We humans are a bunch of chatter boxes. We love to talk and write; to share ideas and opinions. Sometimes it’s for the sake of feeling, as when we attempt to say or write, or hear or read, something beautiful. Other times it’s a way of convincing one’s self they are right about something, whereas others are clearly wrong. Of course, there are other reasons for expressing thoughts.

The thing that most people overlook, though, is this:

Language is magick*.

(And yes, this does relate to awakening.)

I’ll show you a very clear example of why language is essentially a form of magick. Let’s say we’re having a conversation over lunch and you tell me, “You know, my mother is just so wonderful. She’s always been there for me. Even last week she gave me some money to fix my car, without my even having to ask. What a saint, she is!”

What if, in response, I was to look you dead in the eye and say, “Your mother is a filthy whore who deserves to rot in hell!”

Most people, upon hearing these words, will have an immediate felt emotional and physical response. It could be anger or rage. It could be sadness, or surprise, or confusion. Each has its matching physical experience. And it’s this experiential result that gives language its magical power.

In short, what you say and what you hear (what you write and what you read) can influence your experience. And magick is about having an experience. Or, more specifically, as Alan Chapman puts it, magick is about experiencing truth.

Actually, let’s take an excerpt from Alan’s free ebook Three Steps to Heaven: How to practice magick:

Magick is the art of experiencing truth. In other words, you can choose any experience (say, dancing around in your underpants), and decide what that experience will mean (‘It will rain’), undergo the experience (perform the dance), thus rendering the given meaning true (It will rain, because you’ve experienced the fact ‘it will rain’. Experience is the truth). [...] What can be experienced by magick is limited only by your imagination (the subjective), but how that experience manifests is limited by the available means of manifestation (the objective). [Italics his.]

Going back to the example of my cruel words about your mother during lunch, we can see that magick was indeed at work. There was no need to decide beforehand what hearing my words would mean to you. You had already made up your mind about the words “filthy whore” and “burn in hell” long before our conversation. So, the experience the hearing those words, while having already determined what those words mean and how such words would make you feel, resulted in an experience of whatever physical, emotional, and cognitive events that followed. My saying, “Your mother is a filthy whore who deserves to rot in hell!” was, basically, a spell. And it’s hard to find a situation where such a spell doesn’t produce the intended result.

We are using this kind of word-magick on ourselves and others constantly. Whether we are saying words to others, or speaking privately to ourselves in our minds, what we say or think, as well as the meanings we’ve given to each experience of hearing them, will result in some kind of experiential result. In this way, words really matter.

Until they don’t anymore…

That’s the funny thing about magick. The best way to learn how to break a spell is to also know how to cast one. It’s much easier to take something apart if you know how to put it together.

My previous post was all about learning to deceive yourself for the sake of awakening. In said post, I wrote, “When you bring this unconscious process out into the open air of conscious awareness, you can then learn to use it to your advantage. But maybe I’ll save the details for another post…” Well, now I’ve given some of those details.

The same way that the only way to really know how to break a spell is to know how to cast one, the only way to truly stop deceiving yourself is to learning how to deceive yourself – and quite convincingly! Learn to manipulate your own feelings by using different words to describe events. Learn to make yourself feel depressed by conjuring up mental images that make you sad or lonely. Then, picture a smiling loved one and see how it lifts your mood. Say to yourself, “You deserve to be happy and awake!” and smile. Then, say to yourself, “You will never awaken. There is no such thing. Life is completely meaningless,” and then hang your head and frown. Really buy into it, but pay attention at the same time. Watch as the magick of words and images takes you on a ride.

You may think the next step in this process is to simply learn which things make you feel happy and just make an effort to keep those things in mind, while pushing everything else out. You would be wrong.

The reason for this is because the result of any single act of magick is limited. It comes, and then it goes, like everything else of this world, or of any world.

The point, then, is not to use magick to feel happy. The point is to use magick against itself, to turn the tables. For, magick is what keeps us locked into our deluded egoic state. But it’s not the fault of magick, but rather, our own lack of cunning awareness. You can’t blame the thorns for keeping you bound if you’re the one who wandered into them with your eyes closed.

Instead, we can use a thorn to remove a thorn, and then discard them both.

*DISCLAIMER: I admit, I am no expert in the science and praxis of magick. The only area in which I claim any mastery is in the path of awakening, which I understand to be an inherently magical process. It is the one application where my experience carries any weight.

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