In Ensouling Language, the author discusses how important it is for the author to feel the writing s/he is doing, and likewise how important it is for the reader to feel the words, to encounter the meanings that have been placed into the words by the author. The author also notes that every author (and I would add any creative type of person) inevitably encounters a truth which he states as the following: "You must not extend awareness further than society wants it to go." The responsibility of the writer is to extend awareness beyond where society wants it to go, because when this occurs what is shared is an encounter that goes beyond the word and enters the imagination of the audience. To do that the writer and reader needs to feel the words and experience the meaning imparted in them. It's an interesting perspective on writing that I agree with. Writing should move the writer and the reader.
While I write a lot about magical techniques and practices, I do think its important to also feel magic. What I mean by that is that when you practice magic it should change something in you, move you in some way. If it doesn't, then it becomes empty, something done for the sake of being done, but not truly experienced and consequently not likely to change reality either. When the practitioner feels magic, feels a change, that's when the magic becomes embodied and real. It has meaning and that meaning has shaped the practitioner as surely as the practitioner has shaped the meaning, and as a result also shapes reality, opening it to possibility.
Whether I'm doing my daily work or I'm doing a specific working for a result I want to feel the magic. It is sometimes easier to feel it when doing a specific working, because daily work can get monotonous, but the reason you do the daily work is to challenge that monotony and to recognize that the lack of engagement is coming from you. There may be times where its really hard to connect with what you are doing or why you are even doing it and yet if you stick with it, you come to a deeper appreciation of your practice and magic. That actually applies to writing as well.
I write a lot and inevitably I encounter writer's block, where I can't really feel the writing. Yet I know if I stick with it I will get through that block and feel the writing again. The words will become more than just blots of ink on paper or electronic signals in my computer. The key is persistence. If you feel a genuine connection and passion to magic or writing or whatever you stick with it and accept that there will be periods where you don't feel it as much. You do the work anyway and you do it because that feeling isn't the reward, but is actually part of the process and it can't be forced, but it also can't be let go of. It moves you and you move it and that's what keeps you practicing magic or writing or painting, or whatever else.
Interview: Motherboard vice interviewed me and several other people about pop culture magic. Read about it here.
Magical Experiments podcast: Interview with Author Tom Swiss about his book and the intersection of Eastern and Western practices of spirituality.