds.

How: By focusing our consciousness on the source of pain, and perceiving

it simply as energy.

This is a technique which is rather

difficulttoexplain.

The term ‘Magic Eye’ refers to

the books that were popular with

kids in the nineties, where 3d im-

ages would pop out of a page if you

stared at it in a certain way. These

books literally trick your senses so

that you can see beyond what you normally see.

One of the best ways to learn Magic Eye is to just believe you can do it.

First you use your eyes to focus and really look at what you’re looking at (in

this case, the page). Then you unfocus, and let your vision become as fuzzy

as you can get it. Now you use this fuzziness as a sort of mist that you can

look through, like you’re focusing through your unfocus on something that

will appear by itself if you just wait long enough.

I tried this once in a different way. Instead of using a book, I used it on my

own body after I had injured my left ankle. With my eyes closed, and do-


75

ing some simple deep breathing techniques, I felt the pain in my ankle and

focused in on it. Then I thought to myself; if I can really focus on the pain,

and focus my consciousness on my ankle, I can let go of the feeling that my

consciousness is up here in my head. Instead, since the pain is down there

in my ankle, I should be able to move my consciousness into my ankle, be-

come my ankle, and then tap into the pain as if it were just another form of

energy. Which it is: consciousness, energy, no difference.

So I did. I focused on the pain, refocused the location of my consciousness

into my ankle, and could therefore unfocus the pain itself so that it became

just a ball of energy. It was just this warm electrostatic swirl of energy, not

painful at all.

The result of this experiment was that I could not only change the location

of my consciousness itself, and transform the pain into a neutral energy, but

that the pain actually became a source of intense pleasure after a while. It

felt like an orgasm was taking place in my ankle. Weird! And all I did was

focus, unfocus, breathe a little, and see what was hidden behind the image

of the pain. Just as if I’d been looking at a Magic Eye book.

After this event, I decided it was possible to make almost any negative

sensation in my body disappear or even feel pleasurable, probably to the

benefitofthehealingprocess.


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Magick will

What: Being conscious of our in-

fluenceon‘reality.’

Why: To take control of our mind,

instead of letting it control us.

How: With imagination and will.

Imagine something you desire,

know that it can become real by

being aware that you are everything (creator, sustainer, and destroyer), then

let it go and see what happens.

Everything is magical, whether we can see it or not. Creation, time, evolu-

tion, change: these are all going on without us knowing how or why. Some-

thing must be making them happen. It could be a god. It could be us. It

could be that everything is making everything happen.

Whatever else may be helping us along, magick is one way for us to tap

into the source of that change; to become co-creators, consciously evolving

from moment to moment.

Magick will is just another way of saying that we are engaging

our consciousness in the steering of our mental and physical de-

sires. If I feel like having sex because I’m horny, that’s not magical will:

that’s just unconscious bodily programming. That’s how I was engineered

to be before I was even born. But if I can overcome the fact that I’m being


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unconsciously programmed, and make use of my horniness for my own con-

scious purposes (perhaps because I desire to become a mother or father),

well, then it’s magick will.

Magickwillisthecommandingoftheunconsciousfieldsofexperience.

We participate in creation through intent, through a will that is activated in

deep thought, symbols, rituals, or prayers.

This will is not the will of the ego. This is the will of the transcendental

ego, to which we can attune ourselves through mindfulness and other ways

of changing consciousness. In the end, we arethewilloftheuniverse,flesh

and bone, and the whole secret to magick is to be aware of this. To be mind-

ful of our greater identity.

Ourideasaboutrealityareaself-fulfillingprophecy.Whatwebelieveis

true literally becomes true, within limits to be found through experiment.

All magick means is doing this consciously: believing something because

we want it to create a new truth, a new reality. We project desire into reality

and expect to change that reality. In other words, a magus, or magician,

is an experimental believer. A scientist experimenting with his or her

own (state of) mind.

Anything can happen. And we can want anything to happen. So make

things happen. Don’t just hope for it. Think things to happen. Imagine them

to happen. Ask them to happen.

Most of the time we spend in our heads we are being more or less rational,

constructing visions of the future or reconstructing a memory of the past.

In other words, we are rationalizing and escaping the present by creating


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these huge scenarios of “I should have said this” or “What if that happens?”

Try instead to let the picture of what you are thinking about to become clear

to your conscious mind. Learn what your mind wants (and what it doesn’t

want. See @Mindfulness). Then you can truly project what you want - such

as the positive version of the picture or feeling you were having - and beget

for yourself what you truly wish for. Reality will be made to conform to your

will, once you know what your will is.6 The world responds to your every

thought. You may not always notice the results, as they may happen over

time or in a different way than you expected, but they are there.

Your will is whatever you will it to be. But it has to be your will, and it has

to be willed consciously.

What!?

How exactly do you know what your magick will is?

The best way to know your true will is to transcend your normal state of

consciousness. Align yourself with your higher self. Take @psychedelics,

and be overwhelmed with purpose, will, and vision. Or use mindfulness.

Here, you can catch the moment before a thought determines your feelings,

behaviors, or perception. You can step outside of your mind. How do you

[6] This is the classical interpretation of magick. But you could just as easily turn it around, and say that ‘Your will will be made to conform to Reality.’ In other words, through magick, you can put yourself in accordance with the natural way of things. You accept everything, having understood that everything ‘is you’. This may be the more honest perspective. Which interpretation you use will depend on your preference.


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think about stopping to think? This is obviously a paradox, one which any

student of meditation will quickly be confronted with. You’d have to stop

thinkingaboutstoppingthinkingaboutstoppingthinking,adinfinitum,

beforeyouwouldfinallystopthinking.Oruntilsomethingwouldsnapand

you became enlightened.

Buthere’satrick.Inyourmind,connectthiscircleofinfinitethoughtsback

to yourself. Don’t worry about thinking about not thinking about not think-

ingtillinfinitywearsyouout.Justletyourminddowhatitdoes.Withyour

eyes closed, pass your consciousness through your body. Feel it and be fully

present inside it. Then realize that your body and mind are one with reality.

Realize that you are everything. Since you are everything, it is your intent,

your will, which is the universal will, and vice-versa. As above, so below. Now

realizeyourinfluencethroughthistwo-wayconnection.Realizeyourdivine

influence(see@Con-Uncon).Youcandirectyourthoughts,astheyarethe

thoughts of the all, and you can make them accord with your will.

All you need to do is release your expectations, not expecting anything

to happen simply because you want it to, but having faith that those things

will happen which are in accordance with the universal will. Just be careful

to direct your will towards the reality you want and enjoy, not the one you

dislike. Also, beware of doubts. Self-doubt has a tendency to form a nega-

tive feedback system between the conscious and unconscious mind. Magick

usually works in the cases where there are no doubts; where your intuition

tells you that something will happen. It also works where you’ve completely

forgotten about doing the magick. So listen to your intuition!


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Joseph Campbell once wrote the following. He said that “The best advice

is to take it all as if it had been of your intention. With that, you evoke the

participation of your will.” What Campbell is saying is that we never have to

ask the question “WHY ME??” again. We can ‘decide’ to be our own creators,

and reconcile ourselves with anything that has happened in our lives. We

made it happen, whether it was the conscious or unconscious part of us, and

we made it happen for a reason. Believe that everything happens accord-

ing to your (transcendental, or magickal) wish, and you raise yourself from

being a victim of reality to being its central hero(ine). Make the leap from

“Why me?” to “BECAUSE ME!”

If we always expect things to happen the way we want, and then they

don’t, and we get pissed, we’ve gotten our egos caught up in our magick.

Instead, accept that existence is a mystery. We can’t explain all of it, nor

can we change or predict all of it either. Understand that that mystery is

a part of yourself. Even the things you can’t understand are a part of you.

The reason for using higher consciousness instead of the ego in magick is to

recognize the unconscious, the mystery, instead of wanting to consciously

control everything. In other words, we have to let our projected desire go.

Have the idea, feel it, project it, and let it go. See what happens.

An example: some years ago, I had been single for some time. So had one

of my friends. One day, my friend told me that he woke up in the morn-

ing with an intuitive realization; “I am going to get laid today.” And guess

what? He got some action. That made me realize that I could do the same

thing; simply open myself up to a desire, and will it to happen. So I did. I


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put myself into an altered state of consciousness and told my ‘higher self’

that I was ready to meet the woman of my dreams. And then I let it go, and

forgot about it. A few days later a young woman came to my front door for

a spontaneous get-together with friends. She literally came to me. We hit it

off right from the start, and she has been my girlfriend, partner, and soul

mate ever since. Only after a while did I remember how magick had been a

part of our meeting.

It helps to remember that the balance of forces in reality is always main-

tained. In magick, we should be aware that when we take, we will have to

give something in return. Therefore the most important balance to maintain

is to A) Consciously craft our reality, while also B) Surrendering to the expe-

rience. Take turns being a magician and a robot; being the one who creates

a reality and the one who lives in it. Imagine your reality before you

play in it. This is a balance of submission and control.

Here’s one very simple magic technique I stole off of a soccer player on

TV. After he scored a goal, he pretended with his hand that he was waving a

wand in a circle and then he poked through the imaginary circle. It was like

alittlemagicritualconfirmingthepowerofhiswilltoscore.Ifyouneedto

put your magick will into something, try this yourself: speak out your will,

make a circle in the air, then poke it. As if you’re holding a wand and using

it to give something power. Then forget that you ever did something so silly

and let your unconscious you take care of the rest.


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Or, if you’re planting a garden, create a circle of protection around it by

pouring water around it and addressing the potential predators of your

seedlings. Ask them to take only a bit of your crop, and not to ravage the

garden whole. Or, if someone has given you their business card, write on the

back of it what you hope this person will mean to you.

There are endless ways of applying magickal thinking. All it takes is

awareness - awareness of self-as-everything and everything-as-self - and

the will to co-create this world. And the magick works because you - we -

are the magick.

Wake up! You could be willing right now. Not just doing things; but being

things while you do them. If you practice on simple things, like doing the

dishes, conscious will will come more naturally when you’re doing something

complex. Practice awareness; willed action. “I am. I am doing these dishes. I

am doing this. This is magick. I am doing magick. I am doing. I am. I. I am.

I am magick. Hello, me!” Do magick, any time, for any reason, in any way.

Reread this section again a few times to make sure you’ve understood

Magick and the Magick will. Final tip: engage your love before you desire

something. Love is the link that can make things real.

Mantras

At the right moment, mantras can alter our

state of consciousness and give us a kind of ener-

gy that we didn’t have before. We can command

ourselves with mantra’s. We can sing them,


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speak them, write them, read them. Repetition is the key. Here are some

examples of mantra’s I’ve used to change my state of mind and awareness:

‘I define my Reality”

“It is fake you make it real”

‘I am You and You are me’

“Play!”

“Cultivate enjoyment”

Map Your Consciousness

Study the Hindu chakra system

and other maps of consciousness

such as the Eight Circuit Model of

Consciousness, the Enneagram,

AQAL, Tarot, various neurosci-

ences, and the Kabbalistic Tree of

Life. Once you can speak and think

in terms of different maps of your-

self, you can be more aware of what is going on inside you (see @Know

thyself). And you can understand others better and how to approach them.

Furthermore, you can use the maps to help reprogram yourself. Observe

each chakra, each Circuit, each level of your being. You can do this on a

physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual level, to know your pat-

terns and to change them if they need changing.


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Meditate

Everyone meditates differently. To some people it is deep thought; to oth-

ers it is the absence of thought. I’m not sure which I prefer. But I do know

that silence is a healthy thing from time to time.

I challenge you to be silent. With eyes closed, realize you are thinking by

thinking,“Holyshit,Iamthinking.”Applyittoanyspecificthoughtyou

want, like a judgment, an indecision, an insecurity, etc. “Holy shit, I just

thought that,” for example, “I wish I were a vicious rabbit.” When you

watch your thinking, and dissociate from it by being the observ-

er, you can wake up from your mind. You are not your thoughts any-

more; you are, but you are also more. You are being awareness, watching

thoughts. It’s that simple.

In a meditative state, by watching your mind do its thing, it also becomes

clear that we are not really the creators of our own thoughts. Nor are we

directly the creators of reality. Instead, we seem to be conduits; channels

throughwhichcreationtakesplace.Realityflowsoutoftheunconscious

and then happens through us.

Meditation can help open the right channels, so that you can choose what

you think, and therefore what reality your thoughts are helping to create

(see @Mindfulness of creation).

Meditation can help to stop time. Time overcomes you. But outside of

time, you are consciously in control. If you do it every day for longer and

longer periods - if you can stop the sensation of time being something that


85

happens to you - then you can pause and restart yourself (and your world-

view) at any time.

Here’s a meditation experiment. 1) Lie down with eyes closed, hands fold-

ed on your chest. 2) Focus your mind on a picture of the sky, with beautiful

white clouds, asking thoughts gently to leave. 3) In full tranquility, picture

an image of yourself in the sky. 4) Allow the likeness of yourself to be in full

focus,tillitseemstomove.Itwillfloatinaserenepictureofdetachment,

moving through other images in contact with the unconscious mind. 5) Al-

lowmessagestofloatintoyourmind,withoutreaction.Don’tfallasleep.

Recordyourthoughts.Noneareinsignificant,andtheymayeventuallybe-

come clear if you pursue their meaning in any way possible.

Another meditation: imagine yourself being a drop of water in a river that’s

coursingtowardsawaterfall,thentumbledownitintoacoolpool.Youfloat

to the surface in a whole new world. Open your eyes and see if and how you

feel different.

Another meditation: think, “Relax ... I am focused ... I am breathing ...

I am here.”

Another: Ask yourself the question, Do I have any idea why I am doing

what I am doing? Keep asking the question, Why am I sitting here doing

this exercise? (Start, for example, with “I am sitting here doing this exercise

because this book is asking me to do this exercise”.) Go all the way back in

time through all the possible causes you can think of, from the invention of

the printing press to the Big Bang or before. This is a simulation of enlight-

enment, and it may take some effort and ingenuity.


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(Self-) Metaprogramming

What: Using higher states of consciousness to

reprogram our normal states of consciousness.

Why: To install programs that create the mind

we want.

How: Re-educating our minds with specific

commands during a psychedelic experience.

Metaprogramming means using a mind-expanding technique to change

the basic programming of your mind to suit your own personal and evolu-

tionary needs and desires.

Wow,that’samouthful.Basically,inmetaprogramming,yourmindfinally

becomes yours to operate. Really yours. (And the more you develop this

skill, the more you will realize that people in general have never learned

how to think for themselves).

One of the greatest challenges enabled through metaprogramming is to

change our brains in accordance with the reality we have perceived in our

higher states of consciousness. In other words, we can restructure the very

way we perceive ourselves and our reality in our ordinary states of con-

sciousness. We’re raising the standards of what it means to be ordinary.

Again, to simplify further; instead of having to continuously use mind-

expanding techniques to ‘wake up’ or be ‘enlightened’ and so on, as monks

and New Agers do, we can trip from time to time (generally with the help of

psychedelics) and retain elements of higher consciousness in our lives after


87

the trip. We can upgrade our minds. We can upgrade our minds. We can

upgrade our minds.

This is not the same as going to church, psychotherapy, NLP, or other

standard brainwashing techniques. It goes beyond any standard approach

to the mind. Whereas these approaches are like rearranging deck chairs on

the Titanic, so to speak, (as in they create either minimal and meaningless

change or a change in behavior or self-image that doesn’t reach the core of

why you behave the way you do), metaprogramming involves – no, it re-

quires – a higher state of consciousness. Initiation, self-realization, mysti-

cal experience. If you have had one of these experiences, you will no doubt

count it amongst the most incredible, beautiful, insane, and powerful expe-

riences you have ever had.

Most of what we do in life and learning is creating and living out patterns.

We are mostly robots, operating on ancient biological and cultural com-

mands. Small variations in our daily patterns are fairly normal, considering

the amount of chaos and unpredictability in our lives. But big variations are

rare. In fact, we rarely even realize that we are like robots, and that we can

do things to make ourselves operate better.

This is not to say that being a robot is bad. It’s a basic part of our being.

But to really know the robot we need to get out of our mind, out of the robot,

and into a state of higher consciousness.

Psychedelic experiences are one of the most direct and common ways to

do this (see @Psychedelics). Psychedelic experiences take us out of our pro-


88

grams for a while and confront us with our robot selves. We are confronted

with the fact that we are programmed. Scientists and authors like John

Lilly, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson have developed an approach

that makes use of psychedelic and other higher consciousness experiences.

They have described ways of using higher consciousness to de-robotize our-

selves. These techniques are the source of Metaprogramming.

Metaprogramming means learning new ways to pattern our patterning. A

‘metaprogram’ is a program that regulates programs; it’s like the overseer,

the priest king, the inner god that rules over the robot. It’s the voice that

hears and speaks forth to change the other voices. In a way, it is conscious

itself, stripped bare of mind and matter. Activating it means learning how

to use our brains most effectively according to our individual desire and

potential.

With Metaprogramming, we write the picture of what we want

to experience in our minds. We enter a cycle of constantly tran-

scending our programming and learning how to learn new pro-

grams. Think of programs as voices, forces, or frequencies; an orchestra

of instruments of which we are the conductors. It’s our rhythm, our energy,

ourvolumeknob.Andit’sourjobtofindtherightrhythmandharmony.

Programming. We’re all doing it. We can get so good at it (we can get so

intelligent, intellectual, adept, or enlightened) that we can even approach

‘zero programming’ – getting to a point without any programming to block

our direct experience of reality. A point where there are no cultural or bio-


89

logicalfiltersbetweentheexperienceandthereality.Inotherwords,wecan

learn to program ourselves out of our programs and into mindfulness. Pure

consciousness (see @Mindfulness and @Psychedelics).

If you are trying the psychedelic approach to metaprogramming, which

is the basic and most powerful way, it helps to have a plan. Create a list of

commandments for yourself with a new set of programs (read this list at

whatever moment feels right; before, after, or during the peak of your trip).

Your new programs are like a map that shows you where to go to during and

after the death/rebirth experience. Read them out loud while looking into

a mirror, listen to a prerecorded message, write it with an ink pen on an

empty sheet. Get someone else to yell it in your face. Just make sure it gets

deep in there.

Metaprogram your system, then play it. Reinforce it by repeating it to

yourself periodically, as if you were reading the bible you yourself have writ-

ten. What can you metaprogram yourself with? I recommend starting, for

example, with the Eight Circuit script. This is a list of positive, empowering

thought structures for each level, or “circuit,” of your psychological makeup

as explained in depth in Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising.

1. The biosurvival circuit

“I will live forever or die trying.”

2. The emotional-territorial circuit

“I am free; you are free; we can have our separate trips or we can have


90

the same trip.”

3. The semantic circuit

“I am learning more about everything, including how to learn more.”

4. The sociosexual circuit

“Love, and do what thou wilt.”

5. The neurosomatic circuit

“How I feel depends on my neurological knowhow.”

6. The metaprogramming circuit

“I make my own coincidences, synchronicities, luck, and Destiny.”

7. The neurogenetic circuit

“Future evolution depends on my decisions now.”

8. The neuroatomic circuit

“In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes

true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment.”

(Dr. John Lilly)

If you’ve encountered blockages and issues in yourself, or catch yourself

on a negative thought or judgment, program a statement that expresses the


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opposite.Youcanbasicallymetaprogramanythingyouwant,fromflowery

goodness to megalomaniacal arrogance; from Jesus Christ to the Devil him-

self. Take Hassan I Sabbah’s credo, “Nothing is true, everything is permit-

ted.” Or Aleister Crowley’s laws, “Do what thou wilt,” and “Love is the law.”

Or Hagbard Celine’s “Never whistle while you’re pissing.” Or make your own

program. What, for example, is God to you? Is God a good-hearted creator,

a disinterested dreamer, or an amoral trickster? Condense your ultimate

truth into a statement, a perspective, a game rule, and use it as your highest

inner code.

Onamoredailybasis,youcanrunspecificprogramsonyourselfaswell

(see @Summon). Program your reality and then live it. Use @Tarot

cards. Use @mantras. Repeat to yourself “Everything is holy.” Or “Everyone

wants to be loved.” Or “Life is a game.” Or whatever you want. Find your

own preferred programs and play around with them. Empower your own

conscious co-creation.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness, in theory, is simple. It holds that we are mindful

or aware of what we are doing. We observe

ourselves on the inside and on the outside. If

we pick up a piece of paper, we do so while real-

izing that we are picking up a piece of paper. If

we are doing the dishes, we do so with our full

attention.


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Thisis‘goingwiththeflow.’Beingthenow,andhavingahumbleheart.

The whole secret to Buddhist enlightenment, some have said, is to go with

theflow,andtorecognizetheupsanddownsoflife.Justrecognizewhen

you’re down and when you’re up.

In other words, ‘being high’, or being in a higher state of consciousness,

doesn’t mean feeling awesome all the time. If anything, it means being

above all the shit that can happen in life. And not in a condescending way,

but with a kind of compassionate detachment.

Of course, thoughts can get in the way of this. They can really get in

theway.Thebiggestblockagetoourflowcomesfromthoughtsbasedin

fear, guilt, shame, and judgments, especially when we get trapped in these

thoughts.

But mindfulness extends to these thoughts and to all other thoughts as

well. The trick here is not to stop judging or fearing, but to love and accept

our judgments, while at the same time holding our love and acceptance open

to what we are judging. Does that sound a bit too complicated? LoveJudg-

ment. @Accept. @Forgive. Don’t stay attached to your judgments; and don’t

judge yourself for judging. To a certain degree, the brain is what it is and it

does what it does. You don’t have to try to force it to change. Preach love to

your own mind, to your own heart. Love your thoughts and your judgments,

and make sure you love whatever you just judged.

On a simpler note, kick mindfulness into gear by recognizing the fact that

you are not focused, not higher consciousness, not mindful. Accepting this


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without judgment, you can take the next step into waking up. Hey, I wasn’t

awake just now! And now I am. Or, simply ask yourself the question: What

is my mind doing right now? Why do I have these thoughts, and what are

they doing for my state of consciousness? (See @Question). It takes practice

and discipline, but the more you do it the easier it gets.

Mindfulness, in essence, is a way of shutting yourself up. Not shutting

your thoughts up; but detaching yourself from them. You detach from your

ego, from your mind, and stand over it just looking at and listening to your-

self. You learn to ride the wave of consciousness as an observer detached

from any imprinted patterns of behavior. Mindfulness is pretty much the

foundation for every other thing in this list of techniques, which puts new

things into your mind, making it essential towards truly mastering most

of those other techniques. Once you can float on the ocean of con-

sciousness, instead of drowning in your head with all your earth-

ly woes, you can expand and learn to choose the wave you want

to surf or sail on. You can enter mindfulness at will for @magick and @

metaprogramming.

Pause time for a moment by closing your eyes and turning your focus

inwards. Pause time, so that you can restart yourself at any moment. Do it

everyday.Iwrotethislineafewyearsago:“Brainisalwaysprocessing,fill-

ing the void: turn off the noise, open up your programming.”


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Mindfulness of creation

Being mindful, and at the same time being

aware of your creative nature, opens you up

to being aware of what you are creating. Your

thoughts, your feelings, your behavior; you

know that they are creating the basis for your

experience of reality. The trick here is to be-

come aware of your intent. Ask yourself: why are you doing what you

are doing and thinking what you are thinking? And what reality or percep-

tion of reality is this behavior creating?

Most of the time we spend in our heads is a combination of fantasy and

rationality. We pre-construct the future and re-construct the past, thinking,

for example, ‘Oh, if only I hadn’t said that’, or ‘I have to remember to call so

and so tomorrow’. What we are doing, unless we are thinking intentionally

or magically, is escaping the present. Try instead to let the picture of what

you are contemplating become clear to your conscious awareness. Don’t

judge it, just watch it. This way you can learn what you want and what you

don’t want, and whether or not your mind is aligned to those desires. Then

you can focus on the positive aspects of or alternatives to your thoughts.

And reality will be made to conform to your will (see @Magick will).

As for the creation that seems to be going on outside of your body, in the

objective world, and which therefore seems beyond your intent: patch in any

patterns that you discern with your mind as if they were intended for you


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to interpret meaningfully. Take even the most trivially normal things in the

world,likethewaythewindisblowing,orthefactthatthefirstthingyou

saw this morning when you looked out your window was a woman cleaning

up after her dog on the sidewalk.

It may sound crazy, but this is actually a way of reading into the intent of

your transcendental Self. ‘Outer reality’ is literally creating messages for you

to notice. The message? “Wake up to the fact that you are creating.”

If you are conscious of being alive - of being life itself - then you can tran-

scend the duality of good and evil and love your own creation.

Some people will give you the advice to ‘Act like you know.’ Pretending

can get you pretty far in life. But every act is an evolutionary act, and since

you are what is evolving, you do know, somehow. You don’t have to act. You

know that you are playing the player. So here’s a different version: “Know

that you are acting.” This is mindfulness of creation.

Mindfulness of linguistics

What: Being aware of the way we think and speak about things.

Why: To know why we feel and behave the way we do.

How: By practicing meditation and mindfulness, and by updating the

words we use.

There’stonsoftricksouttherethatyoucandotochangeandrefineyour-

self. But few people realize how hugely important language skills, or com-

munication in general, are in deciding how you think; and, therefore, what


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you can think of.

Language, thoughts, communication, and in-

teraction are fundamentally manipulative. We

change things by speaking with or connecting

to them;we influence each other;wedemand

something or force ideas upon ourselves or each

other. It’s endless manipulation.

Upon realizing this, some people end up despising themselves, and they

try to isolate themselves from society. To escape from being manipulated,

and from being manipulators themselves.

However, we can’t get around being manipulative. Even if we isolated our-

selves in caves, we would still manipulate ourselves with our own thoughts

andbeliefs.Therefore,thefirstthresholdtopassinbecomingmindfulof

our language is to accept our manipulativeness. How do you do this? By

communicating with love (see @Love it).

You can have masterful powers through language. You can take the lan-

guage of kings, and make it your own. If you change the way you talk about

something, you will change the way you see it. Everything is or becomes

what you say it is, within limits.

The trick in wielding this power is to be mindful of your language. To keep

sight of your metaphors – your private illusions. What you are being

mindful of when watching your thoughts, your grammar, and

your vocabulary is whether or not your words are reflecting what


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you mean. Are you speaking and thinking from the ego, or from higher

consciousness, your transcendental ego? For example, do you cuss a lot, sigh

a lot, say “I wish that...,” or “I hate...,” or “I have to...”?

Again,mindfulnessisthefirststep,asitdetachesyoufromyourthought

process and makes you an external observer to yourself. From this level of

consciousness you have the freedom to choose the meaning of what you are

thinking about. Choosing meaning creates your level of experience - from

ahappy,toasad,toaninformativeorspirituallysignificantexperience.

Of course, everybody creates their own meaning. But not everybody does

so consciously. They let their ego (or the social norms or consensus reality

they are used to) do it for them. So not everyone is mindful of what they are

creating.

We are constantly creating stories about reality because reality is con-

stantly changing. But nowadays the world is changing too fast for our lan-

guage to keep up. World cultures are merging – so languages are merging.

My advice is to enrich yourself with the languages of others. Your metaphors

help determine, empower, and constrain your behavior and experience of

reality (see @Expand your mythology). Learn more languages – and I mean

all kinds of languages, from sciences to accents to personalities – to expand

your behavior and experience of reality. Every language has something

unique to contribute to your way of communicating. Learn to understand

how your language programs your behavior, and how you can reprogram it.

Be more cynical about your words, and choose your meaning.


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For example, you could decide that words are spiritual. Or magical. Not be-

cause they ‘are’ in an objective sense, but because you have said that they are.

Become mindful of the tone of voice or thinking that you are using. Feel

your words as you speak them out. Which voice do you want to voice? Imag-

ine using a completely different voice for what you’re talking or thinking

about right now. Change it from being the inner critic to being the proud

warrior or the mother. Even pretending can work: like jazz musicians say,

fake it until you make it.

Become aware of the symbols that dominate your mind (see @E-Prime

it). Become aware of the self-destructive symbols: the ones that keep you

separate, weak, alone, afraid, and unlucky.

A good way to program yourself into expanded consciousness, and to re-

member who you are, is to say to yourself, for example, This is me talking to

myself, and I’m listening to myself talk to myself. Everything that I look at,

everything that I read, everything that I hear. Every symbol, every sound,

every car rolling by, every time a bell tolls, every ad I see at a bus stop, every

sign I see; even every particle that I don’t see around me is me.

At this point you are basically @hypnotizing yourself, or @programming

yourself with @mantras. You can loop any word, like beautiful, or love, or

play, in your mind. And remember: what I say three times or more is true.


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Mirror

A mirror shows you an outer re-

flectionofyourself.Butamirroris

just sand and glass. It’s a bunch of

particles; it’s electrons; it’s energy.

Everything else is also a mirror

too; everything else also reflects

you. It’s just more challenging to

see yourself reflected in it when

youdon’tseeyourownfacedirectly.Andit’sevenmorechallengingtofind

yourself beautiful just the way you are in it. Especially if you’re looking at

an ugly person, or a depressing housing complex, or a dirty kitchen. This

is the challenge; to see yourself in everything (see @Connect with

nature).

If you do look at yourself in a mirror, look deeply into one of your eyes.

Seethatyoucanseealittlereflectionofyourselflookingatyourselflook-

ingatyourself,infinitely.What’sknownasan‘Infiniteregress’istherein

the eye in the mirror. You are looking at yourself looking at yourself, and if

you could look close enough, you could see tinier and tinier mirror images

ofyourselfgoingontoinfinity.Thisinfiniteregressisanotsosubtlehint

thatrealityisaninfinityofreflectionsofyourself.Thismakeslookingin

the mirror a great trigger for higher consciousness. What’s more, by looking

deeply into yourself, with a devilish glint or a heavenly smile, you can give

yourself a conscious vibe for the rest of the day (see @Hypnotize yourself).


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Move

“Mens sana in corpore sano;” a healthy mind in a healthy body. This one

goes without saying. Almost.

Youneedmovementtogetyourjuicesflowing.It’sthatsimple.Move-

ment is essential to flow. If you’re trapped in your mind, you need to gate

out of there. Visualize doors, walk through actual doors, look at a painting

or a photograph. The more movement through doors like these, the more

exciting and different your state of mind can become. Walk through lots of

doors, until the last door takes you outside to the place you want to be.

Even if you’re sitting still, let your mind move freely. Realize that every door,

mirror, eye, window, song, book, or painting can help you travel between

worlds. Worlds where you can be someone totally different in a totally dif-

ferent situation.

Do a walking meditation: go through your body parts one by one to get

local awareness. Add a new package of awareness with each bit, from toes,

to feet + toes, to legs + feet + toes, and so on, and combine each bit so that

you’recontinuouslyupdatingyourphysicalunity.Thefirsttimeyougetthis

downwillbethefirsttimeyouwalkproperly.Youjustbecomethewalk.You

becomeaware,andyoushutupbecauseyou’refillingyourmindwithyour

harmonizedbody.Andyoumayfindthatgoinglow-lowinevitablyreestab-

lishes your connection up there.


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Numerology

Playing with numbers is a good way to get your rational mind to cooper-

ate with the irrational, and your conscious with your unconscious. In other

words, it’s a good way to stop being stuck in your mind looking for the order

in your universe, and using creativity instead to create a new order in your

universe.

See meaning in numbers that are special to

you. Add them up, subtract them, whatever. For

example, if your name is Chuck, then take the

position in the alphabet of each letter in your

name, and then add them all together till you get

afinalsingle-digitnumber.‘C’is3,‘H’is8,‘U’is

21, ‘C’ is 3, and ‘K’ is 10. 3 + 8 + 21 + 3 + 10 = 45, and 4 + 5 = 9. So Chuck’s

basic number is nine. There are tons of books and websites that will explain

the ‘meaning’ of each number, from Mayan to Hindu to Norse mythology,

but you could of course give them your own meaning.

If you were born on a certain day of the year, or at a certain time, or if the

numerical value of your name is so-and-so, all these numbers which you

can connect to yourself build up a new sort of vocabulary. It’s a vocabulary

of mystical recognition, where any of the numbers you have given meaning

become reference points whenever you see them in the ‘outside’ world. In

other words, by connecting yourself to a number, any time you see

that number in your environment it will help to consciously con-

nect you to that environment.


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23 is a number that has been given great meaning in popular media. You

can see it everywhere in movies and tv shows, as the hotel room number of a

murder victim, or as the day of the month that something life-changing hap-

pened to the main character (see @Synchronicity). It’s like 23 is the symbol

of symbols, a mystery number to open your consciousness and recognize

your environment as yourself. To wake up and realize, I am the symbol, I

amthesynchronicity.AndnowIcanflowagainandhavefuncreating,orby

sublimating the negativity that’s inside or around me (see @Sublimate).

Playing with numbers can be a great reminder to expand your conscious-

ness. Just as long you can get the numbers to connect you to the mystery

thatcreatedthosenumbersandthe‘irrational’numerologyinthefirstplace,

you’re on the right track.

Optimism/Pronoia

Don’t worry, be happy! Practice being an optimist; whatever happens, it

seems to be a much more successful strategy to face the world in an opti-

mistic frame of mind than otherwise. What’s more, if you can detach from

your ego (e.g. with any of the pause techniques) you needn’t fear anything

anyway. See @Compose yourself.


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Pray

What: Talking to nothing in particular/some-

thing higher about what you want or feel.

Why: To get in touch with your will.

How: Just close your eyes and talk.

Prayer is quite literally talking to yourself. There may or may not be a

God ‘out there’ listening to everybody’s prayers, but that’s not the point.

The point is, whether you’re a Christian, a werewolf, or an atheist, there are

results. Prayer influences the unconscious, and it has effects on

your conscious psychology as well.

First off, when you pray, you are putting all your emotions and desires to-

gether in a way that is clear to your conscious mind. When you talk to God,

so-called, or the higher aspect of your self, or the great Duck-Billed Platypus

in the sky, you put your own heart into that higher perspective. That in itself

is healing.

Praying is a way of communicating with your Higher Self. You can become

(one with) Him/Her. You can worship, command, coax, request, or trade

with Him/Her, or take a moment and say: I am that.

Also, realize that praying for someone is actually praying to someone.

If you pray for your grandma, you are praying (talking) to her through the

unconscious. Of course there are shortcuts, and you could just direct your

prayers directly to somebody. I prefer praying directly to something, like my


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food, or my household appliances, or my means of transport, or my books,

etc. You can hold your hands up like a cup, to receive or to make an offering.

Just be clear: say what you mean, and mean what you say. “Thank you food

foryoursacrifice,”“thankyoubicycleforbeingawesome,”andsoon.

Here’s something that some natives do in one of their prayer rituals. With

your eyes closed, look to the four corners - east, south, west, and north. Mark

each direction physically by turning to it, and mark it mentally by visiting

it with your mind as your body turns in darkness. East, south, west, north.

When you open your eyes again you are centered. You have just turned in a

circle, prayed to the four directions that surround your cosmic center. You

remember that you, like everyone else, carry the center of your universe. You

remember that where you are is you, and you are always here and now. Look

around, experience the limits of your bodily self, what you can see and what

you cannot. Become the conscious center of an entire cosmos.

A Meditative Moment

Focus on each in turn and say:

“Earth me below me,

Sky me above me,

Sun me to my right,

Moon me to my left:

I AM, the center of my universe.”


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Psychedelics

What: Taking psychedelics in a

disciplined way to put a mirror up

to the ego and transcend it.

Why: Because they are powerful,

exciting, and sacred. To experience

higher consciousness.

How: Find an expert, someone

you trust and love, and consume in

a safe and supportive environment.

I don’t want to say too much about psychedelics here, because this book

is largely meant to empower a post-psychedelic lifestyle. A lifestyle after

mind-altering drugs, where you get the most out of what you learned while

being high.

I’ll be honest about this. You don’t need a major transformative experi-

ence like psychedelics to become what you are. But I believe you do need

one to become fully aware of what you are. Short of becoming a monk or

receiving instant enlightenment from a leprechaun, psychedelics might be

the way to go for you. Of course they aren’t for everyone; but personally, I

have yet to meet anybody that didn’t appreciate having ingested psychedel-

ics.

First off: it’s not just the drug, it’s how you use it (your “set and setting,”

as Timothy Leary called it). For me, experimenting with psilocybin mush-


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rooms grew forth out of a deep and urgent drive to uncover “the truth,” no

matter what it may be. “What is reality, and how does anything exist at all?”

Icouldn’tfigureitout,andIwantedtofigureitoutmorethananything.

And so, inspired by a spontaneous spiritual experience, I took a disciplined,

anthropological (combining experience and analysis), and relentless ap-

proach to discovering the truth. With mushrooms. And it worked.

In a sacramental, initiatory sense, when we are actively searching for a

deeper or a spiritual truth, psychedelics can cause what is known as ego

death. Ego death, or deprogramming, temporarily shuts down our internal

autopilot. In this state (which doesn’t occur all the time, nor does it seem

to happen to all who try), we realize that it’s all in our heads. Our assump-

tions, beliefs, and generally pre-programmed reality tunnels have to be left

behindtogetbehindthisstrangeexperienceofbeingalive.Tofindourcore

state of being.

Ego death is a symbolic death of the self; a shedding of our identity. Get-

ting to this stage, by letting go of our individual ego (and everything we

haveeverknowntobetrue),canbedifficult,painful,andeventerrifying.

However, it seems that the deeper we go, the greater the reward. Sometimes,

it seems, you need to go through hell to get into heaven.

Experiencing a higher state of consciousness with psychedelics is like

starting a new life. It’s no surprise people call it a ‘rebirth.’ At least for a

moment, we experience the death of the tiny, separate being that

we were – the automatic process of the ego – and are reborn into


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a new identity. In this new identity, we identify with everything (see @

Expand your identity). We identify as everything. We become eternity in

time,infinityinspace,andthemysteryofexistenceitself(“Whatisreality?”

– “Who’s asking the question?”). This expanded self is what we really are,

just as much as – if not more so than – the individual human being who has

a birthday and a name to set him or her apart. Tat tvam asi, the Hindus say:

Thou art that. In L’akesh, the Maya say; I am you and you are me. Quantum

inseparability, a scientist might call it; everything is fundamentally con-

nected. And it’s an I-opening experience to become fully aware of it.

Tripping on psychedelics is essentially a way of transcending old patterns

(see @Metaprogramming). You deprogram your mind and receive a new

vision of reality and of your own identity, from where you can create new

patterns on a whole other level. Stop playing out the same tired issues that

your parents have been dealing with, and their parents, and their parents

without knowing how to let go. Let it go, and play a new game.

Of course these new patterns in turn become old patterns, so you become

an ego-driven robot again. But chances are your ego will be less self-cen-

tered and will run on better programs. This is especially true if you learn

how to integrate the new inner vision – the higher awareness – with things

like @relativity, @mindfulness, @love, and @magick. Then you can learn

togowiththeflowortoupdateyourselfondifferentlevels,whichiswhat

everything else in this book is about.

You can do many things to have a good trip. Find a shaman. Read books


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about psychedelics by people who have been there. Go to the Netherlands

and shop at a respected smartshop. If you’re serious about experiencing

mystical dimensions of reality, you will most likely need to practice. Get a

rhythm going, and take live notes of your experiences. Write, record what

you can, draw. Or not; you can also lie down in a dark room and go deep into

your own internal reality. Make sure you let enough time pass between trips

to process and integrate lessons (I noticed myself that once a month for

about six months was more than enough, but it could easily be less or more

for you). Find which psychedelic works for you – from bustin’-through-real-

ity mushrooms, to beautiful-but-heavy ayahuasca, to synthetic-but-effective

LSD, to the instantaneous-interdimensional-in-your-face Salvia Divinorum.

Trip at home, at the beach, in a park, or in the woods; somewhere natural

and/or comfortable. Especially in the beginning, trip with someone you

know and trust and love, preferably someone with experience. And realize

that once the ride begins, there’s no turning back. :)

Question

Questioning reality starts with questioning yourself.

Awaken yourself with questions. Am I real?

Is anything real? Why is this pissing me off?

Why should I let it piss me off? What other ways

could I react?

What is my mind doing right now?

Do the “is this real?” mantra, and become


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aware of what reality you are creating.

Ask yourself earnestly: where am I? If you can, answer earnestly: ‘Where

I am is me’.

You can ask yourself at any moment: What’s the game to play? What am I

learning from this? What am I doing to create my own reality tunnel? How

am I going to metaprogram this?

As for the questions that seem to have no answers; the magician Aleister

Crowley said that the path of attainment constantly cycles between ques-

tions and answers, certainty and uncertainty. It’s a perpetual dance. So

remember that you’re dancing – dancing with the truth – and that each

answer lasts only as long as the song that’s playing.

Read

Learn how to relate to the beliefs of the vast

majority of other humans by reading up on

things like General Semantics, General Relativ-

ity, Quantum logic, philosophy of science, Jung-

ian psychology, comparative mythology, anthropology, etc.

Learn new metaphors from all spacetime locations. Study the effects of

words, their power, their uses and abuses. Read up on Neurolinguistic Pro-

gramming(NLP)andfindoutallthedifferentwaysthatlanguagemanipu-

lates you (see @Mindfulness of linguistics).

Ideas are technologies. Languages are technologies. Magick is a technology.

Keep exploring what others have come up with, so that you can re-

late better to their way of thinking, behaving, and perceiving.


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Relativize it

What: Relativize your thoughts, your feelings, and your beliefs.

Why: To have some power over your emotions, beliefs, and judgments.

Relativize to be able to see that there is more than one truth, and that every

truth is real. Relativize to be less small-minded and more creative.

How:Thereisnofinaltruthexceptyourown,butdon’ttrustitcompletely.

Be aware of your own relative truths. Learn updated forms of logic that

automatically relativize your thoughts.

What is real? There is no true cen-

ter in the universe from which we

candefinereality.Andtherenever

has been. It is highly unlikely that

ascientifictheorywillevertellthe

objective truth about how things

work, or why they even exist. The

only ‘true’ center you can rely on is

within yourself. Everything in the world is relative to your experience of it,

and it is your experience alone.

However, your center is not necessarily the same as mine. Everything

I know about reality I know from how it is related to me, to my personal

[7] Even when other people share their experience with you, through stories and so on, it still comes down to your personal experience of their story.


111

experience. And so is yours.7 We all have our own perspective, our own

particular vantage point on reality.

This is relativity. Relativity comes from relatedness. Everything is re-

lated, and if you can see how things are related, or connected,

you can see that your reality is relative to your own perception.

If you can remember, or better yet be conscious of the fact that everything

is relative, you can relativize your own thoughts and feelings. Relativizing

means putting things in a greater perspective. For example, if a Christian

said to an atheist, “God is real,” the atheist would most likely be cynical and

say, “Bullshit. Prove it.” However, if the atheist could relativize the state-

ment, he would say, without having to think of the Christian as being less

intelligent, “Okay, God is real to you, but not to me.” And if the Christian

could relativize, he would have said it differently too; “God is real to me”

(see @E-Prime it). In other words, thinking relativistically, or speaking in

relativetermsaboutcertainthings,canpreventconflictandmakeusmore

understandable to each other. When we think and speak relativistically,

we can relate better to our inner selves as well as to the world around us.

So is God real? The truth of this statement, as with any other statement,

is relative to your personal development, your cultural background, to the

fact that you are human and can think about whether it’s true or not, to the

language you use to think about it, to the moment in life that you ask the

question,etc,etc.Allofyourthoughtsareinfinitelyrelative,anditcanbe

good to remember that. This is not to say that you should use relativ-

ity to accept everything and anything that people do or say; it just


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means that you have more freedom in how you as an individual

decide to interact with those people, thoughts, and behaviors.

I catch myself relativizing thoughts (or voices) in my mind sometimes. I

do this automatically nowadays. What I usually do is, when I have a negative

thought, I start by thinking what its opposite might be. This puts my origi-

nal thought into perspective. What perspective? It’s the higher perspective,

from which every truth has endless angles to choose from. Basically, you

add the polar opposite to any thought, word, or emotion, and realize that

both opposites (for example, from “Rain sucks” to “Rain is awesome!”) and

everything in between them is true to some degree. Any experience can be

relativized like this to escape cycles of negativity and to maintain your inner

balance. Doing otherwise – sticking to absolute, black or white, and nega-

tive thoughts – often begets suffering. You get stuck in a reality you may not

want or need.

In logic and philosophy, relativity is similar to non-duality. Non-duality

means recognizing the dualities, the polarities of nature – like man/woman,

black/white,true/false–andknowingthattheyaretworeflectionsofone

same thing. Putting them next to each other, I see that they are equally real.

One does not make the other untrue; they complement each other. Squish

them into a little black-and-white ball and you have the yin-yang. Oneness.

For example, I am a man, she is a woman; yet we are also neither, because

we are also the one, the source, which has no gender.

Being able to see more than one reality is crucial to understanding how


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wecreaterealitytogether.Dowecreateit,ordowechooseitoutoftheinfi-

nite possibilities? Non-dualistically speaking, if you can relativize and allow

yourself more possibilities than one or two, then you are creating choice for

yourself. Relativizing is creating choice. And being open to choice is being

open to creation.

Here’s a fun exercise in relativizing. I call it the “Everything Is” game. You

may or may not have heard the expression “Everything is everything.” If

you haven’t directly experienced this truth for yourself, the expression may

sound rather quaint. I mean, duh; obviously everything is everything.

However, what the expression hints at is that all is one; and furthermore,

it means that you can take any single element of the world and equate it to

everything else. I’m talking mathematics here. X = Y, where X and Y are

both anything and everything you can imagine. The trick to the game is

deciding which variables you want to relate to each other, and how they are

related.Forexample,thefirsttimeIplayedthisgamewithmyselfItooktwo

objects from my room, which happened to be a couch and a plastic toucan.

Here’s what I came up with:

“First off, the couch and the toucan are both made of particles, or waves,

depending how you look at it. Secondly, they are physically interchangeable.

Since ‘you are what you eat,’ you could feed a couch bit by bit to toucans

and their offspring would be part couch. Similarly, you could make a couch

outoftoucansbyslaughteringabunchoftoucansandstuffingtheirfeath-

ers into the upholstery of a couch, and then making the frame out of their


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beaks. (Don’t do this at home; I’m just sayin’.) Thirdly, you go hunting for

couches in Ikea; and you go hunting for toucans in nature. But both nature

and Ikea can feel like a *#!ing jungle.”

Of course, you don’t have to take it this far. And you can stick to having

‘everything’ as one of your variables, and create a list of relative realities like

“Everything is true,” “Everything is false,” “Everything is connected,” “Ev-

erything is separate,” “Everything is meaningless,” “Everything is a dream,”

“Everythingiswords,”andsoon.Thevariablesareliterallyinfinite,and

just contemplating them can help you relate your experience to a broader

perception.

Existence is ridiculous. How the hell does it exist??! Recognize this at least

onceaday.Rememberthecosmos,andhowinfiniteandeternalitis.This

way you relativize your very existence (and your ego especially). Relativizing

with endless space and time in mind helps you to stop taking yourself too

seriously, because you are – relatively speaking – just a tiny little part of the

cosmic process.

Finally, understand (or remember) that all words and thoughts say the

same thing, and that your truth depends on which side of the divide you are

on. Are you looking from the perspective of your little self - the ego - or from

the perspective of the world? From ego-self or transcendental-self, which

takes no sides at all?

Or can you transcend this duality altogether, and hold both of these per-

spectives at the same time?


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Beyond that, if it suits you to be in a blissful state of enlightenment, you

can know that there is no difference, no duality, and you can just shut up

about everything. Universe, self, no difference. Delightful silence, without

even the need for thought.

