Do you know when you’ve hit bottom? Do you know how to recognize burnout in your life? I share some thoughts on burnout and how it shows up on all levels of our life as well as how you can recognize it. I also share what you can do about it.
How I'm using Tarot to curb my impulsiveness
One of my faults and flaws is that I tend to be an impulsive person. I sometimes make decisions on the fly, in the heat of the moment, without fully considering the ramifications of those decisions. I feel my emotions deeply, and this can be both a good and bad thing. It can be good because of the depth of emotion and the richness that depth brings with it. It can be bad, when those deep emotions take over every other consideration.
Of late, I’ve been feeling my emotions very keenly because of the life transitions I’ve been going through. Trying to find balance with those emotions has been tough, because of how deeply I’m feeling them and I’ve taken this into account by starting a new practice that I’m going to continue for the rest of my life.
Rediscovering my Identity part 4
Rediscovering your identity can be a process of trying things and discovering what works and what doesn’t work, as well as being open to the opportunities that present themselves to you. As I also share in this video, it is important to be in touch with what brings you meaning and satisfaction.
Rediscovering my Identity Part 3
I share how to be present with your identity shifts and why you need to slow down sometimes and go still in order to fully assimilate what comes with those identity shifts.
Why we need to rest and recover
When we’re always trying to do something or be productive at some point we burn out. I discuss why we need to make time to rest and recover in our spiritual and mundane lives and how the right recharge can make us far more productive than always trying to do something. I also explain why we sometimes just need to stay at the bottom, when we hit bottom, so we can catch our breath and figure out what’s next.
Judgment and Release part 3
When do we hold onto judgment and what is the power that brings? When we do we recognize our own fallibilities in our judgments and examine how we’ve come to those judgments? These are important questions to ask that can help us with our magical work and our in line with continuing work I’m around the planetary energy of Mars and Geburah.
Inner Alchemy of Internal Work is available for pre-order!
Transform your life with internal work
Some occultists will tell you that internal work isn’t REAL magical work.
What they don’t know is that an unexamined life leads to lots of reactive magic, where you try to solve your problems, only to have those same problems occur again and again.
How do you get out of that cycle of reactive magic?
By learning how to apply internal work to your life…
In Inner Alchemy of Internal Work I introduce you to the processes and methods of internal work and share why internal work can help you take proactive control of your life and lead to better results with your spiritual practice. In this book you will also learn:
What internal work actually is, and why its a lot more than just shadow work and psychology.
How to apply meditation, pathworking and other magical techniques as forms of internal work that transform your life.
How to dissolve and release stress, tension, and emotional reactivity from your life.
How to work through trauma using internal work.
If you’re tired of living a reactive life, and you want to go deeper in your magical practice and get better results, this book will show you how to apply internal work to your life.
Judgment and Release pt 2
What does it mean to hold judgment over ourselves? I discuss my own tendencies to judge myself and how the work of this month is helping me release those judgments. I also share a realization I’ve had around the Lovers Tarot card.
The connection between internal work and Qi Gong
This last weekend I had the opportunity to take a class on the wood element in Taoism, which specifically focused on learning how to work with the ligaments and tendons of the body. It was an intense class, where we spent a lot of time doing qi gong (moving meditation) around tensing and releasing the ligaments and tendons. What I found most fascinating though was the internal work that happened around these activities.
When I do moving meditation, sometimes the focus is on just doing the movement and fully immersing yourself in the experiences that come up as you do the movement. The focus on movement is essential because you are moving your body in incredibly sophisticated and subtle ways. For example, a slight sensation of kneeling down can involve the tensing and releasing of ligaments in your feet. Likewise, straightening and folding your arms can involve a similar experience of moving the ligaments.
Judgment and Release
Whether we are judging ourselves or others we keep ourselves in a place of tension and attachment through those judgments. However wen we learn to release our judgments we also release the tension and attachment and free ourselves of the burden of the judgment. In this video I share some of my work around this.
The Power of Being Humble part 2
Being humble can actually be a form of confidence in yourself, because it comes with a self-awareness that if often lacking in people who are arrogant. I discuss the connection between confidence and being humble and how they actually go hand in hand.
The power of being humble
There is power in being humble. It seems a contradiction until you realize how it opens you to the world and to being curious and discovering wonder I share my own experiences around becoming humble and why this has transformed my life for the better.
How to be present with and work through fear
In moments of transformation and change in your life, it’s natural to feel fear. However in those moments you have two choices: you either let the fear define you and control you or you make the choice to acknowledge the fear and turn it into motivation to do something. In this video I share what I’m doing with my fear, during the transitions I’m going through.
Letting go of what holds you back
I discuss the power of letting go of what is holding you back and share why we hold onto certain thoughts and emotions and how dissolving those thoughts and emotions can liberate us.
Elemental Balancing Ritual Connection and Truth Month 5
2-23-2021 I switched over to the alchemical substances for mercury yesterday, which in relationship to connection and truth is all about communication. In the meditation work I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been focused on recognizing contractions, where a block forms because of one’s internal defenses. I think of it as a form of compartmentalization, because this sense of contraction seems brought on by a need to try and dissociate with an experience. Or maybe that’s just my experience with it.
I’ve also been continuing to read The Body keeps the Score which essentially discusses how the body internalized traumatic experiences. Reading the book has helped me more readily recognize my own trauma from past experiences, but also consider how trauma is created and what role you can play in the trauma another person has experienced because of your actions.
What does it mean to be grounded?
In an interview I did with Liz Worth, we ended up discussing the need to find balance in your life and not go overboard with your spiritual work. It got me thinking about what it really means to be grounded, especially in relationship to my recent article on recovering from spiritual burnout. I know from my own experiences and what it’s like to go overboard, because I’ve done it with magic and with being a workaholic sometimes. I’ve had to learn the necessity of achieving a better sense of groundedness in what I do through having experiences where I overdid it.
I’ve been reflecting on my own sense of balance quite a bit over the last few years, because I’ve had to make some changes in how I approach my spiritual work, my writing, and other facets of my life. I’ve realized that being grounded isn’t simply making sure you eat a bit of food after a ritual or a do a banishing. Being grounded is connecting to your life in a meaningful way that doesn’t always involve a sense of having to do something, fix something, manifest something, or otherwise deal with whatever seems to be driving you.
What does it mean to cross the abyss?
Crossing the abyss is a phrase sometimes used to describe crossing over the sphere of Daath in the Tree of Life, but in this context I discuss it in relationship to internal work and the dark night of the soul, and what it means to cross the abyss when it comes to your own journey in life and the hard times that inevitably can come your way. I share some of my own experiences in this regard and also explain why these experiences are valuable opportunities to learn and grow.
The Magic of working with your emotions
When you think about your emotions, perhaps the last thing you might consider is that there is a magical aspect to your emotions, or that emotions should even be worked with magically. After all, emotions seem to fall in the domain of psychology and while you can do shadow work around emotions that isn’t always considered “real” magical work. Yet in my own experiences and in observing other magicians, I think there’s a real need to work with the emotions and to do so in a way that is healthy, while also recognizing the role emotions can play in magical work.
What I’ve discovered in my own magical practice, and from observing other practitioners is that while magic can solve some problems, it can also exacerbate other issues, and this can include issues around the emotions. Certainly when I look back at my younger self, I see recognize times when I was reactive with my magical practice because of the emotions I was feeling at the time. I let those emotions take over my identity in the moment. As I began doing internal work aka shadow work around my emotions, it also changed my magical practice. I became less reactive in my usage of magic to resolve problems and started to carefully consider the impact.
Elemental Balancing Ritual Connection and Truth Month 3
12-22-2020 Today I started integrating the Sphere of Art work with the Qi gong work I’m doing. I did the sphere of art ritual and then worked with the alchemical substances for the underworld. Then I did the qi gong work and followed up with meditation, where I also mediated the alchemical substances for the underworld. It was an interesting experience because this time I felt the underworld energies mesh with the qi I had cultivated during the qi gong work. There didn’t seem to be any conflict with the connection of the energies, but of course I’ll test this carefully.
I’ve been reading the 48 laws of Power and what strikes me about this book is that I learned these laws from my dad. I doubt he ever read the book, but so far the laws discussed fit his behavior. He knew how to create an air of mystery, when to keep his mouth shut, but also when to make a scene. He was a cypher and I learned a lot of this from observing him. Of course I’ve also learned some of these laws just from my own experiences, but its fascinating to read this book and recognize my missteps (where I didn’t execute the laws successfully) as well as my successes with those same laws. I’m only part way through the book but it is quite illuminating, especially when you are already putting some of those laws in to action.
The role of compassion in magic
Does compassion have a place in magical work? I explore this question and how compassion informs my approach to magical work and how I interact with other people, as well as my internal work.