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In the book Creating (Affiliate link) the author shares an exercise where throughout the day of a workshop he and his partner randomly pour 7 glasses of water, but don’t explain why they are doing it to the workshop attendees. At the end of the day they ask the attendees to tell them why they are doing this activity and various people share their theories as to why. In the end, it turns out the teachers were doing this activity to illustrate the principle of tension-resolution.
What is the principle of tension-resolution?
It is this: Where there is tension, people will naturally seek to find a resolution for that tension. The author points out that often what is accomplished is NOT a resolution, because people attempt to resolve tension out of a need to control that tension, without fully considering where that need is coming from. It’s a useful lesson that demonstrates the limitations of what we know and control, because it also reveals that in making the choice to act upon tension, we may end up speculating and trying to fill in the gaps instead of being truly open and curious.
Magically speaking, however this inspired some thoughts on my part on how tension-resolution can be applied as a principle of magic. The most obvious lesson is the one the author shared and his sage advice of practicing observing reality objectively. Instead of feeling the need to fill in the gaps with what you think you know, it can be useful to simply observe and take in what you experience without feeling the need to explain it or categorize it or define it. This is no easy task, but it can be very effective for teaching you discipline around how you observe a situation or experience.
The author also makes the following observation about tension: “Tension is the engine that generates energy for action.”
In magical work, we can use tension to empower the workings we do. In fact, one of my go to’s in terms of fueling magical works involves using tension of any type to feed into the work, because tension is a constant and at the same time we are moved toward wanting a resolution (i.e. result). We can use the tension to achieve the result by directing it toward the magical and mundane work we’re doing, and then continually cycling any tension that continues to rise until the resolution is achieved. A good example, would be using the effort and emotions around a job hunt to feed into the magical working that expedites the resolution of the job hunt.
You can also take the opposite approach and delay the resolution by amplifying the tension. The benefit of taking this approach is that by drawing out the tension, you strengthen the result that occurs, because the tension becomes stronger and stronger. The more tension there is in a situation, the more it forces the situation toward a resolution, but if you can delay the resolution, the resultant “explosion” creates a stronger effect of generating a result. For example I used the tension of this summer, doing door dash and dealing with the fallout of my divorce, as well as my internal misery to force several situations to resolve in my favor. Because that tension had been drawn out for so long, it was so powerful that when the time came for desired results to manifest they were almost instantaneous.
We use tension to create movement in our lives. It’s what propels us through any crisis, but any other situation as well. If we can master the awareness of tension, we can apply it meaningfully to our magical work and achieve results by knowing when and how to apply tension to get what we want, when the moment is most opportune to achieve it.