Try relativizing the following thoughts:

‘That guy is a douche.’

‘I don’t feel so good.’

‘This weather is crap.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘White people are the root of all evil.’

Sensory deprivation

What: Shutting down your senses.

Why: To center yourself.

How: Find ways of limiting an individual sense or all of your senses at the

same time. A quiet place, a dark place, even nature as opposed to the city

helps clear your senses.

Every sense – sight, hearing, touch, taste, and

smell – is a union of inner and outer self. Of

body consciousness and universe consciousness.

Realization of that union – of your oneness, or

yoga with reality – is taking place automatically,


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and your senses are where it’s at.

To tap into the oneness that your senses are channeling you can focus

on one single sense. By closing your eyes and listening intently to a single

sound, for example, you can feel connected to the depth of your moment in

spacetime (see @Listen). And listening to it deeply will dissolve the bound-

aries of consciousness, so that the sound is no longer ‘out there’ or ‘in here’.

Try masking a sense. When the eyes are closed, the eye of the mind opens.

Close your eyes: remind yourself that nothing is real. Imagine your will,

your desire, your intent – and then open your eyes to a new time. If you

close your eyes for just a moment like this, you take a moment of silent dark-

ness to reconnect: “I am awake to my creation, and I want to look on it and

see myself.”

Try silencing your thoughts by listening to all the noise in all your senses.

Focus entirely on one sense and all that it’s picking up. And when you look,

see; see that ‘it’ is you, and you are it. Close your eyes to hear, and realize

that the sounds are within you.

You can go even further than this with sensory deprivation. If you shut

down your senses as much as possible, closing out ‘external reality,’ your

reality will boil down to what you are creating with your conscious mind.

Whenyoustepdeepintoacave,forexample,youturnoffyourflashlight

and see…nothing. Pitch black, without an up or a down, without even being

abletoseeyourownhandmoveinfrontofyourface.Atfirst,havingnoth-

ing to look at will make your mind race faster. Your thoughts will become


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louder,andyourmindwilltrytofillintheblackofthevoidanditsgapof

information. Without sight or sound, there is nothing to tell you that you are

really you – a human being separate from its environment. This isolation is

probably why the uninitiated get fearful, paranoid, and temporarily insane

if the lights stay off for too long. Fear of the unknown, of death, secretly

drives our thoughts. But there’s nothing ‘sinister’ about the dark. It’s just

that we’re not used to being confronted with the naked machinations of

our own mind. We’ve never seen it gear up like that and spin out of control

towards the edge. Ironically, we fear that chaos and a loss of control are

lurking there in the dark, when it is our own ego that is creating the chaos.

But sensory deprivation is as honest a mirror as there can ever be; it re-

veals nothing except that which is already inside you. And that which is

insideyouisexactlywhatyouareafraidtofind.

In sensory deprivation, the racing of the mind and the obvious-

ness of its patterns of self-harm and repetition are revealed for

what they are. In other words, through outer darkness, the mind

is put into the spotlight.

The only thing to do now – if you’ve done this before, that is – is to calmly

become aware of your mind, thoughts, judgments, and fears (see @Mindful-

ness). To be awareness. Let the black void take you to the white void. Once

youstepintothatemptinesswithfullawareness,youhaveaninfiniteplay-

ingfieldinwhichtocreateyourpresence.

Somepeoplehaveaccesstoflotationtanks,whereabreathingapparatus

and salt water keep you in as isolated a state as possible. Other people have


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access to caves where there is pitch black darkness. For you and me, in

practical terms, we can just turn off the light at night, cover our eyes, or just

close them. Limiting our senses physically or through willpower like this

can be done at any moment.

Another simple yet effective technique to bring your inner world into focus

is in the shower. In a rather awkward position, sit down and try and wedge

your ears between your knees while letting the water run over your head.

This creates an amazing effect of isolating your mind in a wall of rushing wa-

ter, so that you can enter a different world. Here you can come back into the

moment, meditate, be mindful, imagine and visualize things, and so on.

You know that ringing sound you sometimes hear in your ears? Sometimes

it grows louder; perhaps respective to the diminishing inputs around you.

At night, in a dark, quiet room for instance, it becomes noticeable because

you have little else to pay attention to. Think of that ringing as the buzzing

energy of your own central nervous system: the humming of the brain’s

computer.

Now when you hear the ringing, the high pitch tone, focus on it deeply

until it becomes the complete focus of your awareness, and you become

it by being aware of it alone. Don’t think it: feel it. Ride along its waves all

through your cranium.

The ringing frequency in your brain is a physical manifestation of your

conscious presence: it is like the energy link between the electromagnetic

poles of your brain. If you become it, and consciously ride it full spectrum


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and intensity, you become the full link up between your brain halves and

all the voices that congregate in them. You have connected to the central

frequency of your brain.

Using an eye patch on one eye is also an interesting experiment. Cover

your right eye, but keep staring at something as if you’re still looking at it

with both eyes. Eventually, as your dual-focus adjusts, you will be able to

see both darkness on the right side and the object on the other, creating a

sort of double vision. At the same time, this might get your third eye vision

going so that all the lines, shadows and dimensions of reality blur into one.

Trippy!

Sex

I can only speak to this as a man, but sex and

sexuality are obvious ways to play with con-

sciousness.

Sex magick, for example, uses the moment of

orgasm to project the will into the unconscious. Let your desire go out with

your orgasm, just by thinking of it at the moment of ecstasy. This can be

quite powerful (see @Magick will).

Sex can also be combined with mindfulness (e.g. Tantra) or mind-ex-

panding drugs. Connect with your partner at a cosmic level that melts your

physical bodies together. Use the physical act of becoming one to do

the same on a spiritual level. Pause in the middle of the sex act and

stare deeply into your partner’s eyes. Recognize.


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Sigils

What: Impregnating reality with your artisti-

cally rendered will and imagination.

Why: You decide.

How: Find your will, express it artistically, then

release it and let the unconscious manifest it for you.

Ancient Hindu intellectuals were not all blindly religious, nor were they

carving images of weird gods and goddesses for shits and giggles. Instead,

they realized that the gods they imagined and the symbols they made to

represent them were projections of psychological powers. As Joseph Camp-

bell says, “They [the Gods] are in you, not out there.”

Sigils, like the gods, or any other outer symbols like logos, statues, coins,

flags,etc,areprojectionsofwhatisinsideofyouontotheoutsideworld.

A sigil, in its basic form, is a doodle drawn during class that expresses

your boredom and the desire to do something other than what you are do-

ing. It is a symbol drawn to express some desire or identity.

If you draw or write something with a specific intent, whatever

you have just created is like a magical letter delivered to the un-

conscious. This is a sigil.

Sigils are effective. Just look at the faces on coins or the statues of kings,

pharaohs, and gods. Or the logos of our corporate culture. They all evoke

certain feelings, certain reactions and associations, and they succeed in


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reproducing the reality that they represent. McDonald’s is recognizable

anywhere in the world, and people know exactly what it means when they

see the big M appear at the side of the highway. When you wear the shirt of

some well known brand, you are representing them and their vision of real-

ity, and you are helping to spread it for them.

When you make your own sigils, it may help to be crazy, weird, and eso-

teric about it. Whether random or meticulously designed, sigils shouldn’t

remind you of your original desire or intent. If they do, they will remind you

ofyourexpectationsandwillthusconflictwiththeego.

Also, the sigil is not a command but a request. Use natural or synchro-

nistic things, because the sigil is a living message, a living gateway. Empty

yourself; contact the deep; create and then embrace the sigil; allow it to sub-

merge; close the gap; then forget about it. Drop your expectations of your

desirebeingfulfilled.Thisemptyingmaytakeeffort,butthetransmission

none. Care for the form, nothing else. Don’t think about the results while

transmitting. Success is determined by factors largely beyond your indi-

vidual control.

Personally, I like to ‘keep it symbol.’ Write something on your hand, or

your arm, or your belly or wherever, draw a doodle that means something

to you, and glance upon it during the day to be reminded of whatever mean-

ing you imbued the symbol with. Ozzy Osbourne, for example, has smiley

faces tattooed on his knees, so that every time he takes a dump he reminds

[8] Technically, a symbol isn’t a sigil because it clearly represents something recog-nizable. So a smiley face is bending the rules. In a good way. ☺


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himself to be happy8.

For serious sigilizing I recommend the book Visual Magick by Jan Fries.

Smile

You’re alive!

Smoke cannabis

Cannabis, or marijuana, when consumed in a limited and balanced way,

can be a great tool for consciousness change. Smoke too much, and you may

become too detached; smoke too little, and you may remain too attached.

With the right balance, a cannabis high offers a useful change in perspec-

tive on yourself and your situation in life. It can make you wax philosophi-

cal, as it helps you see through the emotional games and thought patterns

that you have been playing out in your mind. Perhaps most importantly,

cannabis lightens your mood, so that you can remember to enjoy being

alive.

Ittookmeafewyearstofindtherightbalanceformyself.Thishasturned

out to be a matter of smoking (or rather, vaporizing) a controlled amount

once every week or two. Smoking has become a sort of spiritual,


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psychological, creative, and philosophical ritual, quite different in

purpose than that of your average college pothead. I take time to reconnect,

to think new thoughts, to write and to draw, to meditate and to pray. Being

buzzed or high (if you know your own tolerance and preference) can make a

powerful combination with most of the other techniques discussed here.

For those who have absolutely no experience with cannabis, or any desire

to experiment, do with this technique as you would do with any other; pick

and choose as you like.

Stare into the void (Third Eye)

Close your eyes. Look at the darkness. Look

as if you have your eyes open, into the center of

your vision, and a little bit up towards your fore-

head. If you’ve done this before, you know that

kaleidoscopic patterns, faint colors, a tunnel, or images can appear in your

mind. It’s the so-called third eye. Not everybody can see it (yet), but medita-

tion, psychedelics, and marijuana are known to help bring it about.

This third eye seems to be a gateway to the unconscious. The void that you

are looking into is the void of your unconscious mind, projected directly in

front of your brain. Tuning in to closed eye visuals (which seem to be

spontaneously generated by the unconscious), you are enabling direct

communication with the unconscious.

Carl Jung had a nice trick which he called Active Imagination. Basically,

he said, you hold an image in your mind – such as a vision of the Mother


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Mary – projected onto this void behind the eyes, and see what happens to

it. Without any effort, the image should start morphing all by itself. Jung

said to keep note of the different things that appear and the connections you

can see between them, and they will reveal to you the patterns of your own

thoughts and feelings.

An example; if you are nervous right before going up on stage to give a

performance or presentation, close your eyes for a minute and open your

third eye. See what shows up. I did this once before speaking in front of

several hundred people. No other techniques helped to settle my nerves.

But when I looked at my third eye, the face of an overjoyed baby appeared.

It was exactly what I needed to get into the right head space.

Sublimate

Sublimation is a way to escape suffering. Wait,

that’s wrong. No: sublimation is a way to recog-

nize suffering and to do something about it with

your heart and your mind. Basically, what you

do is you change your opinion of what’s happen-

ing in your reality from the negative to the neutral or the positive.

Allacts,events,signsandsynchronicitiesinyourlifetellinfinitestories

about the one basic reality you still live in. At least for yourself, why should

you not read them as love? That way, your basic reality will respond to that

feeling (see @Love it).

The same goes for any experience of suffering, pain, anger, fear, insult,


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and injury. Transform all incoming signals into your desired and

optimal output; turn someone’s anger into love, your jealousy

into compassion. I don’t want anger. I want, for example, to recognize

thatwhichismeanttoangermeandtofindithilariousinstead(butnot

always).

This is also called stopping the Wheel of Karma. You become your fear

and blow it up from the inside out. You neutralize your negativity and the

negativity of others in a playful way.

I learned a simple and effective trick from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat

Han. He suggests that to be mindful you need to recognize the thoughts

that cause your suffering, and embrace them. Literally give them a hug in

your mind; forgive them, and tell them it’s okay. This won’t make anything

go away, but it will transform the pain. It will change your attitude to what’s

going on in your mind and in your life. Hug!

Using a cliché like “Everything is energy,” you should be able to remind

yourself that any feeling, bodily sensation, thought, etc. is an energy form.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed (according to the so-called laws of

science), but it can be transformed. This is similar to the process of transub-

stantiation, where Catholics turn bread into the sacred body of Christ even

though it’s still bread. Without physically changing something, you too can

totally alter your own perception of it.


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Summon

Summoning is a so-called occult

technique of magick (see @Magick

will).

Think of summoning as role play-

ing. Basically, we can imagine any

person, or any role, stereotype, or

archetype that we could be right

now. For example, just picturing

Arnold Schwarzenegger in your mind might make you feel stronger. Think

of a tiger and walk around with a regal prowl. Think of Jesus and walk

around blessing people. Just by thinking you can invoke their characteris-

tics in your own self. Their behavior and their words can become yours for

a while.

Summoning ritual: take an object, stand around it like an idiot doing

some kind of sacred movements and incantations, and at a certain point say

“Now God is in this [something].” You can exchange God with Beelzebub,

Optimus Prime or whatever entity you prefer to summon. The point is, you

will get into a non-ordinary state of consciousness by doing non-ordinary

things.

Synchronicities

Big one. This is probably the biggest one. Synchronicities are the most

down-to-earth reminder and engineer of who you are. Why? Because they


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happen to you. Synchronicities, or coincidences,

are the unconscious at work, revealing itself

through minor or major absurdities. These in-

clude coincidences in things you see or hear, te-

lepathy, Freudian slips, and so on. And you have

to have synchronicities to know that you are in

tune. When you notice a coincidence, you realize that the movie which is

our reality is right on cue. The director is at work, revealing his or her tricks

right in front of your eyes.

Synchronicity is the name Jung gave to meaningful coincidences. The

concept has grown since then, and it covers basically all experiences of co-

incidence, déjà vu, and other such meaningful yet highly personal events.

Whenever you feel like something ‘out there’ is happening directly to you,

andonlyyoucanseethesigns(ormaybeyoushareitwithaspecificper-

son or group), then you are experiencing a synchronicity. In a way, it’s the

‘higher’ you talking to you, the lower you.

Follow the signs! Be inspired by the Invisible Hand that’s directing you.

Here, instead of always talking and trying to be in control of reality, you

listen. Everything is you talking to yourself; so all you have to do is open

your eyes, open your ears, open your heart and mind, and see what you are

trying to tell yourself.

Whether the synchronicities are boring or amazing, interpret them as if

they are meant to be meaningful. Objectively speaking, you cannot know

what they mean, nor should you need to. You can only decide it for yourself.


128

Know that, as with @dreams, the main message of any synchronicity is this:

Wake up!

Synchronicities start as a wakeup call. And when you’re awakened by

them, you are free to do anything because you’re in an altered state already.

It’s the pause that allows you to play.

What you might also try to recognize in your daily life is that everything

is synchronicity. We tend to only notice synchronicities when something

appears odd or unusual. But everything that happens, happens for

a reason; it’s you talking to yourself, creating yourself, playing

with yourself.

Write down all of your synchronicities within a period of one or two

weeks. And if you’re not having enough of them, summon a synchronicity

to yourself. It could be one of your prayers. “Send me a synchronicity,” or

something along those lines.

Talk to the void

This is a continuation of the @Stare into the void post.

With your eyes closed, focus on your third

eye. Banish the shadows of thought projection.

Talk to the light of the void with your thoughts;

animate it by addressing it directly. Giving it a

name might help, so that you can literally speak

to it. You can actually communicate directly


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with the unconscious mind through the inner void, or third eye. It can make

images appear out of nowhere. Now, if you equate the blackness with the

unconscious, with the higher self that you are seeking to communicate with,

then just talk to it. Use it as an object to direct your prayers, your desires,

and your questions at. Get into a meditative state, ask a question to the void,

and see what images arise out of it. And then see what meanings and con-

notations the images bring out to forefront of your rational-intuitive mind.

Whoopa!

Talk to self

Thinking is like talking to yourself. It’s in-

ner chit-chat. A whole concert of different voic-

es could be going on just below the surface of

yourawareness,dukingitouttofindoutwhich

thought or feeling is strongest. It’s as if all the organs of your body, all the

different cells, all your memories, every person you ever met or read about

is calling out to be heard inside you.

So talk to your self. Close your eyes, and say “Hello.” To whom? Duh! Just

close your eyes and say, “Hello. I am in my mind right now. But I’m going to

step outside.” And as you open your eyes and look out again, you don’t just

see the world and your body: you see that the world is your body. And you

are now out here. You are all of it. You are all of THIS, right here.

Everything is speaking to you. And you speak to everything.

Try talking to your car before you turn on the ignition. Talk to your com-


130

puter when you start up a program. Talk to your plants when you water

them. Talk to the sky when clouds are forming. Talk to time when you need

it to be on your side. Talk to nothing in particular when you need to voice

a thought. Talk to your thoughts when you see them going in circles. And

when you talk to all the ten thousand things, be aware of the fact that you

are talking to yourself; not just ‘talking to yourself’, in your mind, but that

you are reaching out to the car, the computer, the plants, the sky, time, noth-

ing, your thoughts, and all these things because they can hear you; because

they are you. They are us, and we are them; no difference. If we say ‘I love

you’ in our heads to the food on our plate, it is heard, and it has consequenc-

es. If we say I hate you, same story. Whether we call it Karma, magick, or

the logic of cause and effect, just understand that this is a mechanism for

the mind to interact with its greater self.

Talk to self can be a @prayer. It need not necessarily be (in my case, pref-

erably not) to God, but it can be directed to the aspect or totality of self

that I’m concerned with. When I pray, I know that by simply speaking out I

am heard by the unconscious. There is an interesting technique that some

Christians use: PUSH, or Pray Until Something Happens. If you add intent

to your prayer – whoever or whatever it may be to – and release it and your

expectations, you know deep down that something is going to happen. You

can stop praying now.

When you meet people, friends or strangers, recognize the gods around

you. Say in your mind, Hello fellow gods. Recognize the divine theater that


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you are playing in together.

We are always talking to ourselves. So what message are you sending and

receiving?

Tarot

TheTarot,inprettymuchanyversionyoucanfind,isasetofillustrated

cards which tells the story of a spiritual seeker’s evolution. Each Tarot

card is a multi-layered symbol that expresses some aspect of our

true selves (see @Sigils) as we journey along our paths.

However, Tarot cards, like dice, lucky coins, etc, can also be used for

things such as divination. They can shed light on a question or desire by

revealing the answer that is already there in your unconscious. Even though

the operating principle in using them is chance, Tarot cards can tell you

the story you need to hear. And they can help your mind to see the best

course of action to take in the now, in the future, or with regards to the past.

Justshufflethedeck,pickoutarandomcardwithintent,andinterpretthe

meaning for yourself.

If you have a question about yourself, your future, or somebody close to

you,shufflethedeckwiththatquestioninmind.Pullacard,orseveral,de-

pending on your skill, and see what the card tells you. Whatever you decide

it says, that is (part of) what it says. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read it

that way. This technique can help reveal the deeper side of a situation, the

hidden element that might be more obvious if you were in a higher state of

consciousness.


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For example, before going to meet someone, or simply to learn more about

people near to me, I like to pull two cards: one that shows who they are on

the outside, and one that shows who they are on the inside. I then have one

or two reference books on the Tarot that help me determine the meaning

of the cards, which in turns helps me prepare ways to behave around the

person in question (see @Compose yourself).

YoucanalsoplaywiththeTarotbychoosingarandomcardthatdefines

your personality for the day. If you take the major arcana or the court cards

or whatever selection of cards you prefer you can give yourself the daily mis-

sion of developing that aspect of your character. Put the card in a frame on

your desk so that you see it often during the day.

Thankfulness

Thank all of creation for its participation in

your vision. Honor and thank what has come

before; pay your respects to what is coming; and

be what is becoming.

A simple trick to trigger gratitude is of course

to list what’s good in your life. It shifts your thinking. And the bonus is that

appreciation attracts support. Don’t just think “thank you:” feel “thank you.”

Feelgratefulnessandforgivenessforwhathascomebefore,alltheinfinite

cells and atoms and beings and minerals that have paved the way for you to

walk on right now (literally!).


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Threshold awareness

Thresholds. Boundaries. Limits. You want to

pass through a threshold, a boundary, a block-

age, and transcend it? It isn’t difficult.Every

moment is a threshold from one time

frame to the next. As if watching a slideshow of our own lives, we’re liter-

ally passing through thresholds all the time. Gateless Gates of eternity.

Practice recognizing thresholds. For example, you can use any physi-

cal doorway you pass through to say “I am entering a dream through this

threshold, and I can be anyone I want this time around” (see @Dream).

When you look out through your eyes, you see your own hands, maybe

even your nose. They are part of the physical threshold of your self. Check

this physical boundary to the world, then step in. Be here now.

When you look out of a window, into a painting, through a game character

on a computer screen, through a camera, or through glasses, recognize that

it is a threshold from one reality to another. Recognize that you are looking

at yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself.

The more you practice recognizing physical boundaries, and remembering

that you can pass through them (‘transcend’ them), the more you condition

yourself to do the same with mental or emotional boundaries.

Remember: I walk out of the walls I make.


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Touch

Actively engage your environment. Or better said, engage the active prin-

ciple of your environment. Realize that reality is alive. Don’t just touch

a door and ask, “am I dreaming,” but consciously acknowledge the door as

consciousness. Close your eyes, focus on the touch, and center your con-

sciousness on it. Consciousness is not centered in your head; you can be

anywhere, and the point of contact between inner and outer reality – the

touch – is a great way to practice decentralizing your consciousness. This

way you are getting out of your head, getting used to different centers of

consciousness, and you can connect your will to your living world (see @

Magic Eye).

Visualization

Influence your own behavior by

visualizing it before you do it. In-

stead of running through scenar-

ios after the fact (“I should have

said this,” etc), play it out the way

you want to see it happen. Decide

on being composed, well-breathed,

and that whatever the other says,

he/she is you and is playing a role in your story (see @Compose yourself).

Remember your smile, expand your ego, and turn the energy of the conver-

sation in any direction you want. Visualize yourself smiling at them.


135

To really feel alive and connected, visualize lines of energy connecting

you to the world. Visualize yourself as a transmitter, sending out waves of

energy across the ether for others to receive. Use your imagination.

Imagine the following magical model of (and key to) the universe, where

you have an energy ball in the palm of your hand. It is a pulsating orb that

you can conjure up anywhere. This ball of power represents the receptive

aspectofSelfwhichyouwishtoinfluencewithmagick.Think(project)your

desired reality into the orb. You can spend any amount of time imagining

your preferred world in this or any other way, no matter how silly or imprac-

tical it seems. The more you do it, the more you realize that imagination is

one of the greatest gifts our brain has given us.

Note:youmayfindthatvisualizationisaloteasierwhenyou’rehigh.

Wake up

Wake up inside yourself after waking

up in your bed. Create some kind of ritual to

wake up inside yourself. Stare at yourself in the

mirror. Recite a mantra or a spell. Say hello to

your bedroom world. Tell yourself something

like “I am creating all of this. And I’m gonna

keep on creating this new day.” Create a feeling of strength, create determi-

nation, create charge. No plans or expectations, just charge and openness.


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Write

When you write, you open yourself up to – you

receive – the words which you use to describe

reality. It is a direct communication from your

imagination. Whether or not we open ourselves

tothisunconsciousflow,wearealwaysevolving.

We are evolving as we speak; you are evolving as

you read; and I am evolving as I write.

Who knows where inspiration comes from? Instead of trying to answer

this mystery, what I like to do to loosen up is to write half-absurd poetry.

Starting with random syllables and sounds, I work towards a kind of recog-

nizable nonsense that projects my desire or state of mind. I imagine some-

thing, believe in it, signify it with words, let it go, and watch it manifest

itself in real life (see @Magick will, @Sigils).9

As a result of your writing, you are imposing your own plot on reality.

Even a word on your bathroom door like “Don’t worry, be happy” can do

good things for you. I wrote this one day as I caught myself worrying about

the way I looked:

Stop worrying about yourself and what other people think of you.

Stop worrying about yourself

Stop worrying

Stop

[9] Watch comic book artist Grant Morrison speaking about the magick of writing at Disinfocon. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6148569602584070911#


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Summary - What’s in Your Hands?

This handbook makes the claim that we, as individual human beings, can

overcome the anxiety we experience in feeling separated from the world

around us by taking control of what is within us. We can reconnect to a

greater identity beyond our thin layer of skin, and start actively co-creating

our lives.

This is a power that was previously reserved for shamans, prophets, high

priests, mystics, and other spiritual leaders. But their tools are now free for

all of us to use.

We too can teach ourselves to live in higher states of consciousness. We

can learn to interact with the world knowing that it is us.

The tools for doing this come down to two simple steps. They are “pause”

and “play,” or mindfulness and magick. Pause yourself with mindfulness by

catching yourself in your automatic patterns and waking up to your identity

– your identity as reality itself. Then, with magick, you are free to decide

how to continue your patterns consciously and playfully. Make your brain

play, like a song that has gone from being a mechanical recording to a live

and joyful improvisation.

Life itself simply happens. That part is the unconscious, the eternal mys-

tery. But how we live it is up to us. Doing it consciously, and mastering the

unconscious patterns that we normally follow, lets us tap into the unex-


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plainable magic that creates our world. When we are aware of the magical

dimension of reality, and tune in with the act of creation and evolution, we

can take our minds into our own hands.

Remember, we are all gods. We are free to do anything and believe

anything we want.

That’s it and that’s all.

It’s not even a commandment: it’s the operating manual of life, the game

plan. It’s the way it is. I’m almost afraid to add a caution, because it should

be enough in and of itself. But I’ll do it anyways: just remember that every-

thing you do works both ways. It always ends in balance, so that what you

do to others you do to yourself.

Love the game. Love yourself. Pause for a moment, and get that it’s all

connected, all us, and play!


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Index

Accept your dark side .44

Act symbolically .45

Believe .46

Breathe .48

Complementarity .50

Compose yourself .51

Connect with nature .54

Consecrate .55

Con-Uncon .56

Cosmic schmuck .58

Dream .59

E-Prime it .61

Embrace insanity (Enjoy it) .62

Etymology .64

Expand your identity .65

Expand your logic .67

Expand your mythology .69

Eye contact .72

Forgive .73

Have faith .75

Have fun .76

Hypnotize yourself .77

Know thyself .77

Listen .78

Love it .78

Magic Eye for the third eye .81

Magick will .83

Mantras .89

Map your consciousness .90

Meditate .91

(Self-) Metaprogramming .93

Mindfulness .98

Mindfulness of creation .101

Mindfulness of linguistics .102

Mirror .106

Move .107

Numerology .108

Optimism/Pronoia .109

Pray .110

Psychedelics .112

Question .115

Read .116

Relativize it .117

Sensory deprivation .122


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Sex .126

Sigils .127

Smile! .129

Smoke cannabis .129

Stare into the void .130

Sublimate .131

Summon .133

Synchronicities .133

Talk to the void .135

Talk to self .136

Tarot .138

Thankfulness .139

Threshold awareness .140

Touch .141

Visualization .141

Wake up .142

Write .143

About the author

Klaas Pieter van der Tempel (1984-) is, amongst other things, the second

of three sons in a family of Dutch-Canadian diplomats. Having lived and

learned across four of Earth’s continents, he formalized his broad interests

in the studies of Anthropology (Hon. BA, University of Toronto) and the

Comparative Philosophy of Science and the Humanities (MA, University of

Utrecht).

During his academic career, Klaas was struck by the limits of human

knowledge and intellectual education. Ever inquisitive, he pursued a side

track in exploring truth through experience, not words, and was transformed

by way of a spontaneous “mystical” type experience. This side track - the ex-

periential, introspective, and experimental approach to consciousness - soon

became the focus of his life instead.

At the time of this writing, Klaas is dedicated to sharing knowledge about

mystical-type experiences both in writing and in personal conversations

and consultations. He lives and plays in the Netherlands with his future wife

Eva.


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Create an Empty Space

Feel free to use this empty space to write down your own techniques, your

experiences, explanations or questions. Then pass it on and let the hand-

book grow!


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The Higher Consciousness Handbook is a book of practical psychology for the awakened and the awakening individual.

Intended for the advanced explorer of consciousness, this book can be a source of inspiration and experimentation for anybody looking to free their mind and play with their sense of reality.

The Higher Consciousness Handbook seeks to answer a basic question of consciousness change. How can we live our daily lives in a higher of state consciousness? In other words, how can we interact with our world knowing that we are one?

Learn how by trying more than fifty techniques, including mindfulness, magick, sigils, synchronicities, dreaming, breathing, sex, and more.

Copyright © 2011, by Klaas Pieter van der Tempel

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Pause, Play: a Higher Consciousness Handbook